January 4, 2023 • 47 mins
After scoring a No. 1 smash with her version of the Prince song “Nothing Compares 2 U” and winning Video of the Year at MTV’s VMAs, Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor became an international sensation. While her look—a shaved head and dazzling, doe-like eyes—was arresting, her vocals were next-level.
But she never wanted to be a pop star. She had a punk sensibility, railing against sexism and exploitation and refusing to let label execs control her. In October 1992, O’Connor concluded her performance on Saturday Night Live by ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II to protest the Catholic Church concealing acts of child abuse. The incident sparked intense backlash, with radio stations refusing to play her music and audiences boycotting her. One single gesture torpedoed her career.
In this episode, we examine the events leading up to the SNL scandal, its damaging consequences, O’Connor’s complicated relationship with fame, and how many of her critics realized years later that she was right all along.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Where Were You In ninety two is a production of
I Heart Radio. A special note this episode contains themes
of physical and sexual abuse. It may not be suitable
for all listeners. She looked like someone who was growing
into battle. Never has said looked as much like you
know what I imagined Joan of Arc looking like you
(00:23):
know She knew exactly what she intended to do. Did
she know what the ramifications were? No, but she definitely
knew what she wanted to do the minute she started
singing that song. Welcome to Where Are You In nine two,
a podcast in which I Your host Jason Lautier look
(00:45):
back at the major hits, one hit wonders, shocking news stories,
and irresistible scandals that shaped what might be the wildest,
most eclectic, most controversial twelve months of music ever. This week,
after scoring a number one smashed with her version of
the Prince song Nothing Compares to You, Irish singer songwriter
(01:05):
Shanid O'Connor became an international sensation. While her look a
shaved head and dazzling dough like eyes was arresting, her
gale force vocals were next level. A songbird and a
siren she could pivot from a whisper to a screen
in seconds. But if her stars seemed to rise overnight,
it fell just as quickly. In October of less than
(01:29):
two weeks after releasing her new album, Am I Not
Your Girl? O'Connor concluded her performance on Saturday Night Live
by ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul the
Second to protest the Catholic Church concealing acts of child abuse.
The incident sparked rabid backlash, with radio stations refusing to
play her music and audiences boycotting her one single gesture
(01:51):
torpedoed her career. In this episode, we examine the events
leading up to that faithful evening, it's crushing consequences, honors,
complicated relationship with fame, and how many of her critics
realized years later that she was right all along. Plus
director Catherine Ferguson joins us to discuss her award winning
two thousand documentary Nothing Compares, which traces the singer's life,
(02:15):
exiled and legacy. When I look back at the artists
who have been instrumental in shaping who I am today,
so many of them confused me. When I first heard
or saw them. I found them weird and hard to
pin down and therefore off putting. They made me uncomfortable,
sometimes even scared me. They were disruptors of gender or genre,
(02:39):
and often both, blurring the lines between male and female
pop and performance art. Nina Simone, David Bowie, Kate Bush,
Prince York, Anny Shade O'Connor. I can't tell you where
I was when I first heard Snad O'Connor. I was
too young to really absorb my surroundings for sound and
time and place to coalesce into a major musical moment.
(03:03):
But I remember that voice. It had nothing to do
with my being American and her being Irish. I had
no idea where she come from. I remember that voice
because it yanked me by the collar and pulled me
out of my comfort zone. It was big and beautiful,
but also strange and intimidating, a little chilling. Music journalist
(03:23):
in Critic and Powers had a similar reaction when hearing
O'Connor for the first time in the nineteen eighties, when
Troy a highlight from the singers debut album The Lion
the Cobra suddenly burst through the speakers in her room.
Her encounter with that voice made her an instant fan.
I will never forget lying in bed in my San
(03:44):
Francisco apartment listening to k u s F, the local
college radio station, and the song Troy came on, and
I mean, the story in that song is so compelling,
but the voice, just the voice of the power, the rage,
the vulnerability, the purity and the dirt in it, all
(04:08):
of that, it just slew me to my soul and
I from that moment, my undivided love for Naid was born.
Powers was a young Irish American woman who had been
raised to be aware of her heritage. She had been
served a lot of popular culture about Ireland and about
the troubles the thirty year conflict in Northern Ireland between
(04:28):
Protestant Unionists or Loyalists, who wanted it to remain part
of the United Kingdom and Roman Catholic nationalists or Republicans,
who wanted it to become part of the Republic of Ireland.
Powers had movies, TV and the band You Too representing
her past in present, but O'Connor folded in Irish folk
music and classic shadows folk singing that truly resonated with
(04:49):
her across the Atlantic. Director Katherine Ferguson, who was born
in Belfast, Northern Ireland's capital, was having a similar response
to the singer. She thanks her father for exposing her
to O'Connor's music. There was just nothing like her. She's
like an alien from water space and see the things
so thrilling really to me at that point she was
(05:12):
put in front of me and this incredible example of um,
you know, this incredible iconic character to admire. So yeah,
it all BEGANE then I was way too young to
be cool enough to know O'Connor's acclaimed first album, The
Lion of the Cobra. But for a certain period, hearing
your cover of Princes Nothing Compares to You on your
(05:34):
radio was a given, as predictable as the sun coming
up each day and going down at the end of it,
which is what the song The Ultimate Breakup Anthem sounds like.
It is somehow both bracing, like the first breath you
take stepping out into the morning, and definitive, like the
brightness vanishing and the darkness of evening descending. It's most
(05:56):
memorable line is its most quietly devastating. All the flowers
that you planted Mama in the backyard all died when
you went away. That's it, so succinct yet so rich
and vivid. You hear it, and you're watching those flowers wilt.
But it's more than that. You're there with a split
screen in front of you, on screen one those flowers
(06:19):
dying under the winter frost on screen too. O'Connor's lover
crossing the threshold, last box in their arms, walking away
from her and her mother and her family and everything
they've established a foundation crumling. Yes, we must credit the
Purple One with writing that line, but let's also be
(06:40):
real here. O'Connor gave it depth. She sings about those
flowers and you believe her. Have you heard Prince's version
of nothing Compares to You? He wrote it for his
side project The Family, and it appeared on their eponymous
debut album, It's Good, better than Good. It certainly does
the job. But this song belongs to a nade, and
(07:01):
it's because of that voice, which conveys years of hurt, confusion,
longing and hope and does so like it's effortless, says Ferguson.
But her voice seem to have such a global appeal
that it's seem to break through where others happens. And
I think that went a very long way. Fortunate it.
I think really her talent is so startling that it
(07:22):
just went through, just pushed three. O'Connor's rousing interpretation if
Nothing Compares to You made her a star, a huge
worldwide star. The track sword to number one in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico,
New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US, where it stayed
at the top of the Billboard Hot one hundred for
(07:43):
four weeks. On the second week of its rain at
number one, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got,
the album it appeared on, began it's six week run
at number one on the Billboard two hundred. Billboard would
name Nothing Compares to You, the number one world single.
At the end of the song was everywhere, and O'Connor's
angelic face and her pained expression, and its music video
(08:06):
was all over MTV, where Nothing Compares You became a
staple soon after its release. It's Easy to See why.
Directed by John Maybury, it features the singer walking through
paris Is Park to Saint Clude on a frigid day.
Dressed in a cloak. She looks monastic as she contemplates
her sorrow own regret. But it's the video's close up
shots of O'Connor and which tears streamed down her cheeks,
(08:28):
that made it legendary, says Anne powers. She gazes outward
directly into the eye of the viewer and her all
of the qualities that we associate with she and her beauty,
her vulnerability, her fierceness are all in that gaze and
in that vocal performance when she looks at you. In
that video, you absorbed both her strength and her defenselessness
(08:51):
in the wake of her heartbreak. Her exposing that heartbreak
and defenselessness, placing it in sharp relief against a stark
black backdrop, is why she comes across so strong, so resilient,
And this is largely because the tears she sheds are
real tears. You see Princess lying about the narrator's mother's flowers.
(09:11):
Dying took on a new meaning for O'Connor when she
shot the video, For nothing compares to you delivering it.
She could not help but think of her own mother,
who had died in a car accident in a few
years before. As she recalled and robed tan Obaum and
Craig Marks is two eleven book I Want My MTV,
The Uncensored Story of the Music video Revolution. Quote. I
(09:32):
made an emotional connection which I was not expecting. It
didn't hit me when I was recording the song and
only kicked in when I was being filmed. So I
was sitting there thinking about me mother and trying hard
nut to bawl my eyes up. I had one little
tear that became the whole video, but it wasn't supposed
to be. The video was massive, and it changed my career.
(09:56):
It did nothing compares to you. One Video of the
Year at the ninet ninety Video Music Awards, making O'Connor
the first woman ever to win in that category. She
beat out Madonna's Vogue for the prize. She also took
home moon Men for Best Female Video, also beating out
Vogue and Best Postmodern Video, a category that would be
renamed Best Alternative Video of the following year. The song
(10:19):
and video made her a household name. If she didn't
look like other female pop stars of the era, few
could argue with the gorgeousness of her voice or the
captivating rawness of her video's imagery. O'Connor's grief over the
loss of her mother may have pervaded the video for
(10:41):
nothing compares to you, but the relationship was fraught, she writes,
and her two thousand twenty one memoir rememberings of the
abuse she suffered as a child the hands of her mother,
whom she recalls would beat her with her field hockey
stick or a carpet sweeper pole, forcing her to strip naked.
