Singer Sinéad O’Connor has retracted her retirement announcement in mere days, saying that she only made the move after being triggered by reporters, who she called “pigs in lipstick.”
Last weekend, the Nothing Compares 2 U singer said her soon-to-be-released album, No Veteran Dies Alone, will be her final work and that she is retiring from the music industry.
O’Connor, who converted to Islam in 2018, called the end of her career “staggeringly beautiful news” and insisted that it was “time to put the feet up and make other dreams come true,” NME.com reported.
However, only days later, O’Connor is retracting the whole thing. She now says that her announcement was a “knee-jerk reaction” to some reporters in the U.K. and Canada. These “pigs in lipstick” triggered her into quitting the recording business, she explained.
“All interviewers were asked to please be sensitive and not ask about child abuse or dig deep into painful shit about mental health which would be traumatising for me to have to think about. Every fuggin time I go to sell a record for 30 years, it’s ‘aren’t you mental? aren’t you an asshole? aren’t you invalid?'” she wrote.
“I said I was retiring. As I have said many times before in knee jerk reactions when I was young and made the butt of media abuse on the grounds I’m legally vulnerable. The hugest misconception (I’m always asked this but never answer) of ‘Sinead O’Connor’ is that she is Amazonian. I’m not. I’m a five-foot, four-inch soft-hearted female who is actually very fragile,” she added.
“But I love my job. Making music that is. I don’t like the consequences of being a talented (and outspoken woman) being that I have to wade through walls of prejudice every day to make a living,” O’Connor continued. “But I am born for live performance and with the astonishing love and support I have received in the last few days and will continue to receive from Rob Prinz and all at ICM, as well as many managers and buyers and fans, I feel safe in retracting my expressed wish to retire.”
O’Connor posted a long note to fans on Twitter in which she exclaimed, “fuck retiring,” and attacked Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick for calling her the “crazy lady in pop’s attic.”
The Muslim convert went on to say the media’s “constant abuse and invalidation” of her helped derail her career.
O’Connor’s last album was I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss, from 2014, and her next album, No Veteran Dies Alone, is reportedly coming out sometime next year.
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