In the vast landscape of pop music circa 2020, Sinead O’Connor is all but invisible, a speck on the horizon that most people over the age of 35 have to squint to recognize.
If she does ring any bells for those folks, it’s usually connected to incidents the 53-year-old singer/songwriter probably wishes we would all move past: her tearing up a picture of the pope on SNL, her distressing Facebook posts that included a suicide threat, her angry tweets decrying all religions that aren’t Islam.
The only time a beam of light seems to poke through those cloudy memories is whenever her peerless rendition of the Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2 U” slips into a ’90s-themed playlist or onto the airwaves of an Adult Contemporary radio station.
How, then, do we account for the reality that every date on O’Connor’s first US tour in nearly six years, including a Crystal Ballroom performance on February 5, is sold out? If she is obscured by a culture that prizes youth and immediacy above all else, why does everyone still want to see her?