Sinead O’Connor died today. 

This one hits hard. Harder than most? I mean we have lost some big ones in the recent past … Prince and David Bowie among others. Maybe this one hit harder because she is younger than me..I just turned 60—she was 56. Maybe because there is a kinship in her pain and suffering as a woman, as a mother. Maybe it was her courage — in standing up for everything she believed in no matter the consequences that she endured, or just that I have been listening to her music and loving her for over 35 years. 

In 1987 when Sinead O’Connor’s “The Lion and the Cobra” was released, I worked at WFNX— an alternative radio station in Lynn Ma. It was my dream job—just out of college, I had DJ’ed at my college radio station and wanted only to get my first real job at WFNX—the coolest radio station in Boston. I worked in traffic (scheduling commercial breaks for the on air jocks) and eventually in sales covering all record labels and record stores(remember those?). I was 24. 

Everyone that worked in that old bank building in downtown Lynn, were young, alternative music lovers — from production to newsroom; sales and on air-personalities to maintenance guys —each worked at WFNX because of  their love of music. No one cared that the pay was lousy or the commute was hell —I drove over an hour and a half each way from Hingham to Lynn every day — in a white Suburu, blasting The Smiths, The Cure, XTC, U2, and Sinead O’Connor on my cassette deck.

We were a bunch of kids running the show at WFNX. The station was a tax write-off for the big-wigs who owned the Boston Phoenix newspaper and they didn’t really pay any attention to us… not until we started showing up in the numbers ratings and started making money for them…

But that didn’t happen until well after Sinead came to the studio to promote her first album and do her very first US radio interview with WFNX that day in 1987. Neither the station nor Sinead was well known except to the “cool kids”. That night we hosted and attended her first show at The Paradise. It was a mesmerizing performance by the  20-year-old Sinead and will be remembered by all who attended. 

There are a handful of shows in Boston in the late 80’s that those in the know still talk about..

”Were you at that Prince show when he showed up at 2:30am?”

“Were you at the Channel when they set off the smoke bomb before the Fine Young Cannibals show?”

“Did you see Sinead at the Paradise?”

(Answer yes to any of those and we can sit and talk music for hours.)

Sinead’s life and turmoil has been so publicly splashed across the news and tabloids and in documentaries over the years that it is hard not to follow along. When her son died last year of suicide my heart ached for her. 

But through all the noise and commotion, what stood out and all that truly mattered to me, was her voice. Her incredibly tender and ferocious voice. Every note seemed perfectly chosen to run up and down  my spine. Coursed through my veins like a drug. I sang along to every note of “Black Boys on Mopeds” and “Three Babies” and Screamed along with “Mandinka” and “Troy”. 

Sinead O’Connor’s music had and still has the innate ability to simultaneously lean into my sadness and fuel my rage. 

I don’t remember if I met her that day at the radio station. My co-workers said she was super kind and soft-spoken . I know I was there, maybe working in the other room or possibly in the conference room. We often had musicians up to the studios, brought upstairs by their Record Exec Reps.; but often I was on the phone or out on the road. So many times they were “nobodies” that became “somebodies”. Like Flea. Like Kurt Cobain. Like Sinead O’Connor.

I do know that I  stood next to her that night at the Paradise show. She was in the crowd in front of the stage, wearing a wig and watching the opening act. No-one knew it was her until afterwards. Looking back, the wig seems odd knowing who she became and the fact that she never hid from anyone. She was who she was and to hell with you if you didn’t take her for that.

I think her death feels so brutal because she has always made us feel her actual pain . She whispered it to us for years—she screamed it at us . Sinead’s inner emotion was blasted out through every verse, every action, every interview. She wanted us to grasp it, understand it, and feel it–because she felt everything. Eventually when you feel everything, it all becomes too much. That amount of empathic raw talent seems almost unsustainable.

Some have said that we all let Sinead O’Connor down. We weren’t there for her. But that’s impossible to say. We don’t really know what she expected of us. If she expected us to love her and enjoy her music, well that we did—and then some. Could any of us have saved her? —I honestly don’t think so. The pain that those with mental illness suffer on a day to day basis are unfathomable for any of us. We are always shocked when they finally put an end to it; but never fully surprised. I can’t imagine losing a child. I hope to never know that pain.

Thank you Sinead for your life and your music that will live on for eternity. You will always be my Heroine .