0:00

Where Were You In ninety two is a production

0:02

of I Heart Radio. A

0:04

special note this episode contains

0:06

themes of physical and sexual abuse. It

0:09

may not be suitable for all listeners. She

0:14

looked like someone who was growing into battle. Never

0:16

has said looked

0:19

as much like you know what I imagined

0:21

Joan of Arc looking like you

0:23

know She knew exactly what she intended

0:26

to do. Did she know what the ramifications

0:28

were? No, but she definitely

0:31

knew what she wanted to do the minute

0:33

she started singing that song. Welcome

0:39

to Where Are You In nine two, a podcast

0:42

in which I Your host Jason Lautier

0:44

look back at the major hits, one hit wonders,

0:47

shocking news stories, and irresistible

0:49

scandals that shaped what might be the wildest,

0:52

most eclectic, most controversial

0:54

twelve months of music ever. This

0:58

week, after scoring a number one

1:00

smashed with her version of the Prince song Nothing

1:03

Compares to You, Irish singer

1:05

songwriter Shanid O'Connor became an international

1:07

sensation. While her look a

1:10

shaved head and dazzling dough like eyes

1:12

was arresting, her gale force vocals

1:15

were next level. A songbird

1:17

and a siren she could pivot from a whisper

1:20

to a screen in seconds.

1:22

But if her stars seemed to rise overnight,

1:24

it fell just as quickly. In October

1:27

of less than two

1:29

weeks after releasing her new album, Am

1:31

I Not Your Girl? O'Connor concluded

1:33

her performance on Saturday Night Live by

1:36

ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul

1:38

the Second to protest the Catholic Church

1:40

concealing acts of child abuse. The

1:42

incident sparked rabid backlash,

1:45

with radio stations refusing to play her music

1:47

and audiences boycotting her one

1:50

single gesture torpedoed her

1:52

career. In this episode,

1:54

we examine the events leading up to that faithful

1:57

evening, it's crushing consequences,

2:00

honors, complicated relationship with fame,

2:02

and how many of her critics realized years

2:04

later that she was right all along. Plus

2:07

director Catherine Ferguson joins us to discuss

2:10

her award winning two thousand documentary

2:13

Nothing Compares, which traces the singer's

2:15

life, exiled and legacy. When

2:23

I look back at the artists who have been instrumental in shaping

2:25

who I am today, so many of them

2:27

confused me. When I first heard or saw

2:29

them. I found them weird and hard to

2:31

pin down and therefore off putting.

2:34

They made me uncomfortable, sometimes even

2:36

scared me. They were disruptors

2:38

of gender or genre, and often both,

2:41

blurring the lines between male and female

2:43

pop and performance art. Nina

2:45

Simone, David Bowie, Kate Bush,

2:48

Prince York, Anny Shade

2:51

O'Connor. I can't tell you

2:53

where I was when I first heard Snad O'Connor.

2:55

I was too young to really absorb my surroundings

2:58

for sound and time and place to

3:00

coalesce into a major musical moment.

3:03

But I remember that voice. It had

3:05

nothing to do with my being American and her being

3:07

Irish. I had no idea where she come

3:09

from. I remember that voice

3:11

because it yanked me by the collar and pulled

3:13

me out of my comfort zone. It was

3:16

big and beautiful, but also

3:18

strange and intimidating, a

3:20

little chilling. Music

3:23

journalist in Critic and Powers had

3:25

a similar reaction when hearing O'Connor for the

3:27

first time in the nineteen eighties, when

3:29

Troy a highlight from the singers debut

3:33

album The Lion the Cobra suddenly

3:35

burst through the speakers in her room. Her

3:37

encounter with that voice made her an instant

3:40

fan. I will never forget

3:43

lying in bed in my San Francisco apartment

3:46

listening to k u s F, the local

3:48

college radio station, and the

3:51

song Troy came on, and

3:54

I mean, the story in that song is so compelling,

3:57

but the voice, just the voice

4:00

of the power,

4:02

the rage, the vulnerability, the

4:05

purity and the dirt in it, all

4:08

of that, it just slew

4:10

me to my soul and I from

4:12

that moment, my undivided love

4:14

for Naid was born. Powers was

4:16

a young Irish American woman who had been raised

4:19

to be aware of her heritage. She

4:21

had been served a lot of popular culture

4:23

about Ireland and about the troubles

4:26

the thirty year conflict in Northern Ireland

4:28

between Protestant Unionists or Loyalists,

4:31

who wanted it to remain part of the United Kingdom

4:33

and Roman Catholic nationalists or Republicans,

4:36

who wanted it to become part of the Republic of Ireland.

4:39

Powers had movies, TV and the band

4:41

You Too representing her past in present, but

4:44

O'Connor folded in Irish folk music

4:46

and classic shadows folk singing that truly

4:48

resonated with her across

4:52

the Atlantic. Director Katherine Ferguson,

4:55

who was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland's

4:57

capital, was having a similar response to

4:59

the singer. She thanks her father for

5:01

exposing her to O'Connor's music. There was just

5:04

nothing like her. She's like an alien from water

5:06

space and see the things so

5:08

thrilling really to me at that point

5:11

she was put in front of me and this incredible

5:14

example of um, you know, this

5:16

incredible iconic character

5:19

to admire. So yeah,

5:22

it all BEGANE then I was way too young

5:24

to be cool enough to know O'Connor's acclaimed first

5:27

album, The Lion of the Cobra. But

5:29

for a certain period, hearing your

5:32

cover of Princes Nothing Compares to You on your

5:34

radio was a given, as predictable

5:37

as the sun coming up each day and going

5:39

down at the end of it, which is what the

5:41

song The Ultimate Breakup Anthem

5:44

sounds like. It is somehow

5:46

both bracing, like the first breath you

5:48

take stepping out into the morning, and definitive,

5:51

like the brightness vanishing and the darkness

5:53

of evening descending. It's

5:56

most memorable line is its most quietly

5:58

devastating. All the flowers

6:01

that you planted Mama in the backyard

6:03

all died when you went away. That's

6:06

it, so succinct yet

6:08

so rich and vivid. You hear

6:10

it, and you're watching those flowers wilt.

