Melville House's Sinéad O'Connor: The Last Interview offers a poignant and intimate look into the life and mind of the iconic singer-songwriter. This posthumous publication, based on a candid interview conducted by music journalist Andrew Mueller, provides a fascinating glimpse into O'Connor's complex personality, her unwavering spirit, and her unflinching honesty.

Mueller's masterful interviewing style draws out O'Connor's thoughts on a wide range of topics, from her childhood and early career to her activism, spirituality, and mental health struggles. The book delves deep into the artist's psyche, exploring her vulnerabilities, her passions, and her unwavering commitment to truth.

One of the most striking aspects of this book is O'Connor's raw and unfiltered honesty. She speaks openly about her experiences with abuse, her battles with addiction, and her ongoing search for meaning and purpose. Her candidness is both heartbreaking and inspiring, offering a powerful testament to the human capacity for resilience and redemption.

Sinéad O'Connor: The Last Interview is a must-read for fans of O'Connor's music and anyone interested in the intersection of art, spirituality, and mental health. It is a fitting tribute to a truly extraordinary artist who left an indelible mark on the world.

While a lot of the content in these interviews is covered by her memoir Rememberings, it is still a reminder of how legendary she was and how her impact lives on. An anti conformist activist that has had such a massive influence on the way of the music industry and always advocating for causes she felt were important, primarily child abuse after her own personal experiences in her upbringing. Rest in peace to an icon!
Thank you to Melville House Publishing and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

Even though I grew up listening to Sinead and witnessing all the controversy around her I didn't know much about her or details that led to her sometimes questionable actions. Reading this book now as an adult really helped me understand some of those actions. Very interesting insight into her opinions about God, religion and women's rights. This is a good book for everyone that would like to learn more about O'Connor.

Thank you Melville House and the author for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

A compilation of interview that Sinead gave spanning her career that shows her personal and professional growth. I enjoyed this and being able to follow her thought process throughout the years. I think she was done a great disservice in pop culture and by the media during her life, and hopefully as we look back on her words people can see that she was spot on about most of her "controversial" opinions and actions. Her views on child abuse, racism, war, church vs religion, feminism, and how the music industry is predatory are all covered in this compilation. I found myself highlighting several passages of her interviews about these topics, particularly the passages about reproductive rights for women and her views on being a single mother. I often think we as a society didn't deserve Sinead, and I only feel that sentiment stronger after reading her interviews together in this format.

Thank you to NetGalley and Melville House for the advanced copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you for the ARC. I've read a few of The Last Interview series and this one has been my favorite so far. O'Connor gave very indepth interviews where she discusses the catholic church, politics, war, her children, the abuse she suffered as a child. She calls people out and never apologies. I loved reading about how she viewed her own career as a success despie the criticism she received after ripping up the photo of the Pope. She truly lived the she wanted.

This was an interesting compilation of interviews with Sinead O’Connor, and though I loved reading about her in her own words, I found myself wanting more. As someone who did not grow up listening to her music or really even hearing about her at all as a figure, I felt out of the loop, lacking context. Perhaps I was just not the right audience for this collection, but having learned more about her since her passing I really was excited to dive into this book to learn more.

One thing I really liked was the range of tones and opinions inserted by the interviewers, and for that I credit the Melville House team. For such a public and controversial figure I’m sure there were loads of interviews to parse through and choose from, and though there were certain topics that I would’ve liked to see more about, I appreciated seeing how the public perceived O’Connor through the lens of each interviewer.

[The complete 1500-word essay review is on Substack and my website.]

After the death of a cultural figure, Melville House will sometimes select interviews that the person did over the course of their career and publish them. This collection of Sinéad O’Connor’s interviews, including an interview she did on The View in 2021 before her death in 2023, is the latest in the series.

Like many people in the Gen X cohort, I encountered Sinéad O’Connor when I was a teenager and she was an emerging pop star. I first remember the video for “Mandinka,” where I heard her incredible ability to reach for a whispery high note then dive for a growling low note. Sometimes the change was crisp and clean; sometimes there was a hitch that reminded me of the “lonesome holler” in American bluegrass music. I took her completely at face value: shaved head, black boots, unapologetic stance with a mirrored guitar blinding the camera. I did not find this off-putting or needlessly defiant. I thought she was someone who knew herself in the way that I wished, as a teenager, that I knew myself. I knew nothing else at all about her.