She would hit her with the sweeping brush and make
her repeat I am nothing. She also writes at her
(11:03):
mother with locker in her room or under the stairs
and starved her, and that she once purposely crashed her car,
which she neade in the passenger seat when she needs
older brother Joe, ran away and refused to come home.
Her mother was hospitalized. She eventually lost a custody of
Shade and her siblings. She Need's youngest brother, John, stayed
with his mother until a second crash. He was in
(11:25):
the backseat of the car when it happened, but he survived.
He was sixteen when his mother died. She Neede was eighteen.
Her mother left four children behind that was and rememberings.
O'Connor describes the bewilderment and anger she felt after her
(11:46):
mother's death. She recounts screaming into the sky at God,
running from the funeral home. I don't think I'll have
her stopped running, she writes. She vows to smoke herself
into oblivion, to smoke until she too is dead and
can reunite her mother, as chaotic and abusive as a
relationship had been. Later that same year, O'Connor left for
London because she had landed a record contract with the
(12:09):
label Ensign, but she couldn't escape the pain and trauma.
It would permeate so much of her work, but also
put a fire in her belly. She would become more
than just a compelling performer. She would become a crusader.
(12:30):
Up next, after the Break, we discussed Shied O'Connor's critically
held first two albums, The Lion in the Cobra and
I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, her first
big public act of protest at the Grammy Awards, and
her controversial reaction to her sudden newfound fame. It was
(12:53):
the late nineteen eighties, Snad O'Connor had landed her first
record contract, but she was barely an adult. She signed
the contract, agreeing to earn a mirror seven percent of
what her records sold, and to pay for nearly all
the recording, promoting, and touring. Out of that seven percent,
she didn't know any better. Paperwork bored her. One demo
she wrote that would end up on her debut album,
(13:16):
The Line in the Cobra, was Troy, one of the tensest,
most searing, most brain tangling tracks to come out of
the eighties, and the first time O'Connor had sung about
her mother. But it wasn't just about her mother. Like
most songs, it was also about love and heartbreak, a
palpable heartbreak. When O'Connor unleashes roars its most memorable line,
(13:39):
I'd kill a dragon for you, I'll die, it genuinely
sounds mid evil, savage and terrifying. She is your valiant knight,
sword in hand, ready to slay the beast. But she
is also the night, a black, cold, lonely, desperate void
longing to be filled, And she is the beast at
(14:00):
menacing and engulfed in its own flames. You can hear
her battered and shattered history, the torment and the fury,
all that she's endured before the age of twenty. Troy
possesses the same dichotomy you here, and nothing compares to you.
It swerves from delicate to defiant in an instant. That dichotomy,
(14:22):
that clashing of tender vulnerability and steadfast resistance, would define
O'Connor's career. After her turbulent childhood and adolescence. She had
little patience for those who wished to control her. Any
whiff of bullshit sexism, misogyny, homophobia, exploitation, abuse, or hypocrisy,
and her guard immediately came up and Powers remembers attending
(14:46):
one of O'Connor's early prece events, she was immediately moved
by her poise and candor, that vibe you get from
a young person who is unafraid of everything and yet
aware of every ghost and demon in the room. And
that is what said was from the beginning. She was
(15:06):
not callous. She didn't have that kind of attitude that
a lot of male punks did. Who I encountered in
the scene, you know, she was open, but she was
also just absolutely determined to make the moves she wanted
to make. Over lunch one day, a pair of record
exact that her label told o'connory, like, I just stopped
(15:27):
cutting her hair short and wear short skirts and jewelry
to essentially present more like quote unquote girl. She responded
by buzzing all their hair off, as she recalled, and
I want my MTV quote they described their mistresses to
me and said I should look like that. I didn't
want to be pushed as some kind of pretty girl,
so my way of answering was to shave my head.
I didn't want to be governed by a load of
(15:48):
middle aged blokes. Her appearance was striking and unconventional for
a young female singer in the late nineteen eighties and
early nineties. MTV dug it, but not everyone. O'Connor to
Old Spin magazine in the Madonna said she looked quote
like I had a run in with a lawnmower, and
that I was about as sexy as a Venetian blind.
(16:09):
She scoffed at the idea of that Madonna was seen
as a sort of feminist hero when she was cutting
other women down like that. During production for The Lion
and the Cobra, O'Connor discovered she was pregnant when a
doctor relayed to her that her label did not think
she should keep the baby. After he had spent so
much money on the album, she was offended and incensed.
She not only kept her baby, but scrapped the record,
(16:32):
which she was hating anyway, and decided to start again.
Though she didn't really know how to use studio equipment,
she would produce it herself. She learned quickly, and the
gambit paid off. Rarely do debut album sound as confident, fearless,
and fully formed as The Lion in the Cobra, a
work that heralded the arrival of a genuine artist with
a genuine vision. O'Connor was just shy of twenty one
(16:54):
when it came out. The Lion and the Cobra is
widely considered one of the best albums of the nineteen
eighties and one of the best debut albums of any decade.
It eventually went gold and earned O'Connor a Grammy nomination
for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She performed her college
radio hit Mandinka at the nineteen nine ceremony and a
(17:17):
head turning ensemble, a black halter top that revealed her middrift,
torn baggy blue jeans, and her signature Doc Martin's. She
tucked the sleeves of her new son Jake's onesie through
her belt loops and wore it around her waist a
slive fuck you to the label who had essentially asked
her not to have him. She also boasted an image
(17:38):
of a man in the crosshairs of a gun, shaved
and died on the side of her head. The design
was the hip hop group Public Enemy's logo, meant to
symbolize the plight of the black man in America. O'Connor
ward out of solidarity to support them and other rappers
whose music had been excluded from the show. While the
Recording Academy had decided to recognize hip hop was its
(18:01):
first ever award for Best Rap Performance, it would not
announce the winner and present the award on television. O'Connor
styling was political, an act of protest. Audiences who had
been unfamiliar with her were intrigued mystified. I don't know
no shame, she wails in Mandinka. The Grammys performance made
(18:22):
you believe it. O'Connor's outspokenness and rebellious streak would not
diminish as her star ros After Nothing Compares to You
conquered MTV and her second album es I Do Not
Want What I haven't got when multi platinum, she could
have set aside her politics to avoid courting controversy and
focus on her career. But if she makes clear in
(18:42):
her memoir Rememberings and in Catherine Ferguson's documentary Nothing Compares,
the singer was never interested in becoming an international celebrity.
She had punk roots and a punk sensibility, says Ferguson.
I just don't think she had ever said that to
be a pop star that wasn't her goal. You know,
she was a very serious musician who happened to become
(19:06):
a global phenomenon, and I think she didn't go into
it ever wanting that she didn't want to be pigeonholed
or have the life that's being created for her. Some
would say O'Connor could write the book on how to
derail a pop career. She refused to comply when faced
with anything that did not align with her belief system
(19:27):
and rapped up plenty of enemies along the way. She
pulled out of a Saturday Night Live appearance when she
learned that Andrew dice Clay, a comedian known for his
homophobic and misogynist sets, was the host. He responded with
a skip, mocking the quote unquote bald chick. When O'Connor
said she'd prefer that the Star Spangled ban Or not
be played before he show at Garden State Arts Center
(19:47):
in New Jersey, it caused a national uproar, with many
calling her quote unquote anti American. Politicians protested her radio
stations refused to play her music. Robert mc hammer sent
her a check for a ticket back to Ireland. Frank
Sinatra said she must be quote unquote one stupid broad
and threatened to quote unquote kicker ass if she were
(20:08):
a guy. She skipped the Grammys and refused to accept
her award for Best Alternative Music Performance, writing a letter
to the Recording Academy accusing it of favoring materialism over songwriting.
In fact, she declined all the awards she received for
I Do not want what I Haven't got. O'Connor explains
(20:32):
her choice and rememberings writing, quote commercial success outranked artistic merit.
I made a lot of money for a lot of
men who couldn't actually have cared less what the songs
were about. She went on, I'm a punk, not a
pop star, adding music shouldn't be such a competition. Her
critics deemed her ungrateful. After the Grammys that year, she
(20:55):
left Los Angeles to return to the UK, giving her
house to the Red Cross. Whether O'Connor wanted to be
a pop star or not, she was, and pop stars
with number one hits and big awards rarely ruffled feathers
like this. She was right. The stuff she was doing
was what punks did, mostly male punks in the early nineties.
She was a young twenty something woman in a male
(21:17):
dominated industry that was still new to her, says music
journalist dam Powers. I don't think she was sacrificed, but
I do think she was out there on the bow
of the ship before this happened to a lot of
other people, and um didn't have a lot of guidance
and didn't have a lot of examples of how to
negotiate this successfully. On the strength of the success of
(21:39):
Nothing Compares to You, I Do Not Want What I
Haven't Got went to number one in multiple countries, including
O'Connor's home country of Ireland, But rather than maintain that
upper trajectory and release a more pop inflected follow up,
she took a sharp left turn. Her next record, Am
I Not Your Girl? Wasn't pop at all. It wasn't
(22:00):
punk or really folk either. It was a collection of
covers of show tunes and jazz standards her parents had
played while she was growing up, music that inspired her
to pursue a singing career. In her memoir, O'Connor admits
that am I Not Your Girl was a quote unquote
red heron. She didn't want to deal with anxiety of
delivering another I do not want what I haven't got.