6:12

But it's more than that. You're there with

6:15

a split screen in front of you, on

6:17

screen one those flowers dying

6:19

under the winter frost on screen

6:21

too. O'Connor's lover crossing the threshold,

6:24

last box in their arms, walking

6:27

away from her and her mother and her

6:29

family and everything they've established

6:31

a foundation crumling. Yes,

6:36

we must credit the Purple One with writing that

6:38

line, but let's also be real here.

6:41

O'Connor gave it depth. She

6:43

sings about those flowers and you believe her. Have

6:46

you heard Prince's version of nothing Compares to You? He

6:49

wrote it for his side project The Family, and it

6:51

appeared on their eponymous debut

6:53

album, It's Good, better than

6:56

Good. It certainly does the job. But

6:58

this song belongs to a nade, and

7:01

it's because of that voice, which conveys

7:03

years of hurt, confusion, longing

7:06

and hope and does so like it's effortless,

7:09

says Ferguson. But her voice seem

7:11

to have such a global appeal that it's seem to

7:13

break through where others happens. And I think

7:15

that went a very long way. Fortunate

7:18

it. I think really her talent is so startling

7:22

that it just went through, just

7:24

pushed three. O'Connor's rousing

7:27

interpretation if Nothing Compares to You made her a

7:29

star, a huge worldwide

7:31

star. The track sword to number

7:33

one in the UK, Ireland, Australia,

7:36

Canada, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand,

7:38

Sweden, Switzerland, and the US, where

7:40

it stayed at the top of the Billboard Hot one hundred

7:43

for four weeks. On the second

7:45

week of its rain at number one, I Do Not

7:47

Want What I Haven't Got, the album it appeared

7:49

on, began it's six week run at number

7:51

one on the Billboard two hundred. Billboard

7:54

would name Nothing Compares to You, the number

7:57

one world single. At the end of the

8:00

song was everywhere, and O'Connor's

8:03

angelic face and her pained expression,

8:05

and its music video was all over MTV,

8:08

where Nothing Compares You became a staple soon

8:10

after its release. It's Easy

8:12

to See why. Directed by John

8:14

Maybury, it features the singer walking through

8:16

paris Is Park to Saint Clude on

8:18

a frigid day. Dressed in a cloak.

8:21

She looks monastic as she contemplates her sorrow

8:23

own regret. But it's the video's

8:25

close up shots of O'Connor and which tears

8:27

streamed down her cheeks, that made it legendary,

8:30

says Anne powers. She gazes

8:33

outward directly into the eye

8:35

of the viewer and her all

8:38

of the qualities that we associate with she and

8:40

her beauty, her vulnerability, her fierceness

8:43

are all in that gaze and in that vocal

8:45

performance when she looks at you. In that video,

8:48

you absorbed both her strength and her

8:50

defenselessness in the wake of her heartbreak. Her

8:53

exposing that heartbreak and defenselessness,

8:55

placing it in sharp relief against a stark

8:58

black backdrop, is why she

9:00

comes across so strong, so resilient,

9:03

And this is largely because the tears she sheds

9:05

are real tears. You

9:08

see Princess lying about the narrator's

9:10

mother's flowers. Dying took on a new meaning

9:13

for O'Connor when she shot the video, For nothing compares

9:15

to you delivering it. She

9:17

could not help but think of her own mother, who

9:19

had died in a car accident in a few years before. As

9:22

she recalled and robed tan Obaum and Craig

9:24

Marks is two eleven book I Want

9:27

My MTV, The Uncensored Story of the Music

9:29

video Revolution. Quote. I

9:32

made an emotional connection which I was

9:34

not expecting. It didn't

9:36

hit me when I was recording the song and

9:39

only kicked in when I was being filmed. So

9:41

I was sitting there thinking about me mother

9:44

and trying hard nut to bawl my eyes up. I

9:46

had one little tear that became

9:48

the whole video, but it wasn't supposed

9:50

to be. The video was massive,

9:53

and it changed my career. It

9:56

did nothing compares to you. One

9:58

Video of the Year at the ninet ninety Video

10:00

Music Awards, making O'Connor the first

10:03

woman ever to win in that category. She

10:05

beat out Madonna's Vogue for the prize. She

10:08

also took home moon Men for Best Female Video,

10:11

also beating out Vogue and Best Postmodern

10:14

Video, a category that would be renamed

10:16

Best Alternative Video of the following year. The

10:19

song and video made her a household name.

10:21

If she didn't look like other female pop stars of the era,

10:24

few could argue with the gorgeousness of her voice

10:27

or the captivating rawness of her video's

10:29

imagery. O'Connor's

10:38

grief over the loss of her mother may have pervaded

10:41

the video for nothing compares to you, but the

10:43

relationship was fraught, she writes,

10:45

and her two thousand twenty one memoir rememberings

10:48

of the abuse she suffered as a child the hands of

10:50

her mother, whom she recalls would beat her

10:52

with her field hockey stick or a carpet sweeper

10:54

pole, forcing her to strip

10:57

naked. She would hit her with the sweeping brush

10:59

and make her repeat I am nothing.

11:02

She also writes at her mother with locker in her room

11:05

or under the stairs and starved her, and

11:07

that she once purposely crashed her car, which

11:09

she neade in the passenger seat when she needs older

11:11

brother Joe, ran away and refused to come home. Her

11:15

mother was hospitalized. She eventually

11:17

lost a custody of Shade and her siblings. She

11:20

Need's youngest brother, John, stayed

11:22

with his mother until a second crash. He

11:24

was in the backseat of the car when it happened, but he

11:27

survived. He was sixteen when

11:29

his mother died. She Neede was eighteen.

