It’s been a hard road for Sinead O’Connor.
On Tuesday, the 54-year-old singer sat down for an interview with Carson Daly on the “Today” show, and opened up about her career filled with controversy.
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Carson Daly speaks with Sinéad O’Connor in a candid conversation about her rise to fame, controversies in her career, finding peace after years of mental health struggles, and her new memoir, “Rememberings.” pic.twitter.com/vrgRSZRo4p
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 1, 2021
“I was really a protest singer, ya know?” O’Connor said. The infamous moment she tore up a photo of the pope on “Saturday Night Live” “wasn’t a stunt, it was a statement against child abuse a decade before the Catholic church sex scandal exploded.”
She decried Americans’ ignorance at the time of the child sexual abuse scandal roiling the Catholic Church.
“Ten years after the pope-ripping episode you all then found out in America that this was all going on,” O’Connor said. “We always say, Americans… they think nothing happens until they find out about it.”
Asked if she thinks of herself as the first person to be cancelled, the singer said, “That’s a good question I never thought of that. I was the first one everyone was like okay that fucker is not having a career now.”
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Looking back, though, there were positive aspects to all the controversy: “It was a blessing because I had to make my living doing the thing I loved doing. Just making music for life.”
In more recent years, after opening up about the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her mother, O’Connor has moved to a remote area outside of Dublin.
“I am good. I have been really good since I moved into this place about a year ago. It’s really peaceful,” she said.
The singer is also planning to put out a new album and take it on tour, but admitted, “I am afraid perhaps I have aged too much and it’s more of a ‘young person’ thing. My soul and spirit are 17 and are certain of it. But my body thinks it’s 70.”
