Music Video Monday: Sinead O'Connor

In honour of St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, this week's music video selection is Irish singer Sinead O'Connor. The first time I saw her perform was on the 1989 Grammy Awards. It was truly shocking. She sang her song "Mandinka" and with her bald head, Doc Marten boots, and angry screeching, I thought she was some kind of neo-nazi punk. She truly scared the crap out of me. My first reaction was: "who is this bald, angry, anarchist bitch?" I wouldn't be buying any of her albums.

A year later, she released the single "Nothing Compares 2 U" (a song written by Prince). It was pretty mellow. The music video was surprising in the emotions revealed. Most of it is a focus on her face and I was mesmerized. She actually looked beautiful (despite her shaved head) and you can see the pain on her face as she sings this song. With one simple music video, she won me over. So much for judging on first appearances! To this day, I consider this music video to be my favourite of all time, because of the impression it left on me (a lesson on not prejudging people based on first appearances). A classmate raved about her album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got and recommended that I must buy it. She called it "very humanistic" (whatever that meant).

So, in the spring of 1990, I bought that album and it has become a classic in my music library. The album is pretty strong throughout with a lot of great songs (such as "Emperor's New Clothes", "Black Boys on Mopeds", and "Three Babies"). As I learned more about her that spring, she was the "anti-Madonna." In an interview, she held it in an empty building to emphasize her lack of materialism. Over the years, she caused some controversies...such as her refusal to have the American national anthem play before her concert at Madison Square Garden (offending American fans, though I never saw what the big deal was) and her performance on Saturday Night Live when she ripped apart a photo of Pope John Paul II and called on people to "fight the real enemy" (the Catholic Church). This was during the time that the Catholic Church was under fire for protecting child molesting priests instead of children.

Though she had announced her retirement from a singing career a few years back, she broke that when she released a reggae album. She has sung various kinds of music, including one of old standards, but her career will probably never reach the success of her second album and hit single in 1990.