A new documentary is shedding light onSinéad O’Connor’s rise to fame, and offering new insight into her infamous appearance onSaturday Night Livein 1992.
The Irish singer, 55, reflects on the incident in a new trailer for the documentaryNothing Compares, and says she was moved to rip up a photo of Pope John Paul II on camera after learning about the ways in which the church was covering up the sexual abuse of children.
“I had come across an article about families who had been trying to lodge complaints against the church for sexual abuse and were being silenced,” she says in the trailer. “Basically everything I had been raised to believe was a lie.”
The stunt sparked serious backlash toward O’Connor, though she has since said she has no regrets (“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,” she wrote in her 2021 bookRememberings. “I feel that having a number-one record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track”).
Sinéad O’Connor.Andrew Chin/Getty
The trailer features insight from an unidentified woman who says she was the one to have booked O’Connor onSNL.
“She blows the candle out, she goes off stage,” the woman recalls. “I had gone into the dressing room after her and I said, ‘You know, I can’t get you out of this.’ And she said, ‘You know what? I don’t want you to.'”
The “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer weighs in, too, and says she feels it’s her duty as an artist to spark dialogue on tough subjects — and despite the backlash she faced from the performance, still believes that.
“I wasn’t thinking to myself, I must be strong. I didn’t know I was strong,” she says in the trailer. “An artist’s job is sometimes to create the difficult conversations that need to be had. That’s what art is for.”
The film focuses on the singer’s life from 1987 to 1993, and includes music videos, concert performances, previously unseen footage and a new interview with O’Connor in which she reflects on her past.
source: people.com
