Delores O’Riordan, Sinéad O’Connor, Glen Hansard

I have been thinking about Irish popular music this week. It has been difficult to think about much else. On Wednesday, we learned that Glen Hansard, who began as a teenage busker in Dublin and went on to star in the hit movie Once and to earn an Oscar for the song “Falling Slowly,” co-written with Markéta Irglová, his co-star in that film and briefly his romantic partner, had died in a motorcycle accident. Once was transformed into a Broadway musical that won eight Tony Awards, a Drama Desk Award, and a Grammy Award. For anyone who knows his music or anything about him, Hansard’s sudden death at fifty-six years old is not easy to absorb. He is the third in a string of wonderful Irish musicians who have left us too soon.

There is a cliché: You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. I associate it with Joni Mitchell’s environmentalist-themed song, “Big Yellow Taxi,” but like all clichés it is ubiquitous. I’ve learned you can feel a sense of loss for something you never possessed in the first place. In particular, you can miss a musician who was alive at a time when you might have enjoyed them but you never knew them until after they died. This happened to me most dramatically when Dolores O’Riordan, the lead singer of the Irish rock group, the Cranberries, died in 2018. At the time, I’d never heard of the Cranberries. They were a famous band that filled arenas in the 90s, but they just never came up on my radar. When I heard the testimonials for O’Riordan, I began to listen to her music and soon discovered what I had lost without knowing it. The Cranberries had a long string of immense hits, including “Dreams,” “Linger,” and “Ode to My Family,” but it is the raging anti-war anthem “Zombie” that will stick with me forever. Inspired by the Warrington, England IRA bombings that killed two children, the song is a screaming plea for an end to the violence of The Troubles. This 1999 live performance in Paris is perhaps the best way to experience the song.

O’Riordan was from County Limerick, and her voice retained a strong Irish flavor, often lilting, yodeling, and gliding in the manner of Gaelic unaccompanied singing. She retained her Irish accent in song: “It’s the same old t’ing since 1916.” Delores O’Riordan was an immensely talented singer and songwriter, and despite not having known her music when she was alive, I miss her sorely now.

The second sad loss in this trio was Sinead O’Connor in 2023. Another quintessentially Irish singer, who frequently sang a cappella with incredible force, notably during an appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1992, singing a version of the Bob Marley song “War,” at the end of which she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II in protest of child abuse. O’Connor received widespread criticism for this act, was booed throughout an appearance at Madison Square Garden two weeks later, and for a time, became something of a musical pariah. In subsequent years, as revelations about sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church came to light, O’Connor’s act was seen as courageous rather than deplorable. In later years, O’Connor suffered the death of a child and a variety of personal and mental health problems, about which she spoke openly. She lived a troubled life, but I remember her as a strong woman standing alone on stage who sang with soaring power and often said things that others were afraid to say. She will be most remembered for her cover of Prince’s song “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which became a worldwide hit. In much of the official music video (see below), her pale, characteristically shaved head fills the screen on a black background as she stares directly at the viewer. It is still a stunning performance.

Now, Glen Hansard. Thanks to friends who introduced me to contemporary Irish music, even before Once, I became a fan of Lisa Hannigan, Gavin Glass, Paul Noonan (Bell X1 and Printer Clips), and Glen Hansard. After the success of the film, Hansard and Irglová formed a group, The Swell Season, and several years ago, I got a chance to see them at Lupo’s in Providence, Rhode Island. It was a wonderful evening, and in live performance you were able to experience Hansard’s deep love of Ireland and its culture. He would often end his concerts with a rousing version of “The Auld Triangle,” a song that Hansard attributed to the Irish playwright Brendan Behan, who included it in his play “The Quare Fellow.” The triangle in question was used to wake prisoners and signal various activities in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin, where Brendan Behan had once been held, and the singer is assumed to be a prisoner in his cell. The best video I’ve found of Hansard and friends singing the “The Auld Triangle,” comes from a 2014 Lollapalooza concert. As you will see, by the end of the song, he typically got the entire audience to sing the chorus:

The auld triangle

Went jingle jangle

Along the banks

Of the Royal Canal

I get choked up whenever I watch the video, which I will place here.

Perhaps because he started out poor, singing on the streets for spare change, Glen Hansard supported a number of charities aimed at the poor and homeless. Each Christmas Eve in the fashionable shopping area of Grafton Street in Dublin, he organized a benefit busk for those who were homeless or in danger of being so. It grew to be an enormous event, and many famous singers, including Bono, Sinead O’Connor, and Lisa Hannigan would participate.

Glen Hansard will forever be remembered as the Dublin street singer raising his hopeful voice.

As for me, I may have more to report soon, but for now, my most recent article in Skeptical Inquirer is “A Visit to the Center of the Spiritualist World.” While in Buffalo, New York for the 2026 CSICon conference in June, I made a side trip to Lily Dale, New York, the most active spiritualist community in the United States. The visit was quite interesting, and I would love to go back.

That’s all for now.

SV