Almost 30 years have passed since Sinéad O’Connor staged one of the most sensational ambushes in rock history, switching her planned promotional appearance on Saturday Night Live at late notice for an incendiary version of Bob Marley’s War, which ended with her ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II in protest at child sexual abuse cover-ups in the Catholic church. The stunt was widely condemned, hastening the volatile young Irish singer-songwriter’s commercial decline, but it was also a brilliant piece of punk performance art. Crucially, O’Connor was on the right side of history, shining a light on a trickle of squalid crimes that has since swelled into a flood.
In the British-Irish documentary Nothing Compares, which world premieres in Sundance this week, Belfast-born director Kathryn Ferguson re-examines O’Connor’s legacy through a 21st century feminist lens, with special emphasis on the steep price of being an outspoken woman in a conservative Catholic country. Officially endorsed by O’Connor, whose audio commentary serves as a loose narrative thread, Ferguson’s feature debut is unashamedly partisan but not a toothless promotional exercise. Now 55, the singer comes over as a mix of icon and iconoclast, wounded child and fallen star, but still capable of self-effacing humour and hard-won wisdom. “There was no therapy when I was growing up,” she recalls. “At that time Irish women weren’t allowed to be angry.”
Chronicling O’Connor’s traumatic childhood and early musical career using a collage of familiar footage, home video snippets, vintage snapshots and impressionistic reconstructions, Nothing Compares is a slickly edited and polished package. Ferguson purposely avoids the standard rockumentary format of talking-head interviewees, but she does include scattered quotes from friends and collaborators including Riot Grrrl pioneer Kathleen Hannah, film-maker John Maybury, hip-hop heavyweight Chuck D and record producer John Reynolds, O’Connor’s first husband. The singer’s critics also appear fleetingly in archive clips: Frank Sinatra, Camille Paglia, even Madonna. Joe Pesci threatening an elfin young woman with a “smack” on Saturday Night Live has certainly not aged well.
Ferguson’s admirable thesis is to avoid framing O’Connor in simplistic “tragic heroine” terms, instead casting her more as a prophetic campaigner who bravely used her fame to highlight inflammatory issues like abortion rights, gay marriage equality, police brutality and clerical child abuse. Alas, tragedy seems unavoidably baked into the singer’s story, particularly given the death of her teenage son Shane just weeks ago. But her underrated role as an outspoken agitator is certainly worthy of reappraisal decades later, even if Ferguson overstates her case by appearing to imply O’Connor single-handedly inspired Pussy Riot, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish and the entire Me Too movement. She’s not the Messiah, she’s a very naughty girl.
One puzzling element of Nothing Compares is the section dealing with the blockbuster hit that gave the film its name, Nothing Compares 2U. Although there are some sweet behind-the-scenes off-cuts from Maybury’s famous tear-jerking video, the Prince-penned smash hit does not even feature on the soundtrack. Only with the final credits do we learn the dispiriting explanation: Prince’s estate denied the film-makers permission to use the song. Which seems oddly mean-spirited, but perhaps understandable given O’Connor’s later revelations about her strange meetings with the late funk-pop superstar, including allegations that he stalked her.
Nothing Compares is an engaging pop-culture history lesson, both uplifting celebration of O’Connor’s prickly legacy and cautionary tale about how emotionally damaged people are drawn to the scorching flame of tabloid-headline fame. Perhaps inevitably, Ferguson mostly concentrates on the singer’s explosive commercial breakthrough period, from 1987 to 1993, when her first three albums scored more than 10 million sales between them before scandal and self-sabotage hobbled her career.
This tight first-act focus makes for a neat rise-and-fall narrative but avoids some potentially more fascinating post-fame chapters, including the singer’s multiple marriages, more musically adventurous later albums, struggles with mental health in the age of confessional social media, and conversion to Islam in 2018. A documentary about O’Connor’s later years would lack the greatest hits but might yield richer insights into the destructive power of being famous, female and Irish after you have outlived your own legend. While we await that film, Nothing Compares is an absorbing catch-up primer for old and new fans alike, with plenty for critics and agnostics to chew over too, and even more for students of feminist pop history. “They tried to bury me,” O’Connor recalls with gleeful relish, “they didn’t realise I was a seed.”
Director: Kathryn Ferguson
Producers: Eleanor Emptage, Michael Mallie
Editor: Mick Mahon
Music: Irene Buckley, Linda Buckley
Production companies: Tara Films (UK), Ard Mhacha Productions (Ireland)
World sales: Submarine Entertainment
In English
97 minutes