11:32

Her mother left four children behind that

11:35

was and

11:42

rememberings. O'Connor describes the bewilderment

11:45

and anger she felt after her mother's death. She

11:48

recounts screaming into the sky at God, running

11:50

from the funeral home. I don't think

11:52

I'll have her stopped running, she writes. She

11:55

vows to smoke herself into oblivion, to

11:57

smoke until she too is dead and can

11:59

reunite her mother, as chaotic and abusive

12:01

as a relationship had been. Later

12:04

that same year, O'Connor left for London

12:07

because she had landed a record contract with the label

12:09

Ensign, but she couldn't

12:11

escape the pain and trauma. It would

12:13

permeate so much of her work, but

12:16

also put a fire in her belly. She

12:18

would become more than just a compelling performer.

12:22

She would become a crusader. Up

12:30

next, after the Break, we discussed

12:32

Shied O'Connor's critically held first two

12:34

albums, The Lion in the Cobra and I Do Not

12:36

Want What I Haven't Got, her first big

12:38

public act of protest at the Grammy

12:41

Awards, and her controversial

12:43

reaction to her sudden newfound fame. It

12:53

was the late nineteen eighties, Snad

12:55

O'Connor had landed her first record contract,

12:58

but she was barely an adult. She signed

13:01

the contract, agreeing to earn a mirror seven

13:03

percent of what her records sold, and to

13:05

pay for nearly all the recording, promoting,

13:07

and touring. Out of that seven percent, she

13:10

didn't know any better. Paperwork bored

13:12

her. One demo she wrote that would end

13:14

up on her debut album, The Line

13:16

in the Cobra, was Troy, one

13:18

of the tensest, most searing, most

13:21

brain tangling tracks to come out of the eighties, and

13:23

the first time O'Connor had sung about her mother.

13:26

But it wasn't just about her mother. Like most

13:28

songs, it was also about love and heartbreak,

13:31

a palpable heartbreak. When

13:36

O'Connor unleashes roars

13:38

its most memorable line, I'd kill a dragon

13:40

for you, I'll die, it genuinely

13:43

sounds mid evil, savage and terrifying.

13:46

She is your valiant knight, sword

13:49

in hand, ready to slay the beast. But

13:52

she is also the night, a black,

13:54

cold, lonely, desperate void longing

13:56

to be filled, And she is

13:59

the beast at menacing

14:01

and engulfed in its own flames. You

14:03

can hear her battered and shattered history,

14:05

the torment and the fury, all that she's

14:08

endured before the age of twenty. Troy

14:10

possesses the same dichotomy you here, and

14:13

nothing compares to you. It swerves

14:15

from delicate to defiant in an instant.

14:21

That dichotomy, that clashing

14:23

of tender vulnerability and steadfast

14:25

resistance, would define O'Connor's

14:28

career. After her turbulent

14:30

childhood and adolescence. She had little

14:32

patience for those who wished to control her. Any

14:35

whiff of bullshit sexism, misogyny,

14:38

homophobia, exploitation, abuse,

14:40

or hypocrisy, and her guard immediately

14:42

came up and Powers

14:45

remembers attending one of O'Connor's early prece

14:47

events, she was immediately moved

14:49

by her poise and candor, that vibe

14:52

you get from a young person who is

14:54

unafraid of everything and yet aware

14:58

of every ghost and demon

15:00

in the room. And that is what said

15:02

was from the beginning. She was

15:06

not callous. She didn't have that kind of

15:08

attitude that a lot of male

15:10

punks did. Who I encountered in the scene,

15:13

you know, she was open, but

15:15

she was also just absolutely

15:18

determined to make

15:21

the moves she wanted to make. Over lunch

15:23

one day, a pair of record exact that her

15:25

label told o'connory, like, I just stopped cutting

15:27

her hair short and wear short skirts and jewelry

15:30

to essentially present more like quote unquote girl.

15:33

She responded by buzzing all their hair off, as

15:35

she recalled, and I want my MTV quote

15:38

they described their mistresses to me and said

15:40

I should look like that. I didn't want to be pushed

15:43

as some kind of pretty girl, so my way of

15:45

answering was to shave my head. I didn't

15:47

want to be governed by a load of middle aged blokes.

15:51

Her appearance was striking and unconventional

15:53

for a young female singer in the late nineteen eighties

15:55

and early nineties. MTV dug

15:57

it, but not everyone. O'Connor

15:59

to Old Spin magazine in the

16:02

Madonna said she looked quote like

16:04

I had a run in with a lawnmower, and that I

16:06

was about as sexy as a Venetian blind. She

16:09

scoffed at the idea of that Madonna was seen as a

16:11

sort of feminist hero when she was cutting

16:14

other women down like that. During

16:16

production for The Lion and the Cobra, O'Connor

16:18

discovered she was pregnant when a doctor

16:21

relayed to her that her label did not think she should

16:23

keep the baby. After he had spent so much money

16:25

on the album, she was offended and

16:28

incensed. She not only

16:30

kept her baby, but scrapped the record,

16:32

which she was hating anyway, and decided

16:34

to start again. Though she didn't

16:36

really know how to use studio equipment, she

16:38

would produce it herself. She learned

16:41

quickly, and the gambit paid off. Rarely

16:44

do debut album sound as confident, fearless,

16:46

and fully formed as The Lion in the Cobra,

16:48

a work that heralded the arrival of a genuine

16:50

artist with a genuine vision. O'Connor

16:53

was just shy of twenty one when it came out. The

16:59

Lion and the Cobra is widely considered one of the

17:01

best albums of the nineteen eighties and

17:03

one of the best debut albums of any decade.

