{"id":19424,"date":"2023-07-27T17:36:20","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T00:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=19424"},"modified":"2023-07-27T18:58:52","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T01:58:52","slug":"sinead-oconnor-and-that-small-town-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2023\/07\/27\/sinead-oconnor-and-that-small-town-song\/","title":{"rendered":"Sin\u00e9ad O&#8217;Connor, and That Small Town Song"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recalling Sin\u00e9ad O&#8217;Connor.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"SINEAD O&amp;apos;CONNOR \/ drink before the war\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/khOR5Ej-h2I?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sin\u00e9ad O&amp;apos;Connor - Drink Before The War (Lyrics)\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_p5V00sUBhI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a beautiful song in part because it&#8217;s sufficiently vague. Is she singing about some particular event? Or just the general attitude of overconfidence, or rather complacency, that nothing bad will ever happen to *me* and therefore I&#8217;m not going to lift my hand to do anything. Sound familiar?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>You say &#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m not afraid, it can&#8217;t happen to me<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve lived my life as a good man<br \/>\nOh, no you&#8217;re out of your mind<br \/>\nIt won&#8217;t happen to me<br \/>\n&#8216;Cause I&#8217;ve carried my weight and I&#8217;ve been a strong man&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And, &#8220;Why don&#8217;t you go out there and do something useful?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Of course the intonation throughout gives those lines great weight you would not suspect from reading them on the screen.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve listened to this song about 10 times today.<\/p>\n<p>John Scalzi <a href=\"https:\/\/whatever.scalzi.com\/2023\/07\/26\/rip-sinead-oconnor\/\">chose<\/a> her song &#8220;Three Babies,&#8221; another great song.<\/p>\n<p>I seem to have seven of her full-length albums, plus a couple EPs, but like many of my favorite pop groups and singers, I kept buying the later ones, once becoming a fan with the early albums, without getting to know them as well as the early ones. In O&#8217;Connor&#8217;s case, I got to know the first two albums very well, but as I glance at the others, I&#8217;m not sure how many of them I will recognize when I listen to them again.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/compote.slate.com\/images\/075a397a-85f1-430f-8212-c740eed61ca2.jpeg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Slate, Molly Olmstead, 27 Jul 2023<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/slate.com\/culture\/2023\/07\/sinead-oconnor-death-pope-photo.html\">\u201cA Lot of Us Were Na\u00efve\u201d<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;How many Catholics changed their mind about the moment in 1992 when Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor shocked the world.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kids won&#8217;t remember this. It happened before the sex scandals of the Catholic church became common knowledge.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There\u2019s a particularly famous moment from the life of the pop-punk icon Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor, who died at age 56 on Wednesday. It occurred in 1992 on the set of Saturday Night Live, and it\u2019s possibly the best reflection of how courageous or inflammatory\u2014depending on your view\u2014O\u2019Connor could be.<\/p>\n<p>Staring into the camera, having just performed Bob Marley\u2019s \u201cWar,\u201d O\u2019Connor\u2014her head shorn, wearing a conservative white dress\u2014held up a photo of Pope John Paul II. And then she tore it to pieces, shouting \u201cfight the real enemy!\u201d She tossed the mess onto the ground.<\/p>\n<p>The aftermath was brutal. The crowd at a Bob Dylan concert booed O\u2019Connor. Frank Sinatra called her \u201cone stupid broad.\u201d She was banned from ever appearing on NBC again. Madonna\u2014the same Madonna who sang \u201cLike a Prayer\u201d\u2014spoke out against her. The public wanted blood, and the moment came to be cited as the reason O\u2019Connor\u2019s career as a pop star ended.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In retrospect, she was right.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/nytfrenchgraphic.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/nytfrenchgraphic.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>NY Times, David French (subscriber-only newsletter), 27 Jul 2023<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/07\/27\/opinion\/small-towns-tolerance.html\">Opinion: Try Tolerance in a Small Town<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The writer is a former Republican who grew up in a small town Kentucky. He has a better take on that Jason Aldean song &#8220;Try That in a Small Town&#8221; since he actually listened to it (and I haven&#8217;t).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you haven\u2019t followed the fight, it\u2019s <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/07\/19\/arts\/music\/jason-aldean-try-that-in-a-small-town-cmt.html\">simple enough to explain<\/a>. Aldean released a song that seems to endorse small-town vigilante violence. If you \u201ccarjack an old lady,\u201d for example, or \u201ccuss out a cop\u201d or \u201cstomp on the flag,\u201d Aldean warns, that \u201cmight fly in the city,\u201d adding an expletive. But in a small town you\u2019ll face potential consequences from \u201cgood ol\u2019 boys, raised up right\u201d to a possible meeting with \u201ca gun that my granddad gave me.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just so that that&#8217;s clarified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recalling Sin\u00e9ad O&#8217;Connor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-resistance","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19424"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19428,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19424\/revisions\/19428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}