(22:22):
She didn't want to deal with anxiety of being a
pop star period. There's nothing compares. Director Katherine Ferguson hypothesizes
O'Connor's about face may have stemmed from her desire to
come up for air after releasing two albums of heavy,
intimate material that she says in the film, and I
think she was buying herself time to work out her
next album. But these were all tracks that she really loved,
(22:45):
and a lot of them she'd been introduced to as
a child. She's been told that the previous albums like
reading somebody's diary and it was far too personals. So
maybe there was a maybe this was a bit of
a bit of light light relief for her. If it
was lighter air for her, O'Connor still attached profound meaning
to these songs. She included the folk ballad Scarlet Ribbons
(23:07):
because her father used to sing it to her when
she was a little girl. She chose to cover a
Vita's Don't Cry for Me Argentina because her mother loved it.
Still allotted award winning chart topping pop breakout, pivoting to
a jazz album right after she become one of the
most famous singers in the world. O'Connor's decision was super
risky and baffling, particularly in the fall of when grunge
(23:28):
gangs to Wrap, Eurodance and Swooney R and B were
dominating the charts. It seemed hopelessly uncool, says An Powers.
There's a lot of pathos in this in this track listing,
and there's a lot of pathos in her performances. As
a career move, it was it was suicidal. I mean,
it was absolutely walking away from the momentum that she had.
(23:51):
In a sense, O'Connor abandoning pop for a standards album
was one of the most punk things she could have done.
It's one of those bold moves that it seems incredibly foolish,
but in the context of her whole career, makes total sense.
It's like early on she's saying, you cannot control me.
And if this sacrifice um leaves me away from the
(24:12):
kind of mainstream career the music industry wants me to have,
I'll deal with that. Am I not Your Girl? Is
a sleepy listen. It's pretty, but it just doesn't showcase
O'Connor's incredible voice enough compared to the blazing richness of
her first two records. It's tepan, but at certain moments
it's sores. With all due respect to Patty Lapone, O'Connor's
(24:33):
interpretation of Don't Cry for Me Argentina is unsurpassed. Tim Rice,
who wrote its lyrics, agrees. He mailed O'Connor a letter
after hearing it, saying it was the best version he'd heard,
hands down. And as for fortune and as for fame,
I never invited them in though it seemed to the
world they were all I desired. They are illusions. They're
not the solutions they promised to be. It's hard to
(24:56):
listen to those lines from the song without thinking of
O'Connor's owned a limit. At the time, the same goes
for the album's other highlight, success has made a failure
of our Home, which she admits in her memoir was autobiographical,
a nod to her struggle with the trappings of her
own newfound success, and the liner notes of am I
Not Your Girl? O'Connor addresses child abuse and its consequences,
(25:20):
the death of self esteem, fear, addiction. We have not
been told the truth, she writes. The message is love.
What can save us? She titled her musings or Where
Is the Lost King, adding if you're out there, I
want to see you. Turns out the songs were more
(25:43):
than just jazz remakes. Her personal trauma and her protest
against abuse of any kind suffused the songs, says Powers.
It was a very unexpected move for an artist like this,
especially following up you know, her massive Popsick, says, and
through that project she was you know, reaching back into
(26:04):
her own childhood and confronting the violence that had been
part of her upbringing um and starting to really I
think grapple with the legacies the of of exploitation of
children and violence towards children that would then motivate her
to make a career changing move up next After the break,
(26:36):
we explore that career changing move O'Connor's controversial scandalous performance
on Saturday Night Live, during which she tore up a
photo of the Pope and told yours to quote unquote
like the real enemy. The year was nat O'Connor was
(27:06):
living in New York City and was set to promote
her latest album, Am I Not Your Girl, which was
released in September. But the singer had other things on
her mind. If she noted in the liner notes of
the record, she had turned her attention to the tense
social climate, specifically to news of child abuse and the
fight for abortion rights, says Catherine Ferguson, director of the
(27:26):
two thousand twenty two counter documentary Nothing Compares. She had
been reading about the cover of abuse in Ireland and
families being silent, and I think she was just really
enraged by the hypocrisy and felt compelled to take a stand.
And I think, you know, in Ireland was a pretty
(27:48):
tumultuous time. The troubles were still awful in the North,
and the size, and of course the question of of
women's bodily autonomy was ready back in the news. In
the sight of Ireland, there was a very famous case
called the X case, where young fourteen year old have
been raised and her family had taken her to England
(28:08):
for an abortion, but then the Irish placed the guards
while she was in England. They were learned to an
injunction ordering them to come home. You know, this tech
started a huge swathe of protests and up roar and
a lot around Catholicism and the control in the church.
And she made was even in ninety two, she'd actually
appeared at one of these big pro choice rallies in Dublin.
(28:31):
She'd been reading about these cases and thinking about it.
And I suppose when you look back at what she
ensured as a child and a teenager, it's just all
kind of came full circle. And O'Connor recalls in her
memoir when her mother died, she returned her home for
the first time in a long time. The only photo
(28:52):
in her mother's room, the only photo she remembers her
ever having in her room, was of Pope John Paul,
the Second visiting Ireland in ninety nine. She writes of
the photo it represented lies and liars and abuse. The
type of people who kept these things were devils Like
my mother. I never knew when or where or how
I would destroy it, But destroy it I would when
(29:14):
the right moment came. She kept the photo every time
she moved, says Ferguson. I think this picture on the
wall of her mother's bedroom. It was very While in
New York, O'Connor met Terry, a West Indian Rastafarian man
from St. Lucia who worked at a juice bar, which
was really a front for him and his friends to
sell weed. One night, just before she would appear as
(29:38):
musical guest on Saturday Night Live, Terry revealed to her
that he had been using children as drug mules, running
guns and drugs in their book bags. He had invaded
someone's turf, and his life was now in danger. O'Connor
was shocked, livid, distraught. She saw him the Friday night
before her SNL set and that would be the last
(29:58):
time she ever saw him. The newspaper stories of children
being abused by priests and their parents having their stories
suppressed and silenced were weighing on O'Connor. She was angry,
even angrier knowing that her friend Terry had also been
abusing children. Was it time to exhume her mother's photo?
Was it time to break the silence? For her first number,
(30:23):
on the October third episode of Saturday Night Live, O'Connor
performed success has made a failure of our home pointed apt.
For her second number, she was supposed to perform Bob
Marley's War Acapella, a song about how racism is a
root of all fighting and bloodshed, and hold up a
photograph of a Brazilian child killed by police. As the
(30:46):
camera zoomed in, O'Connor surrounded herself with candles. She wore
a white lace dress that the previously belonged to shade
that she bought it an auction at nineteen. She also
wore a Star of David necklace and draped a rasta
prayer cloth over the microphone. She delivered the song's final line,
(31:07):
we have confidence in the victory of good over evil,
But when she reached the word evil, she revealed a
different photograph, her mother's picture of Pope John Paul the
second fight, the real enemy, O'Connor shouted. She ripped the
photo in half one time, two times, three times before
throwing its pieces toward the camera. Watch the moment on
(31:30):
YouTube and you can hear only the sound of tearing
and a single male voice, seemingly an audience member, and
meeting a shocked woe no applause, O'Connor takes out her
ear plugs and blows out the candles. She recalls walking
backstage to close doors cast crew. Her manager had disappeared.
(31:51):
Everyone had abandoned her, except her personal assistant, who helped
her pack up and leave. News of O'Connor's s and
OW performance broke meat Elite throughout Sunday and Monday. NBC
reportedly received more than four thousand calls from outraged viewers.
She was banned from the show for life, says Ferguson.
I just don't know if people even knew what they
(32:12):
just sing at the time. They just probably couldn't even
comprehend what. Music journalists and Powers has vivid memories of
watching the Saturday live performance in real time that evening.
She like everyone else, was stunned, But she could see
the resolve on O'Connor's face. But she looked like someone
who was going into battle. Never has said looked as
(32:35):
much like you know what I imagined Joan of Arc
looking like, you know, just complete absorption and her intention
her action at the time people were like, what did
what she really meaning to do? What she did? But
I could see it in her eyes. She knew exactly
(32:57):
what she intended to do. Did she know with the
ramification were No, but she definitely new uh what she
wanted to do the minute she started singing that song.
As an Irish American woman who grew up Catholic and
felt the strict, heavy handed rule of the church powers championed,
O'Connor stand against its transgressions and hypocrisy. Anyone raised Catholic
(33:20):
or in a Catholic dominated culture knows how what a
stronghold that ideology can have on a person. Uh So
for me, it was incredibly cathartic. More repercussions came instantly,
and they were enormous. With one simple act, O'Connor had
detonated her career, at least her career as a famous
(33:41):
pop artist. No, she never really wanted that career, but
she also could never have predicted the severity of the
fallout after the notorious performance, says Ferguson. Even a star,
which she was, was like one of the biggest musicians
in the world, literally probably the top three. Being a
lottest in the world. She wasn't untouchable, and she suffered
(34:03):
the consequences for, you know, for using her platform and
speaking out. You know, there were steam rulers rolling over
her records in Times Square, there were death threats to her,
managements to her and her family, lots of videos refused
by music. You know, the tabloid press had a failed
Day before the SNL incident, O'Connor had been invited to
(34:26):
perform at a Bob Dylan tribute concert at New York's
Madison Square Garden. Given that he was one of her
idols and biggest influences, she was over the moon. This
was an advantage of being famous. She could fully support
the chance of a lifetime. Just a couple of weeks
had passed and she torn up the photo of the Pope.