17:06

It eventually went gold and earned O'Connor

17:08

a Grammy nomination for Best Female

17:10

Rock Vocal Performance. She

17:12

performed her college radio hit Mandinka

17:15

at the nineteen nine ceremony and a

17:17

head turning ensemble, a black

17:19

halter top that revealed her middrift, torn

17:22

baggy blue jeans, and her signature Doc

17:24

Martin's. She tucked the sleeves

17:26

of her new son Jake's onesie through her

17:28

belt loops and wore it around her waist

17:31

a slive fuck you to the label who had

17:33

essentially asked her not to have him. She

17:37

also boasted an image of a man in the crosshairs

17:39

of a gun, shaved and died on the

17:41

side of her head. The design

17:43

was the hip hop group Public Enemy's

17:45

logo, meant to symbolize the plight

17:48

of the black man in America. O'Connor

17:50

ward out of solidarity to support

17:52

them and other rappers whose music had

17:55

been excluded from the show. While

17:57

the Recording Academy had decided to recognize

18:00

hip hop was its first ever award

18:02

for Best Rap Performance, it would

18:04

not announce the winner and present the award

18:06

on television. O'Connor styling

18:09

was political, an act of protest.

18:11

Audiences who had been unfamiliar with her

18:14

were intrigued mystified. I

18:17

don't know no shame, she wails in Mandinka.

18:20

The Grammys performance made you believe it. O'Connor's

18:24

outspokenness and rebellious streak would

18:26

not diminish as her star ros After

18:29

Nothing Compares to You conquered MTV and

18:31

her second album es I

18:33

Do Not Want What I haven't got when multi platinum,

18:36

she could have set aside her politics to avoid courting

18:39

controversy and focus on her career. But

18:41

if she makes clear in her memoir Rememberings

18:44

and in Catherine Ferguson's documentary Nothing Compares,

18:47

the singer was never interested in becoming an international

18:49

celebrity. She had punk roots

18:51

and a punk sensibility, says

18:53

Ferguson. I just don't think she had

18:56

ever said that to be a pop star that wasn't

18:59

her goal. You know,

19:01

she was a very serious musician

19:04

who happened to become a global

19:06

phenomenon, and I think

19:09

she didn't go into it ever wanting

19:11

that she didn't want to be pigeonholed

19:14

or have the life that's being created

19:17

for her. Some would say O'Connor

19:19

could write the book on how to derail a pop career.

19:22

She refused to comply when faced with anything

19:24

that did not align with her belief system and

19:27

rapped up plenty of enemies along the way. She

19:30

pulled out of a Saturday Night Live appearance when

19:32

she learned that Andrew dice Clay, a comedian

19:34

known for his homophobic and misogynist sets,

19:37

was the host. He responded

19:39

with a skip, mocking the quote unquote bald chick.

19:42

When O'Connor said she'd prefer that the

19:44

Star Spangled ban Or not be played before he

19:46

show at Garden State Arts Center in New Jersey,

19:48

it caused a national uproar, with many

19:51

calling her quote unquote anti American. Politicians

19:54

protested her radio stations refused

19:56

to play her music. Robert mc hammer

19:59

sent her a check for a ticket back to Ireland.

20:02

Frank Sinatra said she must be quote

20:04

unquote one stupid broad and threatened

20:06

to quote unquote kicker ass if she were a guy.

20:14

She skipped the Grammys and

20:16

refused to accept her award for Best Alternative

20:18

Music Performance, writing a letter to the Recording

20:20

Academy accusing it of favoring materialism

20:23

over songwriting. In fact,

20:26

she declined all the awards she received for I

20:28

Do not want what I Haven't got. O'Connor

20:31

explains her choice and rememberings writing,

20:34

quote commercial success

20:36

outranked artistic merit. I made

20:38

a lot of money for a lot of men who couldn't

20:40

actually have cared less what the songs were about.

20:43

She went on, I'm a punk, not

20:46

a pop star, adding music

20:48

shouldn't be such a competition. Her

20:51

critics deemed her ungrateful. After

20:53

the Grammys that year, she left Los

20:55

Angeles to return to the UK, giving

20:58

her house to the Red Cross. Whether

21:01

O'Connor wanted to be a pop star or not, she

21:03

was, and pop stars with number one hits

21:05

and big awards rarely ruffled feathers

21:07

like this. She was right. The

21:09

stuff she was doing was what punks did, mostly

21:12

male punks in the early nineties.

21:15

She was a young twenty something woman in a male dominated

21:17

industry that was still new to her, says

21:19

music journalist dam Powers. I don't think

21:21

she was sacrificed, but I do

21:24

think she was out there on

21:26

the bow of the ship before this

21:29

happened to a lot of other people, and

21:31

um didn't have a lot of guidance and didn't

21:34

have a lot of examples of how to

21:36

negotiate this successfully. On the strength

21:38

of the success of Nothing Compares to You, I

21:41

Do Not Want What I Haven't Got went to number one

21:43

in multiple countries, including O'Connor's

21:45

home country of Ireland, But rather

21:48

than maintain that upper trajectory and release

21:50

a more pop inflected follow up, she

21:52

took a sharp left turn. Her

21:55

next record, Am

21:57

I Not Your Girl? Wasn't pop at all. It

22:00

wasn't punk or really folk either. It

22:02

was a collection of covers of show tunes and

22:05

jazz standards her parents had played while

22:07

she was growing up, music that inspired

22:09

her to pursue a singing career. In

22:12

her memoir, O'Connor admits that am

22:14

I Not Your Girl was a quote unquote red heron.

22:17

She didn't want to deal with anxiety of delivering another

22:20

I do not want what I haven't got. She

22:22

didn't want to deal with anxiety of being a pop star period.

22:25

There's nothing compares. Director Katherine Ferguson

22:27

hypothesizes O'Connor's about

22:29

face may have stemmed from her desire to come

22:32

up for air after releasing two albums

22:34

of heavy, intimate material that she

22:36

says in the film, and I think she was

22:38

buying herself time to work out

22:40

her next album. But these were

22:43

all tracks that she really loved,

22:45

and a lot of them she'd been introduced to

22:47

as a child. She's been told that the

22:49

previous albums like reading somebody's

22:51

diary and it was far too personals.

22:54

So maybe there was a maybe this was a bit of a

22:57

bit of light light relief for her. If it

22:59

was lighter air for her, O'Connor

23:01

still attached profound meaning to these songs.

