Reaction to the death of Sinéad O’Connor came quickly from around the local music community on Wednesday.

“Some people don’t seem made for the spotlight,” said former Boulder Daily Camera music critic David Menconi, citing Kurt Cobain as his primary case in point. The difference between Cobain and O’Connor, he added, is that O’Connor managed to live through her time at the top.

“She was quite a comet in her moment, a knife-sharp voice for the ages who not only felt things quite keenly but made you feel them, too,” Menconi said. “Her 1987 debut LP ‘The Lion & The Cobra’ was brilliant, setting the stage for her subsequent gigantic hit cover of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U.’

“I remember barely noticing the original version of that song on the 1985 LP by Prince/Revolution spinoff The Family, which dramatizes just how good O’Connor can be – that she elevated one of Prince’s minor compositions into the stuff of legend.”

O’Connor was, briefly, one of the biggest pop stars in the world, but to say that kind of widespread attention did not agree with her is putting it mildly, Menconi said.

“The same unfiltered emotional rawness she projected as a singer also made her a problematic interview, with one hot-water pronouncement after another. Since that early period, she’s gotten a lot less attention for music than controversy, much of it self-inflicted.”

The same year Cobain died, Menconi noted, O’Connor released “a quietly elegiac, almost whispered version of ‘All Apologies.’ And, no surprise, it’s stunning.”

• Ben Roy, comedian, podcaster and member of the local rock band “Spells,” called O’Connor troubled, always outspoken and incredibly talented. “Thank you for laying down your safety and your career to sound the alarm,” he said. “I’m just sorry this world didn’t respect you more after you did.”

• Artist and designer Brendan Moyles Dorney of the screen shop Rabies Babies added: “She stood alone in front of the world and called out the horror and was punished for it. She’s always a legend in my eyes. Brave, bold, beautiful soul.”