It was fresh in the audience's minds as she took
(34:46):
to the stage to perform a cover of Dylan's I
Believe In You. The sound that ensued was horrifying and excruciating,
cacophony of booze and cheers, all encompassing to the point
that O'Connor could not sing. She describes it in Rememberings
as quote unquote, a sonic riot is that the sky
is ripping apart. She stood mortified and paralyzed, her dreams
(35:11):
shattering before her eyes. She began to pace, afraid of
being drowned out, but also of doing nothing and letting
her hackers win. She tells her band to stop stop
playing the music. She takes her headphones eyes by imagine
people are telling they're asking him through She's getting a
lot of people in her ear, what are you doing?
And she ripped them out of her ears, and she
(35:32):
just starts to sing Bob Marley's War again, but a
much more furious version at this audience of twenty thighs
and people the Madison Square gardens and just screams the
words over the crowd. That's really it's a harrowing wash.
And then it's such a harrowing was because she's just
(35:53):
horrified by the response she gets. And you know, this
is after two weeks of background that she's had all
over the world. Country singer Chris christoffers and joined her
on stage, leaning in and telling her, don't let the
bastards get you down. They exited, he hugged her. O'Connor
recalls nearly throwing up on him. Later, she went to
(36:17):
Dylan's manager to ask him in the singer to help
her expose the child abuse at the hands of the
Irish Church. He refused. After the Medicine Square Garden show,
her father suggested that she abandoned music and go back
to school. Some have called O'Connor's s n L set
an active performance art. She didn't explain herself, and afterwards
(36:41):
her many critics didn't want an explanation. They didn't understand
and didn't care to. She was on her own, a
solitary crusader. Fame was lonely. Activism was even lonelier, says
and powers. That's an interesting thing about her fame in general, UM,
because when you think of the apex of her success,
that video for nothing compares to you. It's just her.
(37:06):
You know, you never see a band, you don't see
her collaborators. It's just her. And when you think of
that moment on Saturday Live Again, it's just even though
there was a band, it's just her. You only think
about her. And then when you think of her getting
booed off the stage at the Dylan thing again, she
is always like alone and and that speaks so profoundly
(37:27):
to the um. The predicament of women in music and
in rock, especially at that time. O'Connor would continue to
release albums Beautiful Ones, her follow up to Am I
Not Your Girl? Universal Mother offered some of her most
personal work Yet It's gorgeous and brutal. She dabbled in
(37:48):
traditional Irish folk, reggae, rock, spiritual music, and even pomp,
but a provocative SNL performance cast a long shadow over
her career and did a number on her mental health.
As she said in a two thousand twenty one interview
with Entertainment Weekly, quote the ten years after that Saturday
Night Live performance, the way that I was dealt with
(38:11):
was shocking. It was the fashion to treat me bad,
whether you were in my bed, at a board meeting,
a TV show, a gig, or a party. Everybody treated
me like I was a crazy bitch because I ripped
up the Pope's picture. We know I'm a crazy bitch,
but that's not why, says Ferguson, I think not having
the number ones and being a world famous, iconic pop store,
(38:33):
she could live with that, but I think, you know,
the way she was treated was disgraceful. She says. You know,
in those days, just the press aren't writing about you,
and people aren't buying your records. You know you've essentially vanished.
That wouldn't happen today because well, I don't think it
could happen today because of social media. For many, O'Connor
became invisible for others, a punchline for others, the enemy.
(38:58):
But if she states in her memoir and in fergus
Since documentary, nothing compares. She has no regrets about the
SNL scandal. If anything, it may have saved her from
an even darker fate. As O'Connor writes and rememberings quote,
A lot of people say or think that tearing up
the Pope's photo derailed my career. That's not how I
feel about it. I feel that having a number one
(39:18):
record derailed my career. Am I tearing the photo put
me back on the right track After us and L
I could just be me, do what I love. And
what she loves more than anything is what she's loved
from the beginning. One of the few gifts her mother
gave her the music. I've done only one holy thing
in my life, she writes, and that was saying Catherine
(39:54):
Ferguson fell in love with O'Connor in her early teens,
she was demoralized watching the SNL backlash, and her fondness
for the singers music only grew deeper as she entered adulthood.
She had the opportunity to collaborate with O'Connor on the
video for her two thousand thirteen single Fourth and Vine
and The Two Captain Touch. In two thousand eighteen, Ferguson
(40:17):
found herself feeling like the world had been turned quote
unquote upside down. She had witnessed the Me Too movement
and the women's marches following the election of Donald Trump
as US president. Government investigations and cases in Ireland had
revealed that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children
for decades, with much of the abuse being covered up.
(40:39):
Investigations and allegations in America over the past decade and
a half had also revealed a pattern of sexual abuse
and cover ups, and a large number of dioceses across
the country. Child abuse and the Catholic Church had become
a global crisis. In August of two eighteen, and the
first papal visit to Ireland and thirty nine years Pope
(41:01):
Francis publicly acknowledged the abuse of young people by clergy
members and the harmon had caused to them in the
Roman Catholic Church, even meeting with eight victims of abuse.
Ireland also held a referendum to legalize abortion rights. Ferguson
kept thinking of O'Connor. It just felt really absurd to
me that she wasn't mentioned in these conversations and at
(41:23):
that time, you know, especially when surely she must have
inspired so many of the activists in these movements. It
just felt like quite an urgent story I wanted to tell,
and particularly through a contemporary lens. Ferguson decided her next
project would be the documentary Nothing Compares, which would celebrate
O'Connor's work and lasting impact. The film premiered on Showtime
(41:44):
and was released in theaters in the UK and Ireland
this past fall. It was met with rave reviews and
won two British Independent Film Awards in December, including Best
Feature Documentary and Best Debut Director. Audience reactions to have
been over wellmingly positive. Ferguson recalls one particular screening in Ireland.
I was sat in an audience with five people and
(42:07):
all ages from twelve up to and quite a quiet
audience throughout the film, completely rampack. And when we get
to that moment, the Saturday Night Live moment and she
ripped up the Pope, the entire audience just started to
cheer and whoop and punch the air and shouts, and
(42:29):
it just was amazing. It was just amazing, actually see
how far things come in the place where this was
all from. Just to see the reaction of the crowd
was very much, very much one day. O'Connor had been
telling the truth, desperately trying to expose it, but many
(42:51):
refused to listen. Everybody's just thinking, oh my god, how
did we did we trader the way that we did,
and however they let this happen, you know, and everything
that she was saying and saying it was that's what
needed to be heard. There was nobody really anywhere talking
about it. It was well to come by ten years later.
(43:13):
It was she was so ahead of her time, or
rather the rest of us were too late. Like many
women navigating the choppy waters of the music industry, Katie Lange,
Sophie Bie Hawkins, Torre Amos, Madonna, O'Connor fought for her
voice to be heard and Like many of those women,
she was met with opposition and disdain. While so many artists,
(43:35):
especially women, would make compromises were backed down to preserve
their careers, O'Connor sacrificed massive success, wealth, awards, celebrity for
what she believed in. She was determined to fight against
the ugliness, cruelty, and injustice in the world, says music
journalists and powers set O'Connor has always been a political artist.
(43:57):
She has always written topical songs, address racism, very profoundly
confronted religious hierarchies. She has stood as uh a person
who presents herself just as she wants to. And it's
not always something that that people appreciate, casual fans especially,
(44:23):
oh that crazy se But you know what, it's the
challenge to the norms that's so important. It's the openness
and honesty about that in her music, which remains so
beautiful and so deep, like so much deeper than of
what else is out there, that keeps me coming back
(44:44):
to her. Many considered she O'Connor to be at best
a hopeless attention seeker and at worst a threat. Now
after thousands of incidents of child abuse in the Catholic
Church have come to light after the count this racial
reckonings in recent years, after the Grammys have been forced
to address allegations of gender and racial bias. Many consider
(45:08):
her a prophet and a hero. And what was fascinating
to hear is that for the first time in the
last decade, she's now being written in with the history
books in Ireland. But I think she's got quite a
time ahead of her in the next few years. I
think it's gonna be a younger demographic. We're really going
to look to her and what she did and as inspiration.
(45:30):
Ferguson points to a vibrant mural in Dublin's Temple Our
neighborhood has further evidence of O'Connor's reappraisal and legacy. It
depicts a singer wearing a shawl over her head, appearing
saintly in solemn. She has that same look of determination
in her eyes that she had when she ripped up
that photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live all
those years ago. The mural reads sad you were right
(45:53):
all along, we were wrong, so sorry, And we're living
in a moment now where I think where we as
a society, as a culture have opened ourselves up to
hearing some some difficult truths, you know, whether it's how
we speak to each other on social media, or what
books we're reading now, or what what movies we want
(46:14):
to see. Um, that's there and I want to hear
more of that in popular music too, and I think
we are hearing it. But Shend has given us a
legacy and a guide to how to do that. Don't
only think of her as the that crazy woman who
did some crazy things. Recognize the truth she offers us.