23:04

She included the folk ballad Scarlet Ribbons

23:07

because her father used to sing it to her when she was a little

23:09

girl. She chose to cover a Vita's

23:11

Don't Cry for Me Argentina because her mother

23:13

loved it. Still allotted

23:15

award winning chart topping pop breakout,

23:18

pivoting to a jazz album right after she become

23:20

one of the most famous singers in the world. O'Connor's

23:23

decision was super risky and baffling,

23:25

particularly in the fall of when

23:28

grunge gangs to Wrap, Eurodance and Swooney

23:30

R and B were dominating the charts. It

23:33

seemed hopelessly uncool, says

23:35

An Powers. There's a lot of pathos

23:37

in this in this track listing, and

23:39

there's a lot of pathos in her performances.

23:43

As a career move, it was it

23:45

was suicidal. I mean, it was absolutely

23:48

walking away from the momentum that she had.

23:51

In a sense, O'Connor abandoning

23:53

pop for a standards album was one of the

23:55

most punk things she could have done. It's

23:57

one of those bold moves that it

24:00

seems incredibly foolish, but in the context

24:02

of her whole career, makes total

24:04

sense. It's like early on she's saying, you

24:07

cannot control me. And if this sacrifice

24:10

um leaves me away from the

24:12

kind of mainstream career the music industry

24:14

wants me to have, I'll deal with that.

24:17

Am I not Your Girl? Is a sleepy listen. It's

24:20

pretty, but it just doesn't showcase O'Connor's

24:22

incredible voice enough compared

24:24

to the blazing richness of her first two records.

24:27

It's tepan, but at certain moments

24:29

it's sores. With all due respect

24:31

to Patty Lapone, O'Connor's interpretation

24:34

of Don't Cry for Me Argentina is unsurpassed.

24:37

Tim Rice, who wrote its lyrics, agrees.

24:40

He mailed O'Connor a letter after hearing it, saying

24:42

it was the best version he'd heard, hands down.

24:45

And as for fortune and as for fame,

24:47

I never invited them in though it seemed

24:50

to the world they were all I desired. They

24:52

are illusions. They're not the solutions

24:54

they promised to be. It's hard

24:56

to listen to those lines from the song without

24:59

thinking of O'Connor's owned a limit. At the time,

25:01

the same goes for the album's other highlight, success

25:04

has made a failure of our Home, which

25:06

she admits in her memoir was autobiographical,

25:09

a nod to her struggle with the trappings of her

25:11

own newfound success, and

25:14

the liner notes of am I Not Your Girl? O'Connor

25:17

addresses child abuse and its consequences,

25:20

the death of self esteem, fear, addiction.

25:24

We have not been told the truth, she writes.

25:27

The message is love. What can

25:29

save us? She titled her

25:32

musings or

25:35

Where Is the Lost King, adding

25:38

if you're out there, I want to see you. Turns

25:41

out the songs were more than just jazz

25:44

remakes. Her personal trauma

25:46

and her protest against abuse of any

25:49

kind suffused the songs, says

25:52

Powers. It was a very unexpected

25:54

move for an artist like this, especially

25:57

following up you know, her massive Popsick,

26:00

says, and through that project

26:02

she was you know, reaching back into her

26:04

own childhood and confronting the violence

26:07

that had been part of her upbringing um

26:10

and starting to really I think

26:14

grapple with the

26:16

legacies the of of exploitation

26:20

of children and violence towards children

26:22

that would then motivate her to

26:25

make a career changing move

26:34

up next After the break, we explore

26:37

that career changing move O'Connor's

26:39

controversial scandalous performance

26:41

on Saturday Night Live, during which she tore

26:43

up a photo of the Pope and told yours to quote

26:46

unquote like the real enemy. The

27:02

year was nat

27:05

O'Connor was living in New York City and was set

27:07

to promote her latest album, Am I Not Your Girl,

27:10

which was released in September. But

27:12

the singer had other things on her mind. If

27:14

she noted in the liner notes of the record, she

27:17

had turned her attention to the tense social

27:19

climate, specifically to news of child

27:21

abuse and the fight for abortion rights,

27:24

says Catherine Ferguson, director of the two thousand

27:27

twenty two counter documentary Nothing Compares.

27:30

She had been reading about the cover of

27:32

abuse in Ireland and families

27:35

being silent, and I think she was

27:37

just really enraged by the hypocrisy

27:40

and felt compelled to take a stand. And

27:43

I think, you know, in

27:45

Ireland was a

27:47

pretty tumultuous time. The

27:49

troubles were still awful in the

27:52

North, and the size, and of course the question

27:54

of of women's bodily autonomy

27:57

was ready back in the news. In the sight of

27:59

Ireland, there was a very famous case

28:01

called the X case, where young

28:04

fourteen year old have been raised and her

28:07

family had taken her to England for an abortion, but

28:09

then the Irish placed the guards while

28:12

she was in England. They were learned to an injunction

28:14

ordering them to come home. You

28:16

know, this tech started a huge swathe

28:18

of protests and up roar and a lot

28:20

around Catholicism and the control in the church.

28:23

And she made was even in ninety two, she'd

28:25

actually appeared at one of these big

28:29

pro choice rallies in Dublin. She'd

28:31

been reading about these cases

28:34

and thinking about it. And

28:37

I suppose when you look back at what she

28:39

ensured as a child and a teenager,

28:42

it's just all kind of came full circle. And

28:44

O'Connor recalls in her memoir when

28:46

her mother died, she returned her home for

28:49

the first time in a long time. The

28:51

only photo in her mother's room, the

28:53

only photo she remembers her ever having in her

28:55

room, was of Pope John Paul, the Second

28:57

visiting Ireland in ninety nine.

29:01

She writes of the photo it

29:03

represented lies and liars and abuse.