This is where The Last Interview begins, these early years, and it stretches across O’Connor’s career through her retirement around the turn of the millennium and into her second stretch of making music and writing a memoir in the twenty-first century. The interviews throw a certain light on how O’Connor thinks and speaks, but the collection really shines a Klieg light on music and pop culture journalism, and its relation to a controversial star, over the course of more than thirty years.

...

She makes very clear in these interviews—which are about far more than her hair—that she wanted the money, she was happy to win the awards, and she was genuinely grateful for her fans. She also wanted to present herself on her own terms, to bring her politics to the pop arena, to fight injustice, and to maintain a sense of integrity. She got shit on for that for a long time, but in the end, Sinéad was right.

Kristin Hersh's introduction to this book seems to be written honestly; when I read it, I felt a huge tinge of sadness that a huge figure who stood for honesty is dead.

> “Where do they learn to do that?” She put the gum in her mouth and nodded toward an entourage actively worshipping the star in the center of their commotion. The group radiated a strange energy: buzzing and alert, they focused on the star while appearing to deflect stranger danger, keeping people away. It looked like a kind of cellular patterning. “Yeah.” I watched the huddle jealously guard its nucleus.
>
> “Some people learn the narcissist side of the equation and some learn the sycophant side. But it’s the same equation.” She touched her fingers to her face in a V shape as if they held a cigarette.
>
> “Do they even like each other?”
>
> “I don’t know. They seem kind of angry.” The entourage made its way across the room, through other entourages, past bowls of fruit and bottles of wine, and then disappeared through a door on the other side—still buzzing, still deflecting.
>
> “What do you think?” Chewing my terrible Dentyne, she squinted at the door closing behind the group.
>
> “I think . . . that the people who treated me like that were the same ones who ended up hating me.” I looked at her, struck by this.
>
> “Hating you?” She nodded, distracted, and I shook my head. “I’m sorry.”
>
> “It’s because I don’t keep my mouth shut.”
>
> “Oh.” We watched a line of people applying makeup in mirrors, their faces surrounded by hot yellow light bulbs.
>
> “Why should you keep your mouth shut? What do you say?”
>
> “All kindsa stuff. Stuff I believe.” Staring, blank eyed, she looked stricken.
>
> “Didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do that.” I shrugged.
>
> “Maybe they aren’t supposed to do that. If it’s stuff you believe . . . seems important to say it. Some people don’t believe in anything. You’re lucky you care.” She looked at me.
>
> “Do you?”
>
> “Care?” She just kept staring, so I kept talking. “I guess, but nobody seems to know what I’m talking about, so . . . they don’t take offense.”
>
> “Offense,” she repeated, laughing. “That’s what I do. I offend.”
>
> “You’re offensive?”
>
> “Indeed.”

In the landscape of today, Sinèad O'Connor wouldn't make many people gag. That would be due to many things: the barriers of offensive things to say is broken down the same moment that they're erected. However, in the 1980s and 1990s, what O'Connor said was inexcusable because of a few things: she was woman, artistically successful from her first album, extremely successful from a record-label point-of-view all over the world, and she said things against the Catholic church. In a Chuck D way, she was Public Enemy Number One, all over the world.

I can't imagine what she faced. And she seemingly didn't bask in her own public image where it came to 'success':

> WILD: Because of the nature of your work, it’s obvious that your fans feel a deep connection with you. What sort of things do they say to you in fan mail?
>
> O’CONNOR: I don’t know. I don’t read it.
>
> WILD: Why not?
>
> O’CONNOR: I’m very frightened of getting ideas about myself. It’s not that I don’t care about people, because I do. It takes a lot for somebody to actually write a letter to you, but I can’t just sit there all day reading letters from people telling me I’m brilliant, because I’ll fucking go mad. I might turn into the biggest wanker that ever walked the Earth, which I’m probably heading toward anyway at this stage.[^1]

She was outrageously funny in interviews. I've a lot of time for a self-deprecating person who isn't afraid of speaking her mind, especially at tastemakers of the times, when she because famous in the UK:

> “And Stock Aitken and Waterman! Pete Waterman was asked how he felt about the problems in South Africa— ‘What problems?’ he said. Shoot the bastard! I would like him to be in the Hippodrome when I firebomb it.”[^2]

She *thought*:

> O’CONNOR: I wouldn’t sing the national anthem.
>
> WILD: Don’t like the tune?
>
> O’CONNOR: I think of the lyrics of the song as being very dangerous. I think if you are into censorship, you should censor that, frankly. “Bombs bursting in air” and the “rockets’ red glare” isn’t anything that I’m interested in singing about. And yet N.W.A piss everyone off singing about AK-47s.

In 2021 she spoke about her [autobiography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rememberings):

> HOSTIN: The first part—you’re welcome—the first part of your book is a very personal account of the abuse you say you suffered from your mother until she died in a car accident when you were eighteen. And, in the book, you reveal for the first time how your mother related to that particular photo we discussed of the Pope that you ripped up on Saturday Night Live. Can you tell us about that?
>
> O’CONNOR: Yeah, well, I guess it goes back to the first question there, where we’re talking about the theocracy in Ireland, which is an unimaginable situation—thanks be to God—for anybody in America. You never—thank God—lived under religious oppression in the way we did in Ireland. The church created the type of people who abused their children in their houses, like my mother did. The protest I made when I tore the picture, it wasn’t only about sexual abuse, it was about the rest of us—do you know? The reports have been done about the sexual abuse, and everything, and that’s obviously hugely valid, and I’ve fought for that publicly and privately, but, you know, the rest of us never got mentioned. The picture, to me, symbolized the kind of monsters that Catholicism created by, first of all, beating the crap out of kids in school—forgive my language—then those kids going off and becoming parents themselves and thinking this is how you raise children. Forcing people to get married after their first kiss—you married the first boyfriend, no contraception, no choice for the women as to whether they wanted to be mothers or not. Bang, bang, bang—babies. It was illegal to work once you got married until 1985 or something, so the church created the circumstances where women were so controlled, man-trolled, that they all, when they went to the doctors depressed and postnatal, they were given Valium. They were all miserably unhappy women. What did they do? Went nuts on Valium: beat every shade of “brown stuff,” as [one] might say, out of their children.[^3]

This book doesn't really complement her autobiography but stands alone as a strange monument, as with any collection of interview conducted by different people from a long period of time. To be interviewed as a musician, especially from a PR perspective, must have been a hard thing for a young person, but I struggle to come up with the name of another woman artist who was launched into superstardom and then hated by the media for so many years. The fact that O'Connor put herself out like she did in interviews says a lot about what a seemingly truthful and honest person she was; she should be canonised, as she herself said Van Morrison should have been.

Through her life, O'Connor created some extraordinarily consoling music, for example her traditional Irish collection *Sean-Nós Nua*, and her roots music album, *Throw Down Your Arms*. I very much hope that the [album she recorded with David Holmes](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/sinead-oconnor-dead-inside-making-last-album-1234796872/) is released.

Sinead O'Connor was with and of the world. She was sensational. She was deeply human and felt for others. Her humanism will be remembered along with her humour, her music, and her art. And for taking amounts of stick that most of us will never know, the wayward hate of strangers who hadn't sorted out their own shit.

[^1]: The Rolling Stone interview by David Wild, 1991-03-01.
[^2]: The Irish Times interview, 1988-10-29.
[^3]: The View radio interview, 2021-06-25.

A collection of interviews.

This makes me sad to read her interviews knowing that she's gone at such a young age.
I found Sinéad O'Connor a complex, interesting and wounded person. She was strong and fragile in equal measures. She had the courage of her convictions and that is a rare thing, indeed.

This book is a small collection of interviews with Sinead O'Connor throughout her career. In it, Sinead explains her thoughts and beliefs on topics ranging from religion to feminism to mental health and how they changed over time. She also shares insight on growing up with a strict Catholic background in an abusive home.

While there were interviews and things I learned about her life that were new to me, I kept wanting more information and ultimately wanted to read about Sinead in her own words. Perhaps the interview format is not for me.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know much about Sinéad O’Connor beyond her music and the Pope incident on SNL. I was only a few years younger than her and listened to her music growing up. Back then, I’m not sure all her beliefs and causes would have resonated with me, but reading them now, it’s clear she was wise beyond her years—eerily prescient in the issues she spoke out about.

