The Smith’s Morrissey has taken to his website to scold the music industry in the wake of Sinéad O’Connor’s death. While many of the tributes to the Irish singer have focused on her indelible musical contributions, Morrissey’s is instead directed at those who “hadn’t the guts to support her when she was alive.”
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O’Connor had a controversial career. She was endlessly outspoken about social and political issues and, as a result, was treated as an outsider by many of her peers and music industry executives. According to Morrissey, O’Connor had fallen prey to the phenomenon of only being praised after death, now that she “can’t answer back.”
“She had only so much ‘self’ to give,” Morrissey wrote. “She was dropped by her label after selling 7 million albums for them. She became crazed, yes, but uninteresting, never. She had done nothing wrong. She had proud vulnerability … and there is a certain music industry hatred for singers who don’t ‘fit in’ (this I know only too well).
“The cruel playpen of fame gushes with praise for Sinead today,” he continued. “You praise her now ONLY because it is too late. You hadn’t the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you.”
He then went on to highlight the contrast between the way O’Connor was treated in life to the way she is remembered now.
“The press will label artists as pests because of what they withhold…and they would call Sinead sad, fat, shocking, insane … oh but not today,” he added. “Music CEOs who had put on their most charming smile as they refused her for their roster are queuing up to call her a “feminist icon.”
Morrissey then went on to compare O’Connor to other musicians who were mistreated by the industry and, as a result, suffered untimely deaths.
“Why is ANYBODY surprised that Sinead O’Connor is dead,” Morrissey wrote. “Who cared enough to save Judy Garland, Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Marilyn Monroe, Billie Holiday? Where do you go when death can be the best outcome?”
He closed out his seething statement with, “Tomorrow the fawning fops flip back to their online shitposts and their cozy Cancer Culture and their moral superiority and their obituaries of parroted vomit … all of which will catch you lying on days like today … when Sinead doesn’t need your sterile slop.”
O’Connor’s death was announced yesterday (July 26). She was just 56 years old. Her death comes a little over a year after her son, Shane, took his own life.
Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images