(47:11):
Where Were You in ninety two was a production of
I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Noel Brown and
Jordan run Tug. The show was researched, written and hosted
by me Jason Lafier, with editing and sound design by
Michael Alder June. If you like what you heard, please
subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, check out the I Heart Radio app,
(47:33):
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Where Were You In ninety two is a production of
I Heart Radio. A special note this episode contains themes
of physical and sexual abuse. It may not be suitable
for all listeners. She looked like someone who was growing
into battle. Never has said looked as much like you
know what I imagined Joan of Arc looking like you
(00:23):
know She knew exactly what she intended to do. Did
she know what the ramifications were? No, but she definitely
knew what she wanted to do the minute she started
singing that song. Welcome to Where Are You In nine two,
a podcast in which I Your host Jason Lautier look
(00:45):
back at the major hits, one hit wonders, shocking news stories,
and irresistible scandals that shaped what might be the wildest,
most eclectic, most controversial twelve months of music ever. This week,
after scoring a number one smashed with her version of
the Prince song Nothing Compares to You, Irish singer songwriter
(01:05):
Shanid O'Connor became an international sensation. While her look a
shaved head and dazzling dough like eyes was arresting, her
gale force vocals were next level. A songbird and a
siren she could pivot from a whisper to a screen
in seconds. But if her stars seemed to rise overnight,
it fell just as quickly. In October of less than
(01:29):
two weeks after releasing her new album, Am I Not
Your Girl? O'Connor concluded her performance on Saturday Night Live
by ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul the
Second to protest the Catholic Church concealing acts of child abuse.
The incident sparked rabid backlash, with radio stations refusing to
play her music and audiences boycotting her one single gesture
(01:51):
torpedoed her career. In this episode, we examine the events
leading up to that faithful evening, it's crushing consequences, honors,
complicated relationship with fame, and how many of her critics
realized years later that she was right all along. Plus
director Catherine Ferguson joins us to discuss her award winning
two thousand documentary Nothing Compares, which traces the singer's life,
(02:15):
exiled and legacy. When I look back at the artists
who have been instrumental in shaping who I am today,
so many of them confused me. When I first heard
or saw them. I found them weird and hard to
pin down and therefore off putting. They made me uncomfortable,
sometimes even scared me. They were disruptors of gender or genre,
(02:39):
and often both, blurring the lines between male and female
pop and performance art. Nina Simone, David Bowie, Kate Bush,
Prince York, Anny Shade O'Connor. I can't tell you where
I was when I first heard Snad O'Connor. I was
too young to really absorb my surroundings for sound and
time and place to coalesce into a major musical moment.
(03:03):
But I remember that voice. It had nothing to do
with my being American and her being Irish. I had
no idea where she come from. I remember that voice
because it yanked me by the collar and pulled me
out of my comfort zone. It was big and beautiful,
but also strange and intimidating, a little chilling. Music journalist
(03:23):
in Critic and Powers had a similar reaction when hearing
O'Connor for the first time in the nineteen eighties, when
Troy a highlight from the singers debut album The Lion
the Cobra suddenly burst through the speakers in her room.
Her encounter with that voice made her an instant fan.
I will never forget lying in bed in my San
(03:44):
Francisco apartment listening to k u s F, the local
college radio station, and the song Troy came on, and
I mean, the story in that song is so compelling,
but the voice, just the voice of the power, the rage,
the vulnerability, the purity and the dirt in it, all
(04:08):
of that, it just slew me to my soul and
I from that moment, my undivided love for Naid was born.
Powers was a young Irish American woman who had been
raised to be aware of her heritage. She had been
served a lot of popular culture about Ireland and about
the troubles the thirty year conflict in Northern Ireland between
(04:28):
Protestant Unionists or Loyalists, who wanted it to remain part
of the United Kingdom and Roman Catholic nationalists or Republicans,
who wanted it to become part of the Republic of Ireland.
Powers had movies, TV and the band You Too representing
her past in present, but O'Connor folded in Irish folk
music and classic shadows folk singing that truly resonated with
(04:49):
her across the Atlantic. Director Katherine Ferguson, who was born
in Belfast, Northern Ireland's capital, was having a similar response
to the singer. She thanks her father for exposing her
to O'Connor's music. There was just nothing like her. She's
like an alien from water space and see the things
so thrilling really to me at that point she was
(05:12):
put in front of me and this incredible example of um,
you know, this incredible iconic character to admire. So yeah,
it all BEGANE then I was way too young to
be cool enough to know O'Connor's acclaimed first album, The
Lion of the Cobra. But for a certain period, hearing
your cover of Princes Nothing Compares to You on your
(05:34):
radio was a given, as predictable as the sun coming
up each day and going down at the end of it,
which is what the song The Ultimate Breakup Anthem sounds like.
It is somehow both bracing, like the first breath you
take stepping out into the morning, and definitive, like the
brightness vanishing and the darkness of evening descending. It's most
(05:56):
memorable line is its most quietly devastating. All the flowers
that you planted Mama in the backyard all died when
you went away. That's it, so succinct yet so rich
and vivid. You hear it, and you're watching those flowers wilt.
But it's more than that. You're there with a split
screen in front of you, on screen one those flowers
(06:19):
dying under the winter frost on screen too. O'Connor's lover
crossing the threshold, last box in their arms, walking away
from her and her mother and her family and everything
they've established a foundation crumling. Yes, we must credit the
Purple One with writing that line, but let's also be
(06:40):
real here. O'Connor gave it depth. She sings about those
flowers and you believe her. Have you heard Prince's version
of nothing Compares to You? He wrote it for his
side project The Family, and it appeared on their eponymous
debut album, It's Good, better than Good. It certainly does
the job. But this song belongs to a nade, and
(07:01):
it's because of that voice, which conveys years of hurt, confusion,
longing and hope and does so like it's effortless, says Ferguson.
But her voice seem to have such a global appeal
that it's seem to break through where others happens. And
I think that went a very long way. Fortunate it.
I think really her talent is so startling that it
(07:22):
just went through, just pushed three. O'Connor's rousing interpretation if
Nothing Compares to You made her a star, a huge
worldwide star. The track sword to number one in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada, Germany, Mexico,
New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the US, where it stayed
at the top of the Billboard Hot one hundred for
(07:43):
four weeks. On the second week of its rain at
number one, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got,
the album it appeared on, began it's six week run
at number one on the Billboard two hundred. Billboard would
name Nothing Compares to You, the number one world single.
At the end of the song was everywhere, and O'Connor's
angelic face and her pained expression, and its music video
(08:06):
was all over MTV, where Nothing Compares You became a
staple soon after its release. It's Easy to See why.
Directed by John Maybury, it features the singer walking through
paris Is Park to Saint Clude on a frigid day.
Dressed in a cloak. She looks monastic as she contemplates
her sorrow own regret. But it's the video's close up
shots of O'Connor and which tears streamed down her cheeks,
(08:28):
that made it legendary, says Anne powers. She gazes outward
directly into the eye of the viewer and her all
of the qualities that we associate with she and her beauty,
her vulnerability, her fierceness are all in that gaze and
in that vocal performance when she looks at you. In
that video, you absorbed both her strength and her defenselessness
(08:51):
in the wake of her heartbreak. Her exposing that heartbreak
and defenselessness, placing it in sharp relief against a stark
black backdrop, is why she comes across so strong, so resilient,
And this is largely because the tears she sheds are
real tears. You see Princess lying about the narrator's mother's flowers.
(09:11):
Dying took on a new meaning for O'Connor when she
shot the video, For nothing compares to you delivering it.
She could not help but think of her own mother,
who had died in a car accident in a few
years before. As she recalled and robed tan Obaum and
Craig Marks is two eleven book I Want My MTV,
The Uncensored Story of the Music video Revolution. Quote. I
(09:32):
made an emotional connection which I was not expecting. It
didn't hit me when I was recording the song and
only kicked in when I was being filmed. So I
was sitting there thinking about me mother and trying hard
nut to bawl my eyes up. I had one little
tear that became the whole video, but it wasn't supposed
to be. The video was massive, and it changed my career.
(09:56):
It did nothing compares to you. One Video of the
Year at the ninet ninety Video Music Awards, making O'Connor
the first woman ever to win in that category. She
beat out Madonna's Vogue for the prize. She also took
home moon Men for Best Female Video, also beating out
Vogue and Best Postmodern Video, a category that would be
renamed Best Alternative Video of the following year. The song
(10:19):
and video made her a household name. If she didn't
look like other female pop stars of the era, few
could argue with the gorgeousness of her voice or the
captivating rawness of her video's imagery. O'Connor's grief over the
loss of her mother may have pervaded the video for
(10:41):
nothing compares to you, but the relationship was fraught, she writes,
and her two thousand twenty one memoir rememberings of the
abuse she suffered as a child the hands of her mother,
whom she recalls would beat her with her field hockey
stick or a carpet sweeper pole, forcing her to strip naked.
She would hit her with the sweeping brush and make
her repeat I am nothing. She also writes at her
(11:03):
mother with locker in her room or under the stairs
and starved her, and that she once purposely crashed her car,
which she neade in the passenger seat when she needs
older brother Joe, ran away and refused to come home.
