Sinead O’Connor was responsible for one of my favourite UAE concert moments.
It was a brisk January evening in 2015 at The Irish Village in Dubai when, in the middle of her set, another venue within the site cranked up its speakers a little too loud.
This happened when O’Connor was playing a suite of quieter songs, such as Black Boys on Mopeds and the apt Thank You for Hearing Me.
Clearly infuriated by the intrusion and sensing the crowd’s discomfort, the seasoned performer decided to embrace the moment and shimmied to the muted dance beats whilst singing the ballads.
While organisers failed to resolve the issue, a determined O'Connor soldiered on and finished strongly.
It's a moment that feels particularly poignant to me with news of O’Connor's death on Wednesday, aged 56.
While her mental health conditions and career controversies are well documented, she came to the UAE during a particularly bright moment when her music was really doing the talking.
A year earlier, O’Connor had released I'm Not Bossy, I'm the Boss, her 10th and final album that was hailed by critics – including yours truly – as a career comeback.
Eschewing her experiments with reggae and electronic music of past projects, this was O’Connor’s most direct collection of pop-rock songs in more than a decade.
Everything about the album felt like a fresh start.
The opener How About I Be Me begins with a wash of keyboards recalling an image of a sunrise, before O'Connor arrives over a gentle digital drum beat and triumphantly announces: "I wanna be a real full woman."
Her smouldering rocker, Kisses Like Mine, echoes her punk roots with her signature dry wit.
Over gnarly riffs, she declares: "See, I'm special forces / They call me in after divorces / To lift you up."
Many of these tracks, including 8 Good Reasons – a showcase of how O’Connor’s voice can equally soothe and shatter listeners – went down a treat amid the appreciative audiences.
It also made for a potent interview with her weeks prior.
With her Dubai concert preceding a flurry of shows, including festival appearances in Australia and an anticipated UK and Ireland tour, O’Connor was in great spirits and enthusiastic to play the new songs.
"It does feel like a first album to me," she told me at the time, before adding it was inspired by the sounds of Chicago blues.
"When you immerse yourself in those kinds of songs, your writing standards just lift.
“Also the thing about those songs is that they teach you to say things extremely direct and simple."
As well as shedding light on her full-throttled singing approach – which she likened to the acting technique of famed Russian method actor Konstantin Stanislavski – O’Connor lamented the lack of fierce female music artists in the charts.
She took particular umbrage to the sexualised nature of today's pop songs, noting how they diminish rather than empower women.
"There is nothing out there such as protest songs or something stirring enough to move you. What I see now is that all of these artists are only writing about sex – and singing with no clothes on,” she said.
“That is really weird to me and it’s something I don’t like because these artists’ audience consists of minors.
“I think there is something very sinister going on when you have an entire generation of people being groomed by such artists and their music.
“For a woman now entering the industry, there is a lot of pressure to take your clothes off and that’s dangerous.”
O’Connor was clearly worked up.
She was also referring to her strongly worded open letter to pop star Miley Cyrus in 2014, where she implored her to rethink her racy approach to her career.
Cyrus dismissed her plea in a series of tasteless tweets referencing O’Connor's mental health.
O’Connor said she shrugged it off with a reply that also serves as a fitting epitaph for her influential career.
“I think everything through before I act,” she said.
“I think it comes with being Irish – we are opinionated people and not the kind to keep our mouths shut, so it would be against my nature to not speak out.”
In that brief moment in Dubai, we experienced O’Connor during a late-career peak.
She reminded us that despite the controversies and personal struggles, her incomparable artistry could be, and will always be, heard above the noise.
