Sinéad O'Connor'sdeath was sadly reported on Tuesday, 26 July, at the age of just 56.
But during her life, the singer was renowned for her trademark buzz cut, emotionally charged vocals and the numerous controversies that plagued her career.
However, the Irish star’s journey to fame and her rebellious protests are shown in a different light in Sky’s latest documentary, Nothing Compares, which was scheduled to be screened this coming Saturday, before the tragic news.
Named after the musician’s best-selling single, Nothing Compares 2 U, the film takes fans behind the hits and the headlines.
It tells the tale of her complicated relationship with her “abusive” late mother, looks at claims that her former record company tried to coax her into an abortion, and examines the live US TV appearance that saw her rip up a photo of the Pope.
“There was no therapy when I was growing up so the reason I got into music was therapy,” Sinéad says in the documentary, filmed in the weeks before she died. “It was such a shock for me to become a pop star, it’s not what I wanted. I just wanted to scream.”
Opening up about her “traumatic” home life, Sinéad speaks of how her mother made her live in their garden “24/7 for a week or two” – an experience which inspired her track Troy. “I’d be screaming, begging her to let me in,” she reveals.
“I spent my entire childhood being beaten up because of the social conditions under which my mother grew up,” she adds.
After being sent to a religious order as an “unmanageable” teenager, Sinéad’s talent was discovered by her music teacher and she was eventually signed by her first record company. It was under their management that she faced her first hurdles in the industry – particularly when it came to her iconic hairstyle.
“They wanted me to grow my hair long, wear short skirts and high heels, make-up and the whole works,” she says. “And write songs that wouldn’t challenge anything, but then I come from a country where there used to be riots in the streets over plays. That’s what art is for.”
So she decided to rebel with a pair of scissors. “Obviously she was having absolutely none of it,” Sinéad’s first husband and record producer John Reynolds says, telling the documentary of the moment she shaved all her hair off. “It’s a powerful statement for a woman because she says, ‘Don’t f**k with me.’”
But her “final straw” with the record company came when they encouraged her to terminate her pregnancy aged 20. She refused, resulting in the birth of first son Jake in 1987 – and her scrapping the first version of her debut album, The Lion And The Cobra.
“It was a response to them telling me I owed it to them not to have a baby. I was like, ‘Well, it ain’t worth it for a s**t f**king record,’” she recalls.
Despite her non-conformist attitude, Sinéad reached No.1 with her cover of Prince’s song Nothing Compares 2 U and became a global star. While filming the music video, the singer couldn’t stop thinking about her mother, who’d died in a car accident five years earlier. “I didn’t know I was going to cry singing it. Every time I sing the song, I think of my mother,” she admits. “I never stopped crying for my mother. I couldn’t face being in Ireland for 13 years. I never even called home, I just cut myself off entirely.”
While everything changed overnight for the star, her defiant displays eventually turned the public against her. American radio stations began boycotting Sinéad’s music after she refused to have the US national anthem played before a concert in New Jersey, while uncomplimentary headlines were plastered about her across the papers.
This reached a whole new level in 1992 when Sinéad ripped up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live to protest child abuse in the Catholic Church. Singing a cover of Bob Marley’s song War, she told the American public to “fight the real enemy”, while live on TV and destroying a photo of Pope John Paul II – to deafening silence from the audience.
“I had fan letters with death threats to myself, death threats to Sinéad,” her agent tells the film. It was shortly afterwards that the star retreated from public life.
She says, “I have about a 10-year period I don’t remember much because it suddenly became a free-for-all for everybody around me to personally and publicly treat me like s**t.”
More than 30 years on, however, Sinéad’s attitude to music and political issues was considered ahead of her time. “I don’t think the powers that be were ready for her,” Public Enemy’s Chuck D says in the film. “There are a lot of artists that came after her that were able to speak their mind and spill their soul. She broke the ice for a whole decade or two after her.”
An oral history of Sinéad’s whirlwind career, Nothing Compares shows how the Irish musician paved the way for the likes of Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande with her distinctive look and political stands on abortion, race and women’s rights.
While criticised for her defiant demonstrations, Sinéad reminds viewers in the documentary that it was her passion that “the world fell in love with” back when the Nothing Compares 2 U music video debuted in 1990.
“I went and did a lot of crying and everyone was like, ‘You crazy bitch,’” she says. “But actually, hold on. You fell in love with that tear. That was a mirror.”
Nothing Compares airs on Saturday 29 July at 9pm on Sky Documentaries
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