Her mother was hospitalized. She eventually lost a custody of
Shade and her siblings. She Need's youngest brother, John, stayed
with his mother until a second crash. He was in
(11:25):
the backseat of the car when it happened, but he survived.
He was sixteen when his mother died. She Neede was eighteen.
Her mother left four children behind that was and rememberings.
O'Connor describes the bewilderment and anger she felt after her
(11:46):
mother's death. She recounts screaming into the sky at God,
running from the funeral home. I don't think I'll have
her stopped running, she writes. She vows to smoke herself
into oblivion, to smoke until she too is dead and
can reunite her mother, as chaotic and abusive as a
relationship had been. Later that same year, O'Connor left for
London because she had landed a record contract with the
(12:09):
label Ensign, but she couldn't escape the pain and trauma.
It would permeate so much of her work, but also
put a fire in her belly. She would become more
than just a compelling performer. She would become a crusader.
(12:30):
Up next, after the Break, we discussed Shied O'Connor's critically
held first two albums, The Lion in the Cobra and
I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, her first
big public act of protest at the Grammy Awards, and
her controversial reaction to her sudden newfound fame. It was
(12:53):
the late nineteen eighties, Snad O'Connor had landed her first
record contract, but she was barely an adult. She signed
the contract, agreeing to earn a mirror seven percent of
what her records sold, and to pay for nearly all
the recording, promoting, and touring. Out of that seven percent,
she didn't know any better. Paperwork bored her. One demo
she wrote that would end up on her debut album,
(13:16):
The Line in the Cobra, was Troy, one of the tensest,
most searing, most brain tangling tracks to come out of
the eighties, and the first time O'Connor had sung about
her mother. But it wasn't just about her mother. Like
most songs, it was also about love and heartbreak, a
palpable heartbreak. When O'Connor unleashes roars its most memorable line,
(13:39):
I'd kill a dragon for you, I'll die, it genuinely
sounds mid evil, savage and terrifying. She is your valiant knight,
sword in hand, ready to slay the beast. But she
is also the night, a black, cold, lonely, desperate void
longing to be filled, And she is the beast at
(14:00):
menacing and engulfed in its own flames. You can hear
her battered and shattered history, the torment and the fury,
all that she's endured before the age of twenty. Troy
possesses the same dichotomy you here, and nothing compares to you.
It swerves from delicate to defiant in an instant. That dichotomy,
(14:22):
that clashing of tender vulnerability and steadfast resistance, would define
O'Connor's career. After her turbulent childhood and adolescence. She had
little patience for those who wished to control her. Any
whiff of bullshit sexism, misogyny, homophobia, exploitation, abuse, or hypocrisy,
and her guard immediately came up and Powers remembers attending
(14:46):
one of O'Connor's early prece events, she was immediately moved
by her poise and candor, that vibe you get from
a young person who is unafraid of everything and yet
aware of every ghost and demon in the room. And
that is what said was from the beginning. She was
(15:06):
not callous. She didn't have that kind of attitude that
a lot of male punks did. Who I encountered in
the scene, you know, she was open, but she was
also just absolutely determined to make the moves she wanted
to make. Over lunch one day, a pair of record
exact that her label told o'connory, like, I just stopped
(15:27):
cutting her hair short and wear short skirts and jewelry
to essentially present more like quote unquote girl. She responded
by buzzing all their hair off, as she recalled, and
I want my MTV quote they described their mistresses to
me and said I should look like that. I didn't
want to be pushed as some kind of pretty girl,
so my way of answering was to shave my head.
I didn't want to be governed by a load of
(15:48):
middle aged blokes. Her appearance was striking and unconventional for
a young female singer in the late nineteen eighties and
early nineties. MTV dug it, but not everyone. O'Connor to
Old Spin magazine in the Madonna said she looked quote
like I had a run in with a lawnmower, and
that I was about as sexy as a Venetian blind.
(16:09):
She scoffed at the idea of that Madonna was seen
as a sort of feminist hero when she was cutting
other women down like that. During production for The Lion
and the Cobra, O'Connor discovered she was pregnant when a
doctor relayed to her that her label did not think
she should keep the baby. After he had spent so
much money on the album, she was offended and incensed.
She not only kept her baby, but scrapped the record,
(16:32):
which she was hating anyway, and decided to start again.
Though she didn't really know how to use studio equipment,
she would produce it herself. She learned quickly, and the
gambit paid off. Rarely do debut album sound as confident, fearless,
and fully formed as The Lion in the Cobra, a
work that heralded the arrival of a genuine artist with
a genuine vision. O'Connor was just shy of twenty one
(16:54):
when it came out. The Lion and the Cobra is
widely considered one of the best albums of the nineteen
eighties and one of the best debut albums of any decade.
It eventually went gold and earned O'Connor a Grammy nomination
for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She performed her college
radio hit Mandinka at the nineteen nine ceremony and a
(17:17):
head turning ensemble, a black halter top that revealed her middrift,
torn baggy blue jeans, and her signature Doc Martin's. She
tucked the sleeves of her new son Jake's onesie through
her belt loops and wore it around her waist a
slive fuck you to the label who had essentially asked
her not to have him. She also boasted an image
(17:38):
of a man in the crosshairs of a gun, shaved
and died on the side of her head. The design
was the hip hop group Public Enemy's logo, meant to
symbolize the plight of the black man in America. O'Connor
ward out of solidarity to support them and other rappers
whose music had been excluded from the show. While the
Recording Academy had decided to recognize hip hop was its
(18:01):
first ever award for Best Rap Performance, it would not
announce the winner and present the award on television. O'Connor
styling was political, an act of protest. Audiences who had
been unfamiliar with her were intrigued mystified. I don't know
no shame, she wails in Mandinka. The Grammys performance made
(18:22):
you believe it. O'Connor's outspokenness and rebellious streak would not
diminish as her star ros After Nothing Compares to You
conquered MTV and her second album es I Do Not
Want What I haven't got when multi platinum, she could
have set aside her politics to avoid courting controversy and
focus on her career. But if she makes clear in
(18:42):
her memoir Rememberings and in Catherine Ferguson's documentary Nothing Compares,
the singer was never interested in becoming an international celebrity.
She had punk roots and a punk sensibility, says Ferguson.
I just don't think she had ever said that to
be a pop star that wasn't her goal. You know,
she was a very serious musician who happened to become
(19:06):
a global phenomenon, and I think she didn't go into
it ever wanting that she didn't want to be pigeonholed
or have the life that's being created for her. Some
would say O'Connor could write the book on how to
derail a pop career. She refused to comply when faced
with anything that did not align with her belief system
(19:27):
and rapped up plenty of enemies along the way. She
pulled out of a Saturday Night Live appearance when she
learned that Andrew dice Clay, a comedian known for his
homophobic and misogynist sets, was the host. He responded with
a skip, mocking the quote unquote bald chick. When O'Connor
said she'd prefer that the Star Spangled ban Or not
be played before he show at Garden State Arts Center
(19:47):
in New Jersey, it caused a national uproar, with many
calling her quote unquote anti American. Politicians protested her radio
stations refused to play her music. Robert mc hammer sent
her a check for a ticket back to Ireland. Frank
Sinatra said she must be quote unquote one stupid broad
and threatened to quote unquote kicker ass if she were
(20:08):
a guy. She skipped the Grammys and refused to accept
her award for Best Alternative Music Performance, writing a letter
to the Recording Academy accusing it of favoring materialism over songwriting.
In fact, she declined all the awards she received for
I Do not want what I Haven't got. O'Connor explains
(20:32):
her choice and rememberings writing, quote commercial success outranked artistic merit.
I made a lot of money for a lot of
men who couldn't actually have cared less what the songs
were about. She went on, I'm a punk, not a
pop star, adding music shouldn't be such a competition. Her
critics deemed her ungrateful. After the Grammys that year, she
(20:55):
left Los Angeles to return to the UK, giving her
house to the Red Cross. Whether O'Connor wanted to be
a pop star or not, she was, and pop stars
with number one hits and big awards rarely ruffled feathers
like this. She was right. The stuff she was doing
was what punks did, mostly male punks in the early nineties.
She was a young twenty something woman in a male
(21:17):
dominated industry that was still new to her, says music
journalist dam Powers. I don't think she was sacrificed, but
I do think she was out there on the bow
of the ship before this happened to a lot of
other people, and um didn't have a lot of guidance
and didn't have a lot of examples of how to
negotiate this successfully. On the strength of the success of
(21:39):
Nothing Compares to You, I Do Not Want What I
Haven't Got went to number one in multiple countries, including
O'Connor's home country of Ireland, But rather than maintain that
upper trajectory and release a more pop inflected follow up,
she took a sharp left turn. Her next record, Am
I Not Your Girl? Wasn't pop at all. It wasn't
(22:00):
punk or really folk either. It was a collection of
covers of show tunes and jazz standards her parents had
played while she was growing up, music that inspired her
to pursue a singing career. In her memoir, O'Connor admits
that am I Not Your Girl was a quote unquote
red heron. She didn't want to deal with anxiety of
delivering another I do not want what I haven't got.
