Northern Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor’s life and career has a new documentary directed by Irish director Kathryn Ferguson called ‘Nothing Compares’, a reference of the signer’s world number one single ‘Nothing Compares to U’. The film is set to make its world premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival which runs between January 20 to 30, 2022. This is also Kathryn’s debut feature film documentary.
For those who are not familiar with Sinéad O’Connor, she released her debut album, ‘The Lion and the Cobra’, in 1987 which reached international charts and achieved gold record status. This led to her first Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. She quickly rose to prominence with her world number one single ‘Nothing Compares to U’, which was a song written and composed by Prince. The meaning behind the songs lyrics focuses on feelings coming from an abandoned lover, which carried a heavy sympathetic heart, which established her raw emotions that carried the song.
Sinéad was known to have had a difficult childhood growing up, as she opened up about her traumatic emotional and physical abuse she received from her parents. During her rise in prominence in the 1990s, she drastically changed her appearance to better reflect her attitude and image of who she wants to be and not what someone expects her to be. Some notable trademarks included her shaved head, angry attitude, eccentric clothing choices, and her feminist views, which made her stand out as a singer, which was quite ahead of her time in the 90s given how much the world has progressively over the years.
Her appearance and image were one thing, but Sinéad’s raw vocals is what ultimately propelled her musical career, as well as her outspoken mindset. The documentary focuses on Sinéad’s life growing up with interviews shared by the Northern Irish singer herself to give viewers an overview of how she became who she is as a person. Music videos, rehearsals, news interviews, and concert performances are sprinkled throughout the documentary with many archived footages are shown for the first time.
The singer’s interview is a reflection of her present views on all the Irish history, activism, religion, gender identity, and political opinions she had in her younger days. Her outspoken demeanor shows no filter behind many of these topics she felt strongly about expressing. Part of the reason she got into music was that she needed an outlet to scream.
With the spotlight and rise in popularity in the 1990s, she was given multiple television platforms to perform and do interviews to dive deeper into the singers’ opinions, which has led to many controversial actions that would evolve along with her image.
In “Nothing Compares” director Kathryn Ferguson felt her incredible musical career and story deserved a spotlight of the worldwide impact Sinéad has contributed not only to the musical industry, but to the community activism as well. Sinéad was known to be a non-conformist which makes her very polarizing to audiences of both ends. Whether they loved or hated her, she got everyone’s attention.
One of the biggest controversial actions that was shown on live television was her appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1992. She took the opportunity to break away from the planned show to tear up a picture of Pope John Paul II on live television as a protest to the Catholic Church sexual abuse cases, which has ultimately been revealed to be true a decade later.
In the following weeks, she made an appearance at a Bob Dylan tribute concert at Madison Square Garden, which by then she was heavily booed onstage as the world became aware of her actions on Saturday Night Live, but stood tall to shout out her rendition of the Bob Marley song ‘War’, until following up with her references to child abuse as previously aired on television. The thought of seeing footage of her being booed offstage was a sight to see given the amount of strength Sinéad mustered to stay on stage and still try to perform in a tough crowd.
It is without a doubt that Sinéad’s pressures of the media never fully knocked her spirit down. She saw musical success with 7 critically acclaimed albums despite her controversial character. It’s for reasons like this that makes Director Kathryn Ferguson inspired to cover the life of Sinéad O’Connor, and showcase the everlasting impact on her legacy.