Stuart Cosgrove: Sinéad O’Connor tributes show Twitter's other side

outpouring of respect, largely free from the judgemental cynicism that often pours from the sewers of Twitter.

We are now so accustomed to ­portraying social media as a place of trolls, bots and gruesome interpretations of the world, it was reassuring to be reminded that it can also be a place of tenderness, spiritual ­reflection and the milk of human kindness.

Sinéad’s death had poetic symmetry to it as well – a fervent iconoclast, who raged against repression, went to her death as an icon, a much-loved personification of the power of pop.

For someone who spent much of her life raging against the dying of the light, ­troubled by Catholicism and wounded ­beyond words by tragedy in her own life, she would have resisted being sanctified as a statue of pop.

What was truly astonishing about her death was that Twitter became a place of gentle remembrance, cleansed of the ugly observations of official political trolls. My timeline was a series of eulogies, short and sometimes reflective psalms in awe of this remarkable women.

The actor Russell Crowe published a very personal commemoration in the form of a twitter thread: “Last year, ­working in Ireland, having a pint in the cold outside a Dalkey pub with some new friends, a woman with purpose strode past us. Puffy parker zipped to the nape and her bowed head covered in a scarf.

“One of my new friends muttered an exclamation, jumped up and pursued the woman. Thirty metres down the road the friend and the woman embraced, and he waved me over. There under streetlights with mist on my breath, I met Sinéad. She looked in my eyes, and uttered with ­disarming softness, ‘Oh, it’s you Russell’.

“She came with us back to the table and sat in the cold and ordered a hot tea. In a conversation without fences we roamed through the recent Dublin heatwave, ­local politics, American politics, the ­ongoing fight for indigenous recognition in many places, but particularly in Australia, her warm memory of New Zealand, faith, ­music, movies and her brother the writer. I had the opportunity to tell her she was a hero of mine.

“When her second cup was taking on the night air, she rose, embraced us all and strode away into the fog-dimmed streetlights. We sat there the four of us and variously expressed the same thing. What an amazing woman.”

Born in Dublin on December 8, 1966, O’Connor rose to fame in the late 1980s with her debut album The Lion And The Cobra and achieved worldwide success in 1990 with a phenomenal reworking of Prince’s song “Nothing Compares 2 U”.

It was her punk-inspired critique of the institutions of the Catholic Church that often set her apart. She refused to avoid or whisper about divisive matters such as contraception, abortion and institutional paedophilia, and so alienated some and outraged others. But her creative ­honesty, sometimes subverting the symbols and costumery of Catholicism, made her a strident figurehead of the new secular ­Ireland.

Sinéad had a restless mind, ­intellectually capable of ranging over the most ­complex to the most ephemeral ­subjects. She searched for faith and belief but never settled on either its meaning or its destination.

Sadly, she had much to endure in her short life. Crowe speaks of her brother ­Joseph, the best-selling author of Star Of The Sea but not of her son Shane who died of suicide and whose death could never be reconciled. In her own final ­social media post, she shared a picture of Shane and wrote alongside it: “Been living as undead night creature since. He was the love of my life, the lamp of my soul.”

In 2021, in an article in The Times, ­Sinéad focused on her decision to tear up the photo of John Paul II in a moment of defiance against the Catholic Church

“The media was making me out to be crazy because I wasn’t acting like a pop star was supposed to act,” she said. “It seems to me that being a pop star is ­almost like being in a type of prison. You have to be a good girl.”

Her contemporary Tracey Thorn, ­retaliating against what she felt was a ­negatively framed feature in the ­Guardian, penned her own testimony to Sinéad: “She was free of the obsessive ­desire to have hits at any cost ... she saw no need to edit herself for public consumption ... she stuck to her guns when powerful forces tried to make her compromise.”

Famously, Sinéad had written a ­motherly open letter to Miley Cyrus ­after seeing the young singer naked in the ultra-sexualised Wrecking Ball ­video. O’Connor felt the singer was being “pimped” by her record company.

Here in Scotland, she had legions of fans. Duglas Stewart, of the BMX ­Bandits and a pop music curator, posted the ­following short message connecting her passing to the earlier death of her ­one-time collaborator Terry Hall: “Sad news about Sinéad O’Connor today. Now Terry and Sinéad are both gone and so I listened to them singing together on All Kinds Of Everything. I really love their version of this song.”

The tweet linked to a video of the duet singing the 1970 Eurovision song made famous by Dana. Once derided by pop cynics, the simple reworking of what can sound like a facile love song is turned into an anthem of discovery, finding love in the ephemera of life.

One of Sinéad O’Connor’s great ­legacies was the way she paid homage to the Irish songbook, delivering a spine-tingling ­version of Danny Boy for Gay Byrne (below) on The Late Show, and duetting with The Chieftains in a funereal version of the rebel song The Foggy Dew. Her sixth studio album Sean-Nós Nua, literally the old/new style, reimagined some of Ireland’s greatest folk ballads, virtually rescuing the wonderful love song Molly Malone from its kitsch imprisonment and setting it free again.

Respect came from the hard core of African American music too. The US rapper Ice T wrote: “Respect to Sinéad ... She stood from something ... Unlike most people. Rest Easy.”

Chuck D of Public Enemy said: “Rest in Power Sinéad O ... Mutual respect.”

He also drew a charcoal portrait of ­Sinéad imagined back in the days when she had Public Enemy’s target icon ­tattooed into her head. According to rap’s subcultural history, Sinéad was one of the first white women to wear a T-shirt ­bearing Malcolm X’s now mainstream armed resistance slogan “By Any Means Necessary”.

Perhaps predictably, the music ­industry rallied to her memory, although many had dismissed her as a head-case and a ­harridan in what was a tempestuous life. In a series of vitriolic comments about the often-hypocritical way that the ­music ­industry had paid its homage, Morrisey said: “As always, the lamestreamers miss the ringing point, and with locked jaws they return to the insultingly stupid ‘icon’ and ‘legend’ when last week words far more cruel and ­dismissive would have done.”

Despite a detour into false equivalence, in which he compared his own “exile” to O’Connor’s experience, Morrissey hit a very credible note, saying: “Tomorrow the fawning fops flip back to their online ­shit-posts and their cosy Cancel Culture and their moral superiority and their ­obituaries of parroted vomit. All of which will catch you lying on days like today ... when Sinéad doesn’t need your sterile slop.”

Bitter but achingly true. Sinéad O’Connor was unconditionally loved by fans that saw a unique humanity in her flaws. She was a radiant woman who now needs to rest in eternal peace.