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[tense music]
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[tense music]
[audience applauding]
[announcer] All right. I gotta tell you,
I'm real proud to introduce this next artist
whose name's become synonymous
with courage and integrity.
Ladies and gentlemen, Sinéad O'Connor.
[audience boos and cheers]
Thank you.
-[videotape squeals] -[boos and cheers continue]
[mysterious music]
[Sinéad] I didn't mean to be strong.
I wasn't thinking to myself, I must be strong.
I didn't know I was strong.
I did suffer through a lot because everybody felt
it was okay to kick the shit out of me.
I regret that I was so sad because of it.
I regret that I spent so many years
very lonely and isolated, really.
Ran down And the lady said it
Got torn down And the priest just said it
Got burned down, ooh
They give me five years Ooh, five years
It's my turn
Oh, oh, Jerusalem
[roars]
There was no therapy when I was growing up.
So the reason I got into music group was therapy,
which is why it was such a shock for me
to become a pop star, it's not what I wanted.
I just wanted to scream.
Everybody in music has a story in terms of their upbringing
or where they came from or what they went through.
There's something they need to get off their chest,
and perhaps we all need a bit of love and affection
that we didn't get anywhere else
but we get by making music.
Come on over there and sit down.
They're all, they're all looking at you, Sinéad,
out there in television land.
They're saying "Mother of God,
what did she do with her head?
Isn't that a disgrace?
I hope my daughter wouldn't turn out like that."
Isn't that what you're saying? Yes, you are.
Already, you are. How are you then?
-I'm fine, thank you. How are you? -Well done so far.
Now from Glenageary, you were a difficult child,
Sinéad O'Connor, you were difficult growing up.
You went through a lot of schools, did you not?
I think quite a few, at the expense of my father.
How many schools did you go through and why?
Um... I think, I don't know how many, Dad? About five.
Five or six.
[host] How many schools did she go through?
-I'd say no more than five or six. -[Host] Five or six.
That's a bit exaggerated actually.
That's in one year, of course.
And for me
Some scarlet ribbons
Scarlet ribbons
For my hair...
[Sinéad] My very first musical memory
is my father singing to me, "Scarlet Ribbons".
I just remember being blown away.
Like I remember like yesterday I was lying on my pillow
and my dad would sing the song to me
and I was like, "Oh, my God."
The angels came in the window.
...all the streets were dark
When I'm 11, my brother comes home with " Slow Train Coming,"
which completely changes my life
and makes me want to be a musician,
and makes me want to be an artist,
and makes me know what kind of artist I want to be
because of the song "Gotta Serve Somebody."
And I was obsessed with Bob Dylan from then on.
My mother had this fantastic record collection
which she would spread out on the dining room table
every morning like a deck of cards.
Her musical tastes ranged from John Lennon
right through awful kind of HMS Pinafore, Light Opera,
right through to, like, Porgy and Bess.
And also in those days, musicals were huge.
That was all that was ever on telly,
was these just high class musicals, you know.
My mother always had the soundtracks to them.
My father was into cello,
which I used to find just too sad, given our circumstances.
My parents separated when I was quite young,
and my mother was a very violent woman,
not a healthy woman mentally at all.
And she was physically
and verbally and psychologically,
spiritually and emotionally abusive.
[tense music]
My mother was a beast,
and I was able to soothe her with my voice,
I was able to use my voice to make the devil fall asleep.
My father is the type of man that didn't want
anyone talking about what happened,
and that's what was wrong with me.
It wasn't talked about, even in the family.
The cause of my own abuse was the church's effect
on this country, which had produced my mother.
I spent my entire childhood being beaten up
because of the social conditions
under which my mother grew up
and under which her mother grew up
and under which her mother and her mother grew up.
I would compare Ireland to an abused child.
I'd a terrible
Broken heart
I'd a terrible
Broken heart...
