TRIBUTE TO SINEAD O’CONNOR.

June 12, 1988 was a clear Sunday, and my mother had just been successful in her application to be canteen convenor at my old primary school, where my brother was in Year Five. The whole family had to go and help her, well, my brother wanted to play around, and I took along a small transistor radio to listen to Take 40 Australia. That was when I heard the song, “Mandinka,” which was also on a cassette that I had gotten, Hit Pix, 88, Volume Two.

Fast-forward three weeks, and for a drama assignment, I had to listen to radio stations that I wouldn’t usually listen to, and I chose 4ZZZ, a university radio station, and the announcer referred to her as Sin Ed O’Connor, obviously not across Gaelic.

I remembered seeing an advertisement for anti-dandruff shampoo, and my high school friend, Brent Palmer, who follows me on here, may well remember Tamiko or Tamika Jones, who had her head shaved on the left-hand side and it was long on the other side, but it was shaved underneath, and she was the first female I saw who’d shaved her head. I do, however, know that some females experience hair loss, due to hormones or alopecia areata.

Fast-forward to 1990, and the rebellious Mandinka and the Emperor’s New Clothes, were contrasted with the Number One song, the Prince-written Nothing Compares to 2U. A whimsical song about a woman whose lover has withdrawn his love and how nothing can compare and then she says that she went to the doctor who told her that she needed to have fun and her ex-lover was a fool.

Controversial, direct and colourful, Rest In Peace and Power, Sinead, Nothing Compares 2U.