29:06

The type of people who kept these things were devils

29:08

Like my mother. I never knew when

29:10

or where or how I would destroy it, But

29:13

destroy it I would when the right moment came. She

29:16

kept the photo every time she moved, says

29:19

Ferguson. I think this picture on the

29:21

wall of her mother's bedroom.

29:24

It was very While in New

29:26

York, O'Connor met Terry, a

29:28

West Indian Rastafarian man from St.

29:30

Lucia who worked at a juice bar, which was

29:32

really a front for him and his friends to sell weed.

29:35

One night, just before she would appear

29:37

as musical guest on Saturday Night Live,

29:40

Terry revealed to her that he had been using children

29:43

as drug mules, running guns and

29:45

drugs in their book bags. He

29:47

had invaded someone's turf, and his life

29:49

was now in danger. O'Connor

29:52

was shocked, livid, distraught.

29:54

She saw him the Friday night before her SNL

29:57

set and that would be the last time she ever

29:59

saw him. The newspaper stories

30:01

of children being abused by priests and

30:03

their parents having their stories suppressed and silenced

30:06

were weighing on O'Connor. She was

30:08

angry, even angrier knowing that her friend

30:10

Terry had also been abusing children. Was

30:13

it time to exhume her mother's photo? Was

30:15

it time to break the silence? For

30:22

her first number, on the October third

30:24

episode of Saturday Night Live, O'Connor

30:28

performed success has made a failure

30:30

of our home pointed apt.

30:33

For her second number, she was supposed

30:36

to perform Bob Marley's War Acapella,

30:38

a song about how racism is a root of all

30:41

fighting and bloodshed, and hold up a photograph

30:43

of a Brazilian child killed by police.

30:46

As the camera zoomed in, O'Connor

30:48

surrounded herself with candles. She

30:51

wore a white lace dress that the previously

30:53

belonged to shade that she bought it an

30:56

auction at nineteen. She also

30:58

wore a Star of David necklace and draped

31:00

a rasta prayer cloth over the microphone.

31:05

She delivered the song's final line, we

31:07

have confidence in the victory of good over

31:09

evil, But when she reached the word

31:12

evil, she revealed a different photograph, her

31:14

mother's picture of Pope John Paul the second

31:19

fight, the real enemy, O'Connor shouted.

31:21

She ripped the photo in half one time,

31:24

two times, three times before

31:26

throwing its pieces toward the camera. Watch

31:29

the moment on YouTube and you can hear

31:32

only the sound of tearing and a single male

31:34

voice, seemingly an audience member,

31:36

and meeting a shocked woe no

31:39

applause, O'Connor takes

31:41

out her ear plugs and blows out the candles.

31:45

She recalls walking backstage to close doors

31:48

cast crew. Her manager had disappeared.

31:51

Everyone had abandoned her, except her

31:53

personal assistant, who helped her pack up

31:56

and leave. News of O'Connor's

31:58

s and OW performance broke meat Elite throughout

32:01

Sunday and Monday. NBC reportedly received

32:03

more than four thousand calls from outraged

32:05

viewers. She was banned from

32:07

the show for life, says Ferguson.

32:10

I just don't know if people even knew what

32:12

they just sing at the time. They just

32:14

probably couldn't even comprehend what. Music

32:17

journalists and Powers has vivid memories

32:20

of watching the Saturday live performance in real

32:22

time that evening. She like

32:24

everyone else, was stunned, But

32:26

she could see the resolve on O'Connor's face.

32:29

But she looked like someone who was going into battle.

32:32

Never has said looked

32:34

as much like you know what I imagined

32:36

Joan of Arc looking like, you

32:39

know, just complete

32:42

absorption and her

32:45

intention her action

32:48

at the time people were like, what did what

32:51

she really meaning to do? What she did? But

32:54

I could see it in her eyes. She knew exactly

32:57

what she intended to do. Did she know with the ramification

33:00

were No, but she definitely

33:03

new uh what

33:05

she wanted to do the minute she started singing

33:07

that song. As an Irish American woman

33:10

who grew up Catholic and felt the strict, heavy

33:12

handed rule of the church powers

33:14

championed, O'Connor stand against its

33:16

transgressions and hypocrisy. Anyone

33:19

raised Catholic or in a Catholic

33:22

dominated culture knows

33:24

how what a stronghold that

33:27

ideology can have on a person. Uh

33:30

So for me, it was incredibly cathartic.

33:32

More repercussions came instantly, and

33:34

they were enormous. With one simple

33:37

act, O'Connor had detonated her

33:39

career, at least her career as a famous

33:41

pop artist. No, she never

33:43

really wanted that career, but she also

33:45

could never have predicted the severity of the fallout

33:48

after the notorious performance, says

33:50

Ferguson. Even a

33:52

star, which she was, was like one of the biggest

33:55

musicians in the world, literally

33:58

probably the top three. Being a lottest in the world.

