The very beautiful and talented Sinead O’Connor (from her website)
Sinéad O’Connor has retracted her announcement, made over the weekend, that she would retire from music and live performance.
In a new statement posted to Twitter, the Irish musician explained to fans that she had felt “badly triggered” by a series of interviews regarding her new memoir, Rememberings, in which she writes of surviving physical and psychological abuse.
The Irish musician said it was “unnecessary and hurtful” for Woman’s Hour presenter Emma Barnett to repeat a statement, made by Neil McCormick in the Telegraph, calling O’Connor “the crazy woman in pop’s attic”, during an interview on 2 June.
Posting on Twitter at the time, she described the interview as “extremely offensive and even misogynistic”.
The BBC said in response: “During an interview about her new book, Sinéad O’Connor was talking about her mental health and was asked what she made of a comment by a music critic reviewing her book in recent days.”
On 5 June, the Irish musician said she was retiring “from touring and from working in the record business”. She tweeted: “I’ve gotten older and I’m tired. So it’s time for me to hang up my nipple tassels, having truly given my all.”
Two days later, she explained: “I was already so badly triggered by the time the BBC fucked me up the ass, with no warning, lube or permission, I lost my shit after women’s hour [sic]: I felt like I did thirty years ago and for thirty years. That I’d be better off (safer) if I ran away and gave up being in music at all. Because I keep getting used as a coat hanger for people to clothe with whatever they like.
“My legal vulnerabilities or past agonies dragged up for salacious entertainment and the paying of the mortgages of mostly men, who, thanks be to God, have never and will never know what it’s like to be a female trauma survivor in this world. A world falsely claiming every day to be less poisoned by stigma or misogyny that [sic] it is in reality.”
Of the Woman’s Hour interview, she wrote: “Of all the shite they could have asked about they grill me on having four kids with four fathers,” she wrote. “About being ‘a horn dog’. Then Barnett dares to suggest that ‘oh aren’t we much better now about discussing mental health’. No, Bitch. Because if we were you wouldn’t have dragged up the madwoman in the attic scenario.”
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Read the whole interview here:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jun/08/sinead-oconnor-retracts-retirement-announcement
https://www.sineadoconnor.com/
[Thank you to Alex Teitz, http://www.femmusic.com, for contributing this article.]