Sinead O’Connor: Nothing Compared to Her

There are those infrequent times in your life when you can remember exactly where you were when you heard a song. For me, it typically occurs when I hear a tune that doesn’t make sense with the world as it was before. Prince’s “When Doves Cry” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” come to mind. On another occasion, I was a pre-driving years teen, up late in a Sunday night, desperately hoping the evening would never end (I hated high school), watching MTV’s two-hour midnight to 2 AM, alternative rock video show, 120 Minutes. 

That show was a staple for me. There I could learn about new artists who I wouldn’t hear on the radio, but would become a staple in my bedroom after I pushed out a few bucks for the cassette. On one particular evening, an artist I had no familiarity with premiered her first single from her debut album “The Lion and the Cobra.” The tune is called “Mandinka.” I didn’t know what “Mandinka” meant, but I was quite sure I had never seen such a face or heard such a voice before. I was so gobsmacked by this bald woman (a big stupid deal at the time) who was pumping out of the tiny speakers of my 17-inch television that I didn’t even know if I liked the song or not. It wasn’t just foreign to me, it was alien. What I did know is that something unique had just happened. Maybe I didn’t realize it consciously, but I could feel it in my bones. This song, this artist, was uncommon.

“The Lion and the Cobra” sold surprisingly well, while still being a bit underground. Of course, that would change with the first single from her second album (“I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”), “Nothing Compares 2 U.” As most people with even half an ear to the ground know by now, “Nothing Compares 2 U” was written by Prince. What I think many aren’t aware of is he never put out a recorded version of his own until much later in his career. 

For a long stretch in the ’80s and ’90s, Prince supported other acts that he put together himself with songs he wrote for them. Sheila E. (“The Glamorous Life”), The Time (“Jungle Love”), Vanity 6 (“Nasty Girl”), and a band called The Family, who would release the first official version of “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The Family’s only album sold a bit, but not enough to warrant a follow up, and the songs would spend several years in obscurity until Sinead recorded it herself.

If ever a woman took a song written by a man and stole it from him in such a way that it seemed impossible that she didn’t write it herself, it was just so with “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The only comparable that leaps to mind is Aretha Franklin snatching “Respect” from its original songwriter, Otis Redding. No one thinks of Respect as an Otis Redding song. That’s Aretha’s song now. The same could easily be said of Sinead O’Connor and “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The song and the video (which largely transfixed on Sinead’s extraordinary face in tight close-up) were a sensation in 1990. Both the single and the album became very unlikely number one hits. 

But O’Connor proved to be not quite made for her times, and soon courted controversy. Sometimes hilariously, such as when she defended hip-hop legends NWA, or more problematically (for her career) when she refused to take the stage at the Garden State Arena in New Jersey until the venue agreed not to play the United States national anthem before her show. O’Connor took issue with the overt nationalism of the song, and being an Irish woman who knew what it was like to suffer under government oppression, she took issue with the United States and the country’s political practices at home and abroad.

Both of these moments were but tempests in a teapot compared to what happened on October third, 1992 while performing as the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live.” People forget that O’Connor performed two songs from her new album “Am I Not Your Girl?” that night. The first was a transcendent cover of Loretta Lynn’s somewhat obscure recording “Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home.” It would be her second performance of the night that people would respond to and recall until this very day. In the ’70s, Bob Marley took a speech by the Ethiopian Emperor, and noted Rastafarian Haile Selassie, and made his words into a song called “War.” Marley’s version was revolutionary in its own right. His version was a call to fight against the oppression of his people. Sinead would adopt that stance for hers as well. 

Sinead’s performance was stunning before she took a photo of then Pope John Paul II, tore it in half, and fiercely stated, “Fight the real enemy!” The public reaction was swift and career-altering. So many were so angry that she shredded this symbol of Catholicism and Christianity on national television. Sadly, few (including the media, who did not do their job) asked why she did it. Sinead O’Connor grew up in a home that her abusive mother ran according to strict religious doctrine. Women were second-class citizens in Ireland. They did not have control over their own bodies, and those young women who got pregnant out of wedlock often had their children taken from them and then sent to a convent themselves for their “sin” (see Peter Mullan’s great film “The Magdalene Sisters” for a painful, but powerful, history lesson). In other words, she had reasons. 

Reasons that over time the public would come to understand even if they didn’t give credit to the messenger. One need only think of the Church’s widespread cover up of sexual abuse by priests (and nuns) to capture the nature of what Sinead was righteously railing against. The cost to this young woman was tremendous. As she once sang on the greatest description of divorce in song that I have ever heard, “I’ll talk but you won’t listen to me. I know your answer already.” The world’s answer was to vilify her, just as it once did a certain boxer named Muhammad Ali when he refused to go to war on behalf of a country that did not grant him the same rights as it did the majority. O’Connor and Ali both lost their primes to a backlash that was ignorant and unfounded. Fortunately, for Ali, grace came to him during his lifetime, and eventually, we realized he was right about Vietnam, racism, and America all along. Sinead O’Connor was never given that grace even though time and evidence have proven her to be equally correct. 

O’Connor’s career never recovered from the melee that followed her appearance on Saturday Night Live. She did record a staggering record called “You Have Made Me The Thief of Your Heart” (written by Bono) for Jim Sheridan’s great Irish biopic “In The Name of the Father.” The song was nominated for a Golden Globe. She attempted a comeback in 2000 with the well-promoted album “Faith and Courage,” that found her collaborating with Wyclef Jean, David Stewart of the Eurythmics, and Brian Eno, among others. The album reached number 55 on the charts, but fell flat with critics (unfairly, I think), and did not find a larger audience. O’Connor recorded five more albums over her lifetime, all quite good–especially “Sean-Nos-Nua,” a collection of traditional Irish songs, and her next to last album “How About I Be Me (and You Be You)? Both met with critical acclaim, even if sales did not follow suit.

My wife and I visited Dublin in 2022, the place of O’Connor’s birth, and found it to be a magical place, completely unlike its recent history might have suggested it to be. People were free, proud, and there was a sense of uplift from the government’s movement away from the Church. I’m glad O’Connor got to see it, considering what a large (and largely uncredited) hand she played in achieving that change. 

Just last year, a terrific documentary on her life, Nothing Compares, debuted on Showtime. The film (directed so well by Kathryn Ferguson) covered the highs and many lows of O’Connor’s childhood, brief fame, controversies, and her more recent years. It’s a heartbreaking film about a woman who suffered from abuse, oppression, and mental illness (O’Connor was diagnosed as bipolar many years ago). O’Connor had a very difficult life that was made more so by the understanding that she was not afforded on that late Saturday over thirty years ago. But there was some sense in the film that she might have found a semblance of peace. A peace that I’m sure was destroyed when her 17-year-old son took his own life the same year.

I saw her perform once on Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD tour in 1993. Gabriel, being the sweet man (and keen observer of great talent) that he is, invited her to sing with him on his “Us” album, and then took her out on the road with him. She opened, and then sang backup and duets with Gabriel as he headlined. She sang the Kate Bush part on “Don’t Give Up,” as well as the duets from “Us”. It was a remarkable experience to see and hear the two of them trade lines. But the moment I remember best came from her solo performance. It was a miserably hot day in Indianapolis when she took the stage for her set, but as she roared through a stunning version of “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance,” I felt chills up my spine and a tingle in every hair. I was not hot, I was not cold, I was something other.

Sinead O’Connor was something other.

She was courageous, difficult, complex, singular, fierce, and so very human. This world wasn’t ready for her. Maybe the next one, should it exist, will be. 

Sinead O’Connor died yesterday. She was 56 years old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VLy1A4En4U