The interviews in this collection are well-chosen and in-depth. It was fascinating to read them together and see how her views evolved over time. However, I found myself wishing for more background or context to better understand what was happening in her life at the time of each interview. Some interviews are clustered within the same period, while others stand alone—what events might she have been responding to in those moments?

Overall, this book offers valuable insight into the mind of a talented artist with deep convictions. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

<b>A Lass That Is Gone</b>
<i>A review of the NetGalley Kindle ARC (downloaded October 7, 2024) of the Melville House paperback/eBook to be released (October 29, 2024).</i>
<blockquote><i>Sing me a song of a lass that is gone,
Say could that lass be I?</i> - excerpt from The Skye Boat Song (Theme from Outlander), one of the final released recordings* by Sinéad O'Connor.</blockquote>
I suppose most people became aware of [author:Sinéad O'Connor|2927214] (1966-2023) with her recording of Prince's <i>Nothing Compares 2 U</i> in 1990. I became a fan as soon as I heard her song <i>Troy</i> off <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/394334-Sin%C3%A9ad-OConnor-The-Lion-And-The-Cobra">The Lion and the Cobra</a> album in 1987. That fandom even included getting a copy of the 12" vinyl of the notorious collaboration with shock performance artist [author:Karen Finley|109789] on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieLYS_Fdt9c">Jump in the River</a> in 1988 [Content Warning: This will sound pretty tame until 4'18", after which it totally jumps the tracks].

This series of interviews collected by Melville House shows that O'Connor was consciously and consistently making her own way throughout her career from the time when she shaved her head in defiance of her record company wanting to market her for her looks. There is the recurring theme of her pain at childhood abuse which underscores many of the interviews.

Much of this was at the hands of her own mother, although the nuns at a Catholic school also left an underlying resentment. That later exploded with her defiant ripping up of a photograph of the Pope during a Saturday Night Live broadcast in 1992 as a symbolic gesture against child abuse in the church. This was well before the Boston Globe's 2002 exposure, articles later collected in [book:Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church|947265] (2003) and the Pope's subsequent apology.

The backlash at the SNL performance seemingly derailed O'Connor's career, but her own feeling was that it set her back on course as someone who defied the status quo. That consistent theme runs throughout all of these interviews, even though there was always a haunted background to her life which sadly ended too young.

My thanks to the author, the publisher Melville House and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this preview ARC, in exchange for which I provide this honest review.

<b>Footnote and Soundtrack</b>
* Listen to Sinéad O'Connor's recording of <i>The Skye Boat Song (Theme from Outlander)</i> on YouTube <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdOoSUCK89I">here</a> or on Spotify <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4SJAXVw4aJN4oXVc9ASZh0">here</a>.

Listen to <i>So Far: The Best of Sinéad O'Connor</i> on a YouTube playlist which begins <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-EF60neguk&list=OLAK5uy_loRYayz-wiOqa3xD5z5QtvbD6ZIG7F2Z0&index=1">here</a> or on Spotify <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/5vonsv14EYnB77YMVlUxWJ">here</a>.

<b>Trivia and Link</b>
The Last Interview series collects conversations with various artists, writers and musicians over their lifetimes. With this Sinéad O'Connor edition the series will number 41 volumes. You can see the series listed at the publisher Melville House <a href="https://mhpbooks.com/series/the-last-interview-series">here</a>.

Full Disclosure: I received an Advance Reader's Copy of Sinead O'Connor: The Last Interview: and other Conversations edited by Melville House from Melville House Publishing via NetGalley. It should be available to the public October 29, 2024.

Sinead O'Connor: The Last Interview: and other Conversations edited by Melville House with introduction by Kristin Hersh is a collection of interviews with Sinead O'Connor that span her career basically from beginning up until her death. Reading it made me miss her so much! Not only was she an incredible singer, she always spoke her mind no matter what the consequences could be. Not enough people do that in the world! She had a tough life, faced so much criticism, and yet continued to make music that would smack you across the face with its beauty and insight. She was so much more than the woman with the shaved head, or the person who tore up the picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. If only people went after pedophiles as hard as they did Sinead after she did that. How dare she call out child abuse! Make no mistake, in reading these interviews, you can't ignore that much of what Sinead did was to call attention to all the different ways children are abused. She wanted a better world for her children and all children. She was way ahead of her time. Now excuse me while I go listen to No Man's Woman.