[Sinéad] I began studying scriptures
when I was very small,
because I wanted to see what was in this book
that they were using to oppress my people.
Why were my grandparents so miserable
that they couldn't have a kiss
without feeling like they were going to burn in hell?
[Father Brian] The church influenced everything.
If it was a sin, then it was against the law of the state.
So divorce, contraception,
and anything that didn't agree entirely
with a very narrow view of the Catholic church,
it was simply not allowed.
It affected every level of society.
It was a mortal sin, for example,
to go to a dance in some diocese,
that didn't end at midnight.
It was a mortal sin to eat meat on a Friday.
You could go to hell for eating a sausage on a Friday.
Everything was gathered around
the power of the church over its people.
[Sinéad] I had loved the Catholic church,
and I had grown up so religious,
like stupidly religious.
I made my holy communion and I took it seriously.
That was a contract with the holy spirit I made,
and I believed it all, and I was trying to live it.
[tense music]
I went into care when I was 14,
into care home for want of a better description.
I was a bit messed up.
And it wasn't acknowledged
what had happened to me in my mother's house.
I was unmanageable, really, so they didn't want me at home.
The place was called "An Grianan," which means "The Sunrise."
[Jeannette] An Grianan was a residential training centre
run by a religious order, by sisters.
The girls came from mixed backgrounds.
Some had come from other children's homes,
have been in care all their lives.
Others had come from insecure family settings
and they needed somewhere where there was structure
and safety for a few years.
[Sinéad] They got a guitar teacher in
who was the loveliest woman alive,
who I still know and I still talk to now and then.
She's bloody lovely.
If not for her, I wouldn't have made it through that place.
[Jeannette] The first night, I was there
doing music with the girls,
I asked her, would she like to sing a song for us.
And I won't forget it as long as I live,
because we were just stunned.
We needed to encourage her in this wonderful talent.
Ooh, I'm freezing!
[Jeannette] When we decided to get married,
I asked Sinéad then to do the solo.
And she sang "Evergreen," which was my favourite song.
One love
Ageless and ever
Evergreen
[Jeannette] The emotion of the song
almost brought people to tears.
It was stunning. It was absolutely stunning.
[Sinéad] In the congregation was her brother, Paul Byrne,
and then he was forming this band called In Tua Nua.
[Paul] We were searching for a singer.
So when I heard this voice, it stopped me in my tracks.
After chatting with Sinéad on the steps of the church,
I'd arranged to go up and see her at An Grianan.
We gave her a tape and she phoned the next day.
She had the lyrics and the melody done.
So we went back up the next night and she sang it to us,
and it was spectacular.
We had to book a couple of hours on a Wednesday afternoon
because Sinéad got a half day from school on a Wednesday.
Picked her up, did two hours of vocals with her,
and then had her back before the nuns noticed she was missing. [laughs]
[Sinéad] So the first song that I wrote,
which became their first single, was called "Take My Hand."
It was a result of the punishment
the nun meted out to me one day,
the nun, she could be terribly kind,
but she could also be terribly cruel as well.
Where I was, was attached to a Magdalene Laundry.
She sent me to sleep in the hospice part of the laundry
as punishment a couple of times,
to remind me that if I didn't behave myself,
I was going to end up like these women.
When I went up, there was no staff there with the ladies.
There was never any nuns or nurses.
And the poor ancient ladies who were the Magdalene girls
were lying in their beds calling out for nurses all night
that never came, it was awful.
I didn't know what to do, and obviously, I was terrified.
Take my hand
[tense music]
[Jeannette] These women,
we're now talking about the early '80s,
some of them have been there from the 1920s.
These women, who through no fault of their own,
had just been put in by the courts and by men.
Very often the cases were they had been raped
by maybe the local priest, the doctor, the father,
or some pillar of society.
They had to pay the price
and were locked away for their whole lives.
[Sinéad] The whole of Ireland talks about these ladies,
but I met them, I met them at their most vulnerable.