(22:22):
She didn't want to deal with anxiety of being a
pop star period. There's nothing compares. Director Katherine Ferguson hypothesizes
O'Connor's about face may have stemmed from her desire to
come up for air after releasing two albums of heavy,
intimate material that she says in the film, and I
think she was buying herself time to work out her
next album. But these were all tracks that she really loved,
(22:45):
and a lot of them she'd been introduced to as
a child. She's been told that the previous albums like
reading somebody's diary and it was far too personals. So
maybe there was a maybe this was a bit of
a bit of light light relief for her. If it
was lighter air for her, O'Connor still attached profound meaning
to these songs. She included the folk ballad Scarlet Ribbons
(23:07):
because her father used to sing it to her when
she was a little girl. She chose to cover a
Vita's Don't Cry for Me Argentina because her mother loved it.
Still allotted award winning chart topping pop breakout, pivoting to
a jazz album right after she become one of the
most famous singers in the world. O'Connor's decision was super
risky and baffling, particularly in the fall of when grunge
(23:28):
gangs to Wrap, Eurodance and Swooney R and B were
dominating the charts. It seemed hopelessly uncool, says An Powers.
There's a lot of pathos in this in this track listing,
and there's a lot of pathos in her performances. As
a career move, it was it was suicidal. I mean,
it was absolutely walking away from the momentum that she had.
(23:51):
In a sense, O'Connor abandoning pop for a standards album
was one of the most punk things she could have done.
It's one of those bold moves that it seems incredibly foolish,
but in the context of her whole career, makes total sense.
It's like early on she's saying, you cannot control me.
And if this sacrifice um leaves me away from the
(24:12):
kind of mainstream career the music industry wants me to have,
I'll deal with that. Am I not Your Girl? Is
a sleepy listen. It's pretty, but it just doesn't showcase
O'Connor's incredible voice enough compared to the blazing richness of
her first two records. It's tepan, but at certain moments
it's sores. With all due respect to Patty Lapone, O'Connor's
(24:33):
interpretation of Don't Cry for Me Argentina is unsurpassed. Tim Rice,
who wrote its lyrics, agrees. He mailed O'Connor a letter
after hearing it, saying it was the best version he'd heard,
hands down. And as for fortune and as for fame,
I never invited them in though it seemed to the
world they were all I desired. They are illusions. They're
not the solutions they promised to be. It's hard to
(24:56):
listen to those lines from the song without thinking of
O'Connor's owned a limit. At the time, the same goes
for the album's other highlight, success has made a failure
of our Home, which she admits in her memoir was autobiographical,
a nod to her struggle with the trappings of her
own newfound success, and the liner notes of am I
Not Your Girl? O'Connor addresses child abuse and its consequences,
(25:20):
the death of self esteem, fear, addiction. We have not
been told the truth, she writes. The message is love.
What can save us? She titled her musings or Where
Is the Lost King, adding if you're out there, I
want to see you. Turns out the songs were more
(25:43):
than just jazz remakes. Her personal trauma and her protest
against abuse of any kind suffused the songs, says Powers.
It was a very unexpected move for an artist like this,
especially following up you know, her massive Popsick, says, and
through that project she was you know, reaching back into
(26:04):
her own childhood and confronting the violence that had been
part of her upbringing um and starting to really I
think grapple with the legacies the of of exploitation of
children and violence towards children that would then motivate her
to make a career changing move up next After the break,
(26:36):
we explore that career changing move O'Connor's controversial scandalous performance
on Saturday Night Live, during which she tore up a
photo of the Pope and told yours to quote unquote
like the real enemy. The year was nat O'Connor was
(27:06):
living in New York City and was set to promote
her latest album, Am I Not Your Girl, which was
released in September. But the singer had other things on
her mind. If she noted in the liner notes of
the record, she had turned her attention to the tense
social climate, specifically to news of child abuse and the
fight for abortion rights, says Catherine Ferguson, director of the
(27:26):
two thousand twenty two counter documentary Nothing Compares. She had
been reading about the cover of abuse in Ireland and
families being silent, and I think she was just really
enraged by the hypocrisy and felt compelled to take a stand.
And I think, you know, in Ireland was a pretty
(27:48):
tumultuous time. The troubles were still awful in the North,
and the size, and of course the question of of
women's bodily autonomy was ready back in the news. In
the sight of Ireland, there was a very famous case
called the X case, where young fourteen year old have
been raised and her family had taken her to England
(28:08):
for an abortion, but then the Irish placed the guards
while she was in England. They were learned to an
injunction ordering them to come home. You know, this tech
started a huge swathe of protests and up roar and
a lot around Catholicism and the control in the church.
And she made was even in ninety two, she'd actually
appeared at one of these big pro choice rallies in Dublin.
(28:31):
She'd been reading about these cases and thinking about it.
And I suppose when you look back at what she
ensured as a child and a teenager, it's just all
kind of came full circle. And O'Connor recalls in her
memoir when her mother died, she returned her home for
the first time in a long time. The only photo
(28:52):
in her mother's room, the only photo she remembers her
ever having in her room, was of Pope John Paul,
the Second visiting Ireland in ninety nine. She writes of
the photo it represented lies and liars and abuse. The
type of people who kept these things were devils Like
my mother. I never knew when or where or how
I would destroy it, But destroy it I would when
(29:14):
the right moment came. She kept the photo every time
she moved, says Ferguson. I think this picture on the
wall of her mother's bedroom. It was very While in
New York, O'Connor met Terry, a West Indian Rastafarian man
from St. Lucia who worked at a juice bar, which
was really a front for him and his friends to
sell weed. One night, just before she would appear as
(29:38):
musical guest on Saturday Night Live, Terry revealed to her
that he had been using children as drug mules, running
guns and drugs in their book bags. He had invaded
someone's turf, and his life was now in danger. O'Connor
was shocked, livid, distraught. She saw him the Friday night
before her SNL set and that would be the last
(29:58):
time she ever saw him. The newspaper stories of children
being abused by priests and their parents having their stories
suppressed and silenced were weighing on O'Connor. She was angry,
even angrier knowing that her friend Terry had also been
abusing children. Was it time to exhume her mother's photo?
Was it time to break the silence? For her first number,
(30:23):
on the October third episode of Saturday Night Live, O'Connor
performed success has made a failure of our home pointed apt.
For her second number, she was supposed to perform Bob
Marley's War Acapella, a song about how racism is a
root of all fighting and bloodshed, and hold up a
photograph of a Brazilian child killed by police. As the
(30:46):
camera zoomed in, O'Connor surrounded herself with candles. She wore
a white lace dress that the previously belonged to shade
that she bought it an auction at nineteen. She also
wore a Star of David necklace and draped a rasta
prayer cloth over the microphone. She delivered the song's final line,
(31:07):
we have confidence in the victory of good over evil,
But when she reached the word evil, she revealed a
different photograph, her mother's picture of Pope John Paul the
second fight, the real enemy, O'Connor shouted. She ripped the
photo in half one time, two times, three times before
throwing its pieces toward the camera. Watch the moment on
(31:30):
YouTube and you can hear only the sound of tearing
and a single male voice, seemingly an audience member, and
meeting a shocked woe no applause, O'Connor takes out her
ear plugs and blows out the candles. She recalls walking
backstage to close doors cast crew. Her manager had disappeared.
(31:51):
Everyone had abandoned her, except her personal assistant, who helped
her pack up and leave. News of O'Connor's s and
OW performance broke meat Elite throughout Sunday and Monday. NBC
reportedly received more than four thousand calls from outraged viewers.
She was banned from the show for life, says Ferguson.
I just don't know if people even knew what they
(32:12):
just sing at the time. They just probably couldn't even
comprehend what. Music journalists and Powers has vivid memories of
watching the Saturday live performance in real time that evening.
She like everyone else, was stunned, But she could see
the resolve on O'Connor's face. But she looked like someone
who was going into battle. Never has said looked as
(32:35):
much like you know what I imagined Joan of Arc
looking like, you know, just complete absorption and her intention
her action at the time people were like, what did
what she really meaning to do? What she did? But
I could see it in her eyes. She knew exactly
(32:57):
what she intended to do. Did she know with the
ramification were No, but she definitely new uh what she
wanted to do the minute she started singing that song.
As an Irish American woman who grew up Catholic and
felt the strict, heavy handed rule of the church powers championed,
O'Connor stand against its transgressions and hypocrisy. Anyone raised Catholic
(33:20):
or in a Catholic dominated culture knows how what a
stronghold that ideology can have on a person. Uh So
for me, it was incredibly cathartic. More repercussions came instantly,
and they were enormous. With one simple act, O'Connor had
detonated her career, at least her career as a famous
(33:41):
pop artist. No, she never really wanted that career, but
she also could never have predicted the severity of the
fallout after the notorious performance, says Ferguson. Even a star,
which she was, was like one of the biggest musicians
in the world, literally probably the top three. Being a
lottest in the world. She wasn't untouchable, and she suffered
(34:03):
the consequences for, you know, for using her platform and
speaking out. You know, there were steam rulers rolling over
her records in Times Square, there were death threats to her,
managements to her and her family, lots of videos refused
by music. You know, the tabloid press had a failed
Day before the SNL incident, O'Connor had been invited to
(34:26):
perform at a Bob Dylan tribute concert at New York's
Madison Square Garden. Given that he was one of her
idols and biggest influences, she was over the moon. This
was an advantage of being famous. She could fully support
the chance of a lifetime. Just a couple of weeks
had passed and she torn up the photo of the Pope.