34:01

She wasn't untouchable, and she suffered

34:03

the consequences for, you know, for using

34:06

her platform and speaking out. You know, there

34:08

were steam rulers rolling over

34:10

her records in Times Square, there

34:12

were death threats to her, managements to

34:15

her and her family, lots

34:18

of videos refused by music. You

34:20

know, the tabloid press had a failed

34:22

Day before the SNL incident,

34:25

O'Connor had been invited to perform at a Bob

34:27

Dylan tribute concert at New York's Madison

34:29

Square Garden. Given that he was

34:31

one of her idols and biggest influences,

34:33

she was over the moon. This was

34:36

an advantage of being famous. She could fully support

34:38

the chance of a lifetime. Just

34:40

a couple of weeks had passed and she torn up the

34:42

photo of the Pope. It was fresh

34:44

in the audience's minds as she took

34:46

to the stage to perform a cover of Dylan's I

34:49

Believe In You. The sound that

34:51

ensued was horrifying and excruciating,

34:54

cacophony of booze and cheers, all

34:57

encompassing to the point that O'Connor could

34:59

not sing. She describes

35:01

it in Rememberings as quote unquote, a

35:04

sonic riot is that the sky is

35:06

ripping apart. She stood

35:09

mortified and paralyzed, her

35:11

dreams shattering before her eyes. She

35:13

began to pace, afraid of being drowned out,

35:16

but also of doing nothing and letting

35:18

her hackers win. She tells her band

35:20

to stop stop playing the music. She

35:22

takes her headphones eyes by imagine people

35:25

are telling they're asking him through She's getting

35:27

a lot of people in her ear, what

35:29

are you doing? And she ripped them out of her

35:32

ears, and she just starts to sing Bob

35:34

Marley's War again, but

35:36

a much more furious version at

35:39

this audience of twenty

35:41

thighs and people the Madison Square gardens

35:43

and just screams the words

35:46

over the crowd. That's

35:48

really it's a harrowing wash. And then

35:50

it's such a harrowing was because she's just horrified

35:54

by the response she gets. And

35:57

you know, this is after two weeks of

35:59

background that she's had all

36:02

over the world. Country singer Chris

36:04

christoffers and joined her on stage, leaning

36:07

in and telling her, don't let the bastards

36:09

get you down. They exited, he

36:12

hugged her. O'Connor recalls

36:14

nearly throwing up on him. Later,

36:16

she went to Dylan's manager to ask him

36:18

in the singer to help her expose the child abuse

36:21

at the hands of the Irish Church. He

36:23

refused. After the Medicine

36:25

Square Garden show, her father suggested

36:28

that she abandoned music and go back to school. Some

36:34

have called O'Connor's s n L set an active

36:36

performance art. She didn't

36:38

explain herself, and afterwards

36:41

her many critics didn't want an explanation. They

36:44

didn't understand and didn't care to. She

36:47

was on her own, a solitary crusader.

36:50

Fame was lonely. Activism was

36:52

even lonelier, says and powers.

36:55

That's an interesting thing about her fame in general,

36:58

UM, because when you think of the apex

37:00

of her success, that video for nothing

37:02

compares to you. It's just her.

37:06

You know, you never see a band, you don't

37:08

see her collaborators. It's just her.

37:11

And when you think of that moment on Saturday

37:13

Live Again, it's just even though there was a

37:15

band, it's just her. You only think about her.

37:17

And then when you think of her getting booed off the stage

37:20

at the Dylan thing again, she is always

37:22

like alone and

37:25

and that speaks so profoundly to

37:27

the um. The

37:30

predicament of women in music

37:32

and in rock, especially at that time.

37:35

O'Connor would continue to release albums

37:37

Beautiful Ones, her follow up

37:39

to Am I Not Your Girl? Universal

37:42

Mother offered some of her most personal

37:45

work Yet It's gorgeous and

37:47

brutal. She dabbled in traditional

37:49

Irish folk, reggae, rock,

37:52

spiritual music, and even pomp, but

37:54

a provocative SNL performance cast

37:57

a long shadow over her career and

37:59

did a number on her mental health. As

38:02

she said in a two thousand twenty one interview

38:04

with Entertainment Weekly, quote the

38:06

ten years after that Saturday Night Live performance,

38:09

the way that I was dealt with was shocking.

38:12

It was the fashion to treat me bad, whether

38:14

you were in my bed, at a board meeting, a

38:16

TV show, a gig, or a party.

38:19

Everybody treated me like I was a crazy bitch

38:21

because I ripped up the Pope's picture. We

38:24

know I'm a crazy bitch, but that's not why, says

38:27

Ferguson, I think not having the number

38:29

ones and being a world famous,

38:32

iconic pop store, she could live with that, but I think,

38:34

you know, the way she was treated was disgraceful.

38:37

She says. You know, in those days, just the press aren't

38:39

writing about you, and people

38:41

aren't buying your records. You know you've

38:44

essentially vanished. That wouldn't

38:46

happen today because well, I

38:48

don't think it could happen today because of social media.

38:51

For many, O'Connor became invisible for

38:53

others, a punchline for others,

38:56

the enemy. But if she states in

38:58

her memoir and in fergus Since documentary, nothing

39:01

compares. She has no regrets about

39:03

the SNL scandal. If anything,

39:05

it may have saved her from an even darker fate. As

39:09

O'Connor writes and rememberings quote,

39:11

A lot of people say or think that tearing up the Pope's

39:13

photo derailed my career. That's

39:15

not how I feel about it. I feel that

39:17

having a number one record derailed my career. Am

39:20

I tearing the photo put me back on the right

39:22

track After us and L I

39:24

could just be me, do what I love. And

39:27

what she loves more than anything is what she's

39:29

loved from the beginning. One of the few

39:31

gifts her mother gave her the music.