These people convinced my father that they could help me
with whatever behavioural issues I had
as a result of what had happened to me growing up.
But they didn't, they just shut the door in his face
when he dropped me there, they took his money.
The problems were compounded.
We all were walking around thinking we were terrible people
that didn't deserve to live.
My father, I'm sure the world would acknowledge,
deserves a refund.
Young woman With a drink in her hand
She liked to listen To rock and roll
She moves with the music
'Cause it never gets old
[Clodagh] Sinéad and I met when we were
both around 18 years old.
We were very close for a number of years
until life kind of took us in different directions.
She really wanted to be doing her music.
I think she really knew what she wanted to do,
but I don't quite know if she knew
what path it would take her on.
[Sinéad] I put an ad in Hot Press magazine
that I was a singer and I wanted to find a band to join.
And I remember going into these suburban houses,
doing auditions for these various different bands.
Eventually I ended up meeting this dude called Colm Farrelly
who was putting together this band
Ton Ton Macoute, so I became the singer in that band.
I had a job at the Bad Ass Cafe on Crown Alley,
and we used to rehearse right across the road from it.
We did nothing but rehearse live,
which is why I love live performing.
And every rehearsal was like a gig.
Nigel Grainge and Chris Hill came over to Dublin
to see us, Ton Ton Macoute.
[tense music]
About six months later, my mother unfortunately died,
very selfishly.
Months after that, I get a phone call from Chris and Nigel.
He said, "Well, why don't you come to London
and do some demos?"
For five long years
I thought you were my man
But I found out
I'm just a link In your chain
You got me Where you want me
I ain't nothin' But your fool
You treated me mean
Oh, you treated me cruel
[Mike] I worked with Sinéad from her arrival in London
through to the development of and the recording
of her first album, "Lion and the Cobra."
Our job as a sort of group of musicians from the outset
was to help her to find her feet.
She'd already found her voice,
but she wanted to find the sort of musical clothing
that she wanted to wrap around that amazing voice.
[man] What's it called?
Um, we haven't got a name for it yet.
[John] So we went into a rehearsal studio in Putney
and started to routine the songs
and get used to the dynamics and arrangements.
It makes a big difference if you can go in
and rehearse for a long time.
Nigel Grange was the head of Ensign at the time.
He was quite used to putting people into a position
of being able to work for long periods.
So he's a kind of nurturer.
I'm just as guilty as you
I'm just as ashamed as you
[John] The first time I heard Sinéad's voice,
it's just unbelievable.
It was jumping octaves
and going from whisper to scream in half a second.
I mean, it was just amazing,
a young kid from Dublin, you know.
And
I'm just as guilty as you
[sombre music]
[Sinéad] You often hear artists saying
that they're channelling something.
I think actually you're channelling yourself.
Your subconscious is talking to you.
I just had these songs inside me
that had to come out.
[John] They were very, very personal
and they were sort of cathartic, really.
There were kind of songs to help her, to heal her.
[Mike] In some respects, I think the band that we were,
the band of musicians who were around her,
were something of a family for her.
We were safe.
Fachtna O'Ceallaigh had been Boomtown Rats' manager
and had run U2's label.
He came over to London and became Sinéad's manager.
[reggae music]
[Sinéad] I had a great time hanging out with Fachtna,
and Fachtna used to bring me to Portobello Road on Saturdays,
where he had his friend Lepkey, and Leroy.
He used to have the Dread Broadcasting Company
and they had the open mics.
[Sinéad] Bearing in mind I'm Irish
and I've come from the theocracy,
and these guys were coming along
roaring about the Pope is the devil,
and fucking burn the Vatican and all this stuff,
so that was like, "Oh, my God, I'm home."
I couldn't believe it.
I fell in love with Rasta at that point.
[upbeat music]
Love to everyone. You're back in tune to The Rankin' Miss P,
on DBC, the Dread