It was fresh in the audience's minds as she took
(34:46):
to the stage to perform a cover of Dylan's I
Believe In You. The sound that ensued was horrifying and excruciating,
cacophony of booze and cheers, all encompassing to the point
that O'Connor could not sing. She describes it in Rememberings
as quote unquote, a sonic riot is that the sky
is ripping apart. She stood mortified and paralyzed, her dreams
(35:11):
shattering before her eyes. She began to pace, afraid of
being drowned out, but also of doing nothing and letting
her hackers win. She tells her band to stop stop
playing the music. She takes her headphones eyes by imagine
people are telling they're asking him through She's getting a
lot of people in her ear, what are you doing?
And she ripped them out of her ears, and she
(35:32):
just starts to sing Bob Marley's War again, but a
much more furious version at this audience of twenty thighs
and people the Madison Square gardens and just screams the
words over the crowd. That's really it's a harrowing wash.
And then it's such a harrowing was because she's just
(35:53):
horrified by the response she gets. And you know, this
is after two weeks of background that she's had all
over the world. Country singer Chris christoffers and joined her
on stage, leaning in and telling her, don't let the
bastards get you down. They exited, he hugged her. O'Connor
recalls nearly throwing up on him. Later, she went to
(36:17):
Dylan's manager to ask him in the singer to help
her expose the child abuse at the hands of the
Irish Church. He refused. After the Medicine Square Garden show,
her father suggested that she abandoned music and go back
to school. Some have called O'Connor's s n L set
an active performance art. She didn't explain herself, and afterwards
(36:41):
her many critics didn't want an explanation. They didn't understand
and didn't care to. She was on her own, a
solitary crusader. Fame was lonely. Activism was even lonelier, says
and powers. That's an interesting thing about her fame in general, UM,
because when you think of the apex of her success,
that video for nothing compares to you. It's just her.
(37:06):
You know, you never see a band, you don't see
her collaborators. It's just her. And when you think of
that moment on Saturday Live Again, it's just even though
there was a band, it's just her. You only think
about her. And then when you think of her getting
booed off the stage at the Dylan thing again, she
is always like alone and and that speaks so profoundly
(37:27):
to the um. The predicament of women in music and
in rock, especially at that time. O'Connor would continue to
release albums Beautiful Ones, her follow up to Am I
Not Your Girl? Universal Mother offered some of her most
personal work Yet It's gorgeous and brutal. She dabbled in
(37:48):
traditional Irish folk, reggae, rock, spiritual music, and even pomp,
but a provocative SNL performance cast a long shadow over
her career and did a number on her mental health.
As she said in a two thousand twenty one interview
with Entertainment Weekly, quote the ten years after that Saturday
Night Live performance, the way that I was dealt with
(38:11):
was shocking. It was the fashion to treat me bad,
whether you were in my bed, at a board meeting,
a TV show, a gig, or a party. Everybody treated
me like I was a crazy bitch because I ripped
up the Pope's picture. We know I'm a crazy bitch,
but that's not why, says Ferguson, I think not having
the number ones and being a world famous, iconic pop store,
(38:33):
she could live with that, but I think, you know,
the way she was treated was disgraceful. She says. You know,
in those days, just the press aren't writing about you,
and people aren't buying your records. You know you've essentially vanished.
That wouldn't happen today because well, I don't think it
could happen today because of social media. For many, O'Connor
became invisible for others, a punchline for others, the enemy.
(38:58):
But if she states in her memoir and in fergus
Since documentary, nothing compares. She has no regrets about the
SNL scandal. If anything, it may have saved her from
an even darker fate. As O'Connor writes and rememberings quote,
A lot of people say or think that tearing up
the Pope's photo derailed my career. That's not how I
feel about it. I feel that having a number one
(39:18):
record derailed my career. Am I tearing the photo put
me back on the right track After us and L
I could just be me, do what I love. And
what she loves more than anything is what she's loved
from the beginning. One of the few gifts her mother
gave her the music. I've done only one holy thing
in my life, she writes, and that was saying Catherine
(39:54):
Ferguson fell in love with O'Connor in her early teens,
she was demoralized watching the SNL backlash, and her fondness
for the singers music only grew deeper as she entered adulthood.
She had the opportunity to collaborate with O'Connor on the
video for her two thousand thirteen single Fourth and Vine
and The Two Captain Touch. In two thousand eighteen, Ferguson
(40:17):
found herself feeling like the world had been turned quote
unquote upside down. She had witnessed the Me Too movement
and the women's marches following the election of Donald Trump
as US president. Government investigations and cases in Ireland had
revealed that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children
for decades, with much of the abuse being covered up.
(40:39):
Investigations and allegations in America over the past decade and
a half had also revealed a pattern of sexual abuse
and cover ups, and a large number of dioceses across
the country. Child abuse and the Catholic Church had become
a global crisis. In August of two eighteen, and the
first papal visit to Ireland and thirty nine years Pope
(41:01):
Francis publicly acknowledged the abuse of young people by clergy
members and the harmon had caused to them in the
Roman Catholic Church, even meeting with eight victims of abuse.
Ireland also held a referendum to legalize abortion rights. Ferguson
kept thinking of O'Connor. It just felt really absurd to
me that she wasn't mentioned in these conversations and at
(41:23):
that time, you know, especially when surely she must have
inspired so many of the activists in these movements. It
just felt like quite an urgent story I wanted to tell,
and particularly through a contemporary lens. Ferguson decided her next
project would be the documentary Nothing Compares, which would celebrate
O'Connor's work and lasting impact. The film premiered on Showtime
(41:44):
and was released in theaters in the UK and Ireland
this past fall. It was met with rave reviews and
won two British Independent Film Awards in December, including Best
Feature Documentary and Best Debut Director. Audience reactions to have
been over wellmingly positive. Ferguson recalls one particular screening in Ireland.
I was sat in an audience with five people and
(42:07):
all ages from twelve up to and quite a quiet
audience throughout the film, completely rampack. And when we get
to that moment, the Saturday Night Live moment and she
ripped up the Pope, the entire audience just started to
cheer and whoop and punch the air and shouts, and
(42:29):
it just was amazing. It was just amazing, actually see
how far things come in the place where this was
all from. Just to see the reaction of the crowd
was very much, very much one day. O'Connor had been
telling the truth, desperately trying to expose it, but many
(42:51):
refused to listen. Everybody's just thinking, oh my god, how
did we did we trader the way that we did,
and however they let this happen, you know, and everything
that she was saying and saying it was that's what
needed to be heard. There was nobody really anywhere talking
about it. It was well to come by ten years later.
(43:13):
It was she was so ahead of her time, or
rather the rest of us were too late. Like many
women navigating the choppy waters of the music industry, Katie Lange,
Sophie Bie Hawkins, Torre Amos, Madonna, O'Connor fought for her
voice to be heard and Like many of those women,
she was met with opposition and disdain. While so many artists,
(43:35):
especially women, would make compromises were backed down to preserve
their careers, O'Connor sacrificed massive success, wealth, awards, celebrity for
what she believed in. She was determined to fight against
the ugliness, cruelty, and injustice in the world, says music
journalists and powers set O'Connor has always been a political artist.
(43:57):
She has always written topical songs, address racism, very profoundly
confronted religious hierarchies. She has stood as uh a person
who presents herself just as she wants to. And it's
not always something that that people appreciate, casual fans especially,
(44:23):
oh that crazy se But you know what, it's the
challenge to the norms that's so important. It's the openness
and honesty about that in her music, which remains so
beautiful and so deep, like so much deeper than of
what else is out there, that keeps me coming back
(44:44):
to her. Many considered she O'Connor to be at best
a hopeless attention seeker and at worst a threat. Now
after thousands of incidents of child abuse in the Catholic
Church have come to light after the count this racial
reckonings in recent years, after the Grammys have been forced
to address allegations of gender and racial bias. Many consider
(45:08):
her a prophet and a hero. And what was fascinating
to hear is that for the first time in the
last decade, she's now being written in with the history
books in Ireland. But I think she's got quite a
time ahead of her in the next few years. I
think it's gonna be a younger demographic. We're really going
to look to her and what she did and as inspiration.
(45:30):
Ferguson points to a vibrant mural in Dublin's Temple Our
neighborhood has further evidence of O'Connor's reappraisal and legacy. It
depicts a singer wearing a shawl over her head, appearing
saintly in solemn. She has that same look of determination
in her eyes that she had when she ripped up
that photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live all
those years ago. The mural reads sad you were right
(45:53):
all along, we were wrong, so sorry, And we're living
in a moment now where I think where we as
a society, as a culture have opened ourselves up to
hearing some some difficult truths, you know, whether it's how
we speak to each other on social media, or what
books we're reading now, or what what movies we want
(46:14):
to see. Um, that's there and I want to hear
more of that in popular music too, and I think
we are hearing it. But Shend has given us a
legacy and a guide to how to do that. Don't
only think of her as the that crazy woman who
did some crazy things. Recognize the truth she offers us.
(47:11):
Where Were You in ninety two was a production of
I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Noel Brown and
Jordan run Tug. The show was researched, written and hosted
by me Jason Lafier, with editing and sound design by
Michael Alder June. If you like what you heard, please
subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, check out the I Heart Radio app,
(47:33):
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Jason Lamphier
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