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.
What are the influencer academy modules?
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Greatest of All Time
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Jawan
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Pharaoh's curse
British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.
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PROFILE OF HALAN
Started: November 2017
Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport and logistics
Size: 150 employees
Investment: approximately $8 million
Investors include: Singapore’s Battery Road Digital Holdings, Egypt’s Algebra Ventures, Uber co-founder and former CTO Oscar Salazar
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre, six-cylinder
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About RuPay
A homegrown card payment scheme launched by the National Payments Corporation of India and backed by the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank
RuPay process payments between banks and merchants for purchases made with credit or debit cards
It has grown rapidly in India and competes with global payment network firms like MasterCard and Visa.
In India, it can be used at ATMs, for online payments and variations of the card can be used to pay for bus, metro charges, road toll payments
The name blends two words rupee and payment
Some advantages of the network include lower processing fees and transaction costs
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
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Anghami
Started: December 2011
Co-founders: Elie Habib, Eddy Maroun
Based: Beirut and Dubai
Sector: Entertainment
Size: 85 employees
Stage: Series C
Investors: MEVP, du, Mobily, MBC, Samena Capital
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
