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A version of this article first appeared in December 2022. It has been republished after the news of the death of Sinead O’Connor.
REVIEW: Even if you think you know the controversy around the rise and fall of Sinead O’Connor in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, nothing can quite prepare you for the footage of her jaw-dropping appearance on Saturday Night Live, or the subsequent abuse and astonishingly awful interviews she was subjected to.
Belfast-born Kathryn Ferguson’s debut documentary Nothing Compares (now streaming on TVNZ+), which made its bow at January’s Sunday Film Festival, has lengthy clips which highlight both, enabling viewers to relive the sheer shock and awe – and angry aftermath – of the Irish singer’s heartfelt a capella version of Bob Marley’s War on the long-running variety show on October 3, 1992, before she stunningly produced a photo of then Pope John Paul II, sung the word “evil”, tore the photo into pieces, said “fight the real enemy” and threw the bits towards the camera.
As Nothing Compares highlights, that iconic television moment wasn’t an isolated incident, but rather the culmination of a couple of years of very public controversy that also involved the playing of the American national anthem before her concerts and demonstrable support of Public Enemy’s complaint against the Grammys over the then lack of a hip-hop category.
Saturday Night Live
Joe Pesci responds to Sinead O’Connor tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II on the previous week’s episode of Saturday Night Live in October 1992.
READ MORE:
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* Alice Snedden: I wish my cause celebre wasn’t sClub7
* Sinead O’Connor asked Dr Phil for help over mental illness
However, what’s perhaps even more outrageous now is the hysterical, sexist and misogynistic reaction to O’Connor’s highlighting of social issues dear to her.
Frank Sinatra threatened to “kick her in the ass” after the Star Spangled Banner brouhaha, while on the very next Saturday Night Live episode after Pope-gate, host Joe Pesci told the live audience that if it had happened on his show, “I would have given her such a smack…I would have grabbed her by her eyebrows”. Other “commentators” pronouncements were even more distasteful.
Supplied
If you take away anything from the fascinating and fabulous, powerful and potent Nothing Compares, it’s that Sinead O’Connor made mistakes, but also broke the ice for a succession of outspoken artists over the following three decades.
Rather than a soup-to-nuts look at a colourful and controversial artist’s career, Ferguson’s focus is very much on the six years between 1987 (when her debut album The Lion and the Cobra was released) and 1993 (just after the decidedly mixed reaction to her third album – Am I Not Your Girl? – which consisted mainly of jazz standards), when she was subject to so much scrutiny and constantly trying to challenge conformity, the patriarchy and prejudices of the music industry.
Aimed at reframing her through a contemporary lens, the tight focus is the documentary’s real strength, the incredible collection of emotion-filled, evocative and provocative archival footage mixed in with modern day interviews with those who were there, including O’Connor herself. “Everybody felt it was OK to kick the shit out of me,” she heart-wrenchingly recalls, before defiantly adding, “I regret that I was so sad because of it.”
Stuff
Sinead O’Connor performed at New Zealand’s Womad in 2015.
While her troubled childhood and later struggles are most definitely not ignored, they play second-fiddle to her extended moment in the blinding glare of zeitgeist spotlight, when she went from pop poster-girl to an almost cartoon villain.
As she points out, thanks to THAT video for 1990 global mega-hit Nothing Compares 2 U (a song which sadly doesn’t feature very prominently here thanks to the estate of its original writer Prince), “the world fell in love with me because I was crying”. Even more revealingly, she notes: “I didn’t want to be a pop star – I just wanted to scream.”
If you take away anything from this fascinating and fabulous, powerful and potent documentary, it’s that O’Connor made mistakes, but also broke the ice for a succession of outspoken artists over the ensuing three decades. As singer and feminist activist Kathleen Hanna put it, “She forged her own path in a world that wasn’t ready for her”.
Nothing Compares is now available to stream on TVNZ+.
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