TikTok revives Sinéad O'Connor's 'Famine' to address colonial wounds

Sinéad O'Connor's life was marred with controversy over her steadfast, clear-eyed rejection of the status quo. She shaved her head in response to her beauty becoming a marketing tool, ripped apart a photograph of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live to protest child abuse in the Catholic church, and sang illuminating protest songs ranging in topics from Black liberation to Ireland's history of oppression. 

Now, a TikTok trend once again proves that the Irish singer-songwriter, who passed away last year, was on the right side of history. 

"I want to talk about Ireland. Specifically, I want to talk about the famine, about how there wasn't actually a famine," O'Connor raps over a rhythmic beat on her 1994 song "Famine." On the social media platform, it's become the soundtrack for Irish people sharing experiences reckoning with British colonialism, from mockery of their Irish names to misinformation about Ireland's independence. 

One video caption reads, "me to an English in-law when he thought it was okay to laugh when telling us his uncle was a black and tan." Another says, "me when people ask why irish isn't spoken widely in Ireland or why we should care about it." 

Ciara Ellen, an Irish creator based in Dubai, decided to participate in the trend after facing yet another mispronunciation of her name. "I had a conversation with someone where they said my name wrong, and I corrected them politely. Then they just were very, 'Oh, why would you spell it like that doesn't make any sense?'" she told Mashable.

In the video, Ellen writes, "Me when someone tells me my name should be pronounced differently than it's spelled." It garnered over 2.4 million views and over 250,000 likes. 

The TikTok trend is part of a larger cultural interest in Ireland and its history. The internet is obsessed with actors like Paul Mescal and Cillian Murphy, and the Irish-language rap group Kneecap recently released a semi-autobiographical film that was met with critical acclaim. 

Ahead of the release of Universal Mother, the album featuring "Famine," O'Connor told The New York Times, "I am Ireland. Everything that has happened to Ireland has happened to me." The famine was a defining moment in Irish history, with over one million people dying and nearly two million people emigrating out of the country. The track — relaying O'Connor's belief that the individual and their country are connected — weaves together her experiences of child abuse with Irish oppression. She urges, “And if there ever is gonna be healing / Then there has to be remembering and grieving / So that then there can be forgiving / There has to be knowledge and understanding.” When posting videos to the song, Irish creators embody this ethos. 

"Famine" was met with mixed reception at the time of its release. It was a tense political climate, as the Irish Republican Army was in its first ceasefire and the teaching of a "nonpartisan" history of the Irish potato famine — known more accurately as the Great Famine in Ireland — was in a state of transition. Additionally, there wasn't much scholarly work on the political underpinnings of the famine before the late 20th century.

A Los Angeles Times article published a year after the song's release reports that the track "created a controversy that raged through the Irish press… many said [it] irresponsibly dredged up an anti-English attitude that had dissipated." The article also notes that an Irish government minister said peace in the North would "enable all Irish people to explore more freely the truth about the famine."

Despite the song being released several years before her birth, Ellen remembers "Famine" playing at Christmas and her uncles rehashing its controversy. Later, in fourth year, the Irish equivalent of sophomore year of high school, it was used as a teaching tool in her history class. 

But as with most TikTok trends, the sound left its bubble of Irish creators, like Ellen, and reached Americans, morphing its meaning. Some, like Indigenous American creator @ndnreginageorge, match the song's tone. Their video reads, "The Choctaw Nation sent money to feed their people 16 years after the Trail of Tears because they knew what it was to starve and wanted to help." Others, mainly posted by Irish Americans, missed the mark.

"Some sounds and trends with a clear message behind them should probably be used in a different sense. And there was a mass amount of videos about Irish toes," said Ellen, referring to TikToks from Irish Americans talking about inheriting "Irish toes" and "Irish knees," things the 24-year-old and her friends and family in Ireland have never heard of.

The flood of comments and DMs she received asking for an explanation of O'Connor's provocative words led her to make a 7-minute video about Irish history she thinks every Irish American needs to know — her audience is 90 percent American.

"I'm happy that me, as an Irish person, could be someone people could learn from rather than someone who might be spreading misinformation," said Ellen. "On TikTok, it's hard to know the truth sometimes, and there's so much misinformation about the famine out there because a lot of history was erased. Not everyone had the privilege of learning and having their family tell them stories because [Irish Americans] had to lie to fit in."

One thing remains clear: O'Connor's message endures, more relevant than ever.