39:35

I've done only one holy thing in my

39:37

life, she writes, and that was saying

39:54

Catherine Ferguson fell in love with O'Connor

39:56

in her early teens, she was

39:58

demoralized watching the SNL backlash,

40:01

and her fondness for the singers music only

40:03

grew deeper as she entered adulthood. She

40:06

had the opportunity to collaborate with O'Connor

40:08

on the video for her two thousand thirteen

40:10

single Fourth and Vine and The Two Captain

40:13

Touch. In two thousand

40:15

eighteen, Ferguson found herself

40:17

feeling like the world had been turned quote unquote

40:20

upside down. She had

40:22

witnessed the Me Too movement and the women's

40:24

marches following the election of Donald Trump as

40:27

US president. Government

40:29

investigations and cases in Ireland

40:31

had revealed that hundreds of priests had

40:34

abused thousands of children for decades,

40:36

with much of the abuse being covered up. Investigations

40:40

and allegations in America over the past

40:42

decade and a half had also revealed a

40:44

pattern of sexual abuse and cover ups, and

40:46

a large number of dioceses across

40:48

the country. Child abuse

40:51

and the Catholic Church had become a global

40:53

crisis. In August of

40:55

two eighteen, and the first

40:57

papal visit to Ireland and thirty nine

41:00

years Pope Francis publicly

41:02

acknowledged the abuse of young people by clergy

41:04

members and the harmon had caused to them

41:07

in the Roman Catholic Church, even

41:09

meeting with eight victims of abuse. Ireland

41:12

also held a referendum to legalize

41:14

abortion rights. Ferguson

41:17

kept thinking of O'Connor. It just felt

41:19

really absurd to me that she wasn't

41:21

mentioned in these conversations and at

41:23

that time, you know, especially when surely

41:25

she must have inspired so many of the activists

41:28

in these movements. It just felt like

41:30

quite an urgent story I wanted to tell, and

41:33

particularly through a contemporary lens. Ferguson

41:35

decided her next project would be the documentary

41:38

Nothing Compares, which would celebrate

41:40

O'Connor's work and lasting impact. The

41:43

film premiered on Showtime and was released

41:45

in theaters in the UK and Ireland this past

41:47

fall. It was met with rave reviews

41:50

and won two British Independent Film Awards

41:52

in December, including Best Feature

41:54

Documentary and Best Debut Director.

41:57

Audience reactions to have been over

42:00

wellmingly positive. Ferguson recalls

42:02

one particular screening in Ireland. I was

42:04

sat in an audience with five people

42:06

and all ages from twelve up

42:08

to and quite

42:11

a quiet audience throughout the film, completely

42:14

rampack. And when

42:16

we get to that moment, the Saturday Night

42:18

Live moment and she ripped up the Pope,

42:21

the entire audience just started

42:23

to cheer and whoop and

42:26

punch the air and shouts,

42:28

and it just was amazing.

42:32

It was just amazing, actually

42:35

see how far things come in

42:37

the place where this was all from. Just to

42:39

see the reaction of the crowd was very

42:43

much, very

42:45

much one day. O'Connor

42:47

had been telling the truth, desperately trying

42:49

to expose it, but many refused

42:51

to listen. Everybody's just thinking, oh

42:54

my god, how did we did

42:57

we trader the way that we

42:59

did, and however they let this happen,

43:01

you know, and everything that she was saying

43:03

and saying it was that's what needed

43:06

to be heard. There was nobody

43:08

really anywhere talking about it. It was well to come

43:11

by ten years later. It

43:13

was she was so ahead of her time, or rather

43:16

the rest of us were too late. Like

43:18

many women navigating the choppy waters

43:20

of the music industry, Katie

43:23

Lange, Sophie Bie Hawkins, Torre Amos, Madonna,

43:26

O'Connor fought for her voice to be heard

43:29

and Like many of those women, she was met

43:31

with opposition and disdain. While

43:34

so many artists, especially women, would

43:37

make compromises were backed down to

43:39

preserve their careers, O'Connor

43:41

sacrificed massive success, wealth,

43:44

awards, celebrity for what she

43:46

believed in. She was determined to fight

43:48

against the ugliness, cruelty, and

43:51

injustice in the world, says music

43:53

journalists and powers set O'Connor

43:55

has always been a political artist. She has always

43:58

written topical songs, address

44:01

racism, very profoundly

44:04

confronted religious

44:06

hierarchies. She has stood

44:09

as uh a

44:11

person who presents herself

44:14

just as she wants to. And it's

44:16

not always something that that people

44:19

appreciate, casual fans

44:22

especially, oh that crazy

44:24

se But you know what, it's the

44:26

challenge to the norms

44:29

that's so important. It's the

44:31

openness and honesty about that in

44:33

her music, which remains so beautiful

44:36

and so deep, like so

44:38

much deeper than of

44:41

what else is out there, that keeps

44:43

me coming back to her. Many

44:47

considered she O'Connor to be at best

44:49

a hopeless attention seeker and at

44:52

worst a threat. Now

44:55

after thousands of incidents of child abuse in

44:57

the Catholic Church have come to light after

44:59

the count this racial reckonings in recent

45:01

years, after the Grammys have been

45:03

forced to address allegations of gender

45:06

and racial bias. Many

45:08

consider her a prophet and a hero.

45:10

And what was fascinating to hear is that for the first

45:12

time in the last decade, she's now

45:15

being written in with the history books in

45:17

Ireland. But I think she's got quite

45:19

a time ahead of her in

45:21

the next few years. I think it's gonna be a

45:24

younger demographic. We're really going to

45:26

look to her and what she did and

45:29

as inspiration. Ferguson points to a vibrant

45:31

mural in Dublin's Temple Our neighborhood has

45:34

further evidence of O'Connor's reappraisal

45:36

and legacy. It depicts a singer

45:38

wearing a shawl over her head, appearing saintly

45:41

in solemn. She has that same

45:43

look of determination in her eyes that she

45:45

had when she ripped up that photo of the Pope on Saturday

45:47

Night Live all those years ago. The

45:50

mural reads sad you

45:52

were right all along, we were

45:54

wrong, so sorry, And

45:57

we're living in a moment now where

45:59

I think where we as

46:01

a society, as a culture have opened

46:04

ourselves up to hearing some some difficult

46:06

truths, you know, whether it's how

46:09

we speak to each other on social media, or

46:11

what books we're reading now, or what what movies

46:14

we want to see. Um, that's

46:17

there and I want to hear more of that in

46:19

popular music too, and I think we are

46:21

hearing it. But Shend has given us

46:23

a legacy and a guide to how

46:25

to do that. Don't only think of her

46:28

as the that crazy woman

46:30

who did some crazy things. Recognize

46:33

the truth she offers us. Where

47:11

Were You in ninety two was a production of I Heart

47:14

Radio. The executive producers

47:16

are Noel Brown and Jordan run Tug. The

47:18

show was researched, written and hosted

47:20

by me Jason Lafier, with editing

47:23

and sound design by Michael Alder June.

47:26

If you like what you heard, please subscribe and

47:28

leave us a review. For more podcasts

47:30

from my Heart Radio, check out the I Heart Radio

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app, Apple podcast, or wherever you

47:34

listen to your favorite shows.