I'm unsure why The View interview is referred to as her last interview when Kathryn Ferguson's documentary 'Nothing Compares' (2022) made the same claim. She was on The View two years before her passing. She did several interviews after that. The focus is mostly on interviews from the '90s and '00s. Her queerness was barely visible. It doesn't have any reference to her conversion to Islam, which was a huge part of her identity and healing. She preferred the name Shuhada' Sadaqat, which wasn't mentioned once. Nothing about who she was outside of the peak of her mainstream career and the SNL protest is really covered. It doesn't show care or respect for who she was at the time of her passing. It treats her as a nostalgia trip and a controversial figure who did one act of protest. Her entire life was a protest! She adamantly stood up for the rights of all oppressed peoples.

I don't know who this is supposed to be for, but it's not for her fans. It feels like a cheap gimmick to make a profit off of a dead queer Muslim woman.

Also, the cover art is ugly as shit.

Sinéad O'Connor: The Last Interview is actually a series of interviews conducted throughout her life. These offer a point of view that was not often widely publicized after that fateful night on SNL. O'Connor was well-spoken, thoughtful, and ahead of her time. You get to see her grow from her time as an adolescent all the way through until she ultimately passes on. Her interviews give us an intimate portrait of her life and how her views became more polished as she matured. She went from a rebel to a more introspective, spiritual individual.

Thank you to NetGalley and Melville House for permitting me to read this book prior to publishing in an e-book format in exchange for an honest review.

I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about Sinéad O'Connor.

As a lifelong Sinead fan and an artist, I’ve got to keep it real here. Sinead’s music carried me through high school and college—I’m a total nineties art school girl at heart. So, there’s no way I can get past that awful cover. Like, why? She deserves at least to have her eye color right!

The interviews are interesting, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she would’ve wanted these transcripts out there. The whole thing feels rushed, especially with that cover, which makes me question the book’s intentions.

Still giving it 3 stars, though. I’m too much of a diehard fan to give anything related to Sinead a bad review.

Autobiographic, Sinéad O'Connor: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (2024) by Melville House is a collection of her interviews between 1987 and 2021. The famous pop singer with the shorn hair and doc martin boots, was a Grammy Award winning artist, creator of diverse music genre albums and human rights advocate and activist. Best known for her huge 1990 hit single 'Nothing Compares to You', Sinéad’s life was not without controversary, raising her children on her own and struggling with the demons of mental health. Her death at fifty-six years of age, was preceded by her eldest son’s tragic death just over a year earlier. This book is an interesting prism into the life of Sinéad O'Connor through the years, with various magazines and journalists (a list of them is provided in the appendix) discussing a variety of topics regarding Sinéad’s own worldview. An inspirational read, as Sinéad reveals in her own words, her story, life, music, views and why she did what she did. A must-read book with five stars rating, that provides a valuable insight into Sinéad O'Connor, an incredible if troubled soul. With thanks to Melville House Publishing for an uncorrected advanced review copy for review purposes. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own, freely given and without any inducement.

"Sinead O'Connor: The Last Interview and Other Conversations"

Thanks to NetGalley and Melville House for permission to read this work prior to its publication date.

I read O'Connor's memoir earlier this year and found it deeply affecting. The interviews compiled in this work are no different. The only controversial thing about Sinead O'Connor is that she said what she believed in consistently throughout her career without compromising herself. In a world of politicians saying things and spinning them, fake apologies from influencers and all around BS being spewed from every direction, it means so much to be a person that is true to your beliefs and true to your word. This is an inspirational read and I just wish it had pictures of Sinead, as she was as gorgeous as she was truthful.

Unfortunately I couldn't review this book because it was in a pdf format and that doesn't work well on my e-reader.

If you're a fan, this book is for you! It was a quick read, and shared a variety of interviews from the artist. I really enjoyed it!