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A review by jonscott9
Rememberings by Sinéad O'Connor
5.0
Oh dear, what a painful and warm and damn funny memoir. Sinead O'Connor is so droll. Listening to her deliver the audio version of this is a delight.
Her thoroughly Irish and yet unique and dark upbringing; the many artistic and musical triumphs; the bizarre, amusing and/or egregious interactions with fellow famous persons; her litany of episodes of heroic advocacy and public travail – it's all here.
The latter stages of the book speak to her albums (more than you might recall) on a per-chapter basis, and they're persuasive and clear-eyed. She doesn't love everything she's done, and will call a spade a spade (paraphrasing, "it's a great song but didn't fit this record"). It's illuminating to hear her speak to her catalog, top to bottom. What a special sadness that she was working on a new album when she passed, which just as of early this month (January 2024) was said by the coroner to have been from natural causes at just age 56.
Come for her thoughts on Frank Sinatra and Joe Pesci, both of whom harshly criticize her, after an unnecessary debacle over the U.S. national anthem and the SNL moment-turned-milestone. (She loves Bob Dylan, feasts upon his "Gotta Serve Somebody" activist art, but he doesn't come off well in the Dylan birthday-party show she plays. In short, she gets booed – this is post-SNL – Kris Kristofferson salvages her from the stage, and Team Dylan doesn't help at all.) Stay for her moments with Lou Reed, Muhammad Ali, Anita Baker (who says the most lovely, poetic thing about Sinead's voice to her; you'll have to read it) and other luminaries. Enjoy the shite talk she reserves for MC Hammer and his limp opportunism. And absolutely *cringe* over her chapter-long hang with Prince, whose former manager became Sinead's and who beckoned her to his SoCal estate via limo only for a truly wild evening to play out.
As has been written since her tragic tho natural death, Sinead was always before her time. Perhaps she was era-less. For a while, she was certainly peerless in her courage and activism. She took on the Catholic Church covering for priests and bishops who molest the young, and (tho it was “an extraordinary setup"), she rightly opted out of the Star-Spangled Banner being played before one of her concerts in New Jersey. (Who creates a brouhaha over an Irish person opting out of the militaristic American anthem pumping through speakers preshow? Answer: Feckless turds in our broken country.)
Apropos of nothing, I love how much she uses the words "square" (as in unhip) and "hoor" (akin to whore), and how she pronounces "hoor" and "cool." Actually, all three got a lot of play here.
Don't ever defy a good audiobook: Sinead's intoning of her own words is the way to take this in. Her cadence, her accent, and what she's saying by way of various inflections, emphases and levels of excitement or somberness.
I don't reread a lot of books, though this is definitely one I'll return to each decade 'til I'm gone. And I feel that's how Sinead would have it.
Her thoroughly Irish and yet unique and dark upbringing; the many artistic and musical triumphs; the bizarre, amusing and/or egregious interactions with fellow famous persons; her litany of episodes of heroic advocacy and public travail – it's all here.
The latter stages of the book speak to her albums (more than you might recall) on a per-chapter basis, and they're persuasive and clear-eyed. She doesn't love everything she's done, and will call a spade a spade (paraphrasing, "it's a great song but didn't fit this record"). It's illuminating to hear her speak to her catalog, top to bottom. What a special sadness that she was working on a new album when she passed, which just as of early this month (January 2024) was said by the coroner to have been from natural causes at just age 56.
Come for her thoughts on Frank Sinatra and Joe Pesci, both of whom harshly criticize her, after an unnecessary debacle over the U.S. national anthem and the SNL moment-turned-milestone. (She loves Bob Dylan, feasts upon his "Gotta Serve Somebody" activist art, but he doesn't come off well in the Dylan birthday-party show she plays. In short, she gets booed – this is post-SNL – Kris Kristofferson salvages her from the stage, and Team Dylan doesn't help at all.) Stay for her moments with Lou Reed, Muhammad Ali, Anita Baker (who says the most lovely, poetic thing about Sinead's voice to her; you'll have to read it) and other luminaries. Enjoy the shite talk she reserves for MC Hammer and his limp opportunism. And absolutely *cringe* over her chapter-long hang with Prince, whose former manager became Sinead's and who beckoned her to his SoCal estate via limo only for a truly wild evening to play out.
As has been written since her tragic tho natural death, Sinead was always before her time. Perhaps she was era-less. For a while, she was certainly peerless in her courage and activism. She took on the Catholic Church covering for priests and bishops who molest the young, and (tho it was “an extraordinary setup"), she rightly opted out of the Star-Spangled Banner being played before one of her concerts in New Jersey. (Who creates a brouhaha over an Irish person opting out of the militaristic American anthem pumping through speakers preshow? Answer: Feckless turds in our broken country.)
Apropos of nothing, I love how much she uses the words "square" (as in unhip) and "hoor" (akin to whore), and how she pronounces "hoor" and "cool." Actually, all three got a lot of play here.
Don't ever defy a good audiobook: Sinead's intoning of her own words is the way to take this in. Her cadence, her accent, and what she's saying by way of various inflections, emphases and levels of excitement or somberness.
I don't reread a lot of books, though this is definitely one I'll return to each decade 'til I'm gone. And I feel that's how Sinead would have it.