M. Suzanne Terry

There are quite a few musicians who had a formative impact on me in my teen years/young adulthood. Some blew me away with their talent, their stage presence, their personality, or all of the above. Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, the Cranberries. And Sinéad O’Connor. 

When everyone in the sheltered social pocket where I lived in my small town was scandalized by her ripping the picture of the Pope, I wondered why (I didn’t really have access to why because that was pre-internet and so my information was limited to what I could glean from the library and the news. It was…slanted…to put it mildly). Friends threw away their singles of “Nothing Compares to You,” and leaders at church seemed to agree it was a clear attack on all Christianity. It wasn’t, of course, and it was odd to hear so many of the Baptists I grew up with come to the Pope’s defense. After all, they usually enjoyed a nice rousing dose of judgment for anyone who wasn’t at least Protestant, dismissing all others as heretics of varying degrees. But Christians have a hard time passing up any opportunity to play martyr, don’t we? Even if we have to join forces with those we usually look down our noses at and completely fabricate our entire point.

But Sinéad didn’t look unhinged to me. She didn’t look hysterical. Or demonic. Or anything I heard people calling her. She did look mad. And she was right to be. 

It’s possible that I have Sinéad O’Connor to thank for my religious deconstruction tendencies. 

I just finished the audio of her memoir Rememberings. She read it herself, and it was particularly moving to hear her story in her own voice.

It’s a weird kind of grief when someone I love – but don’t actually know – dies. It’s like the lingering fog of a cold I’m just beginning to get over. Everything moves a little more slowly and the brightness of the world she no longer inhabits is just a little dimmer. I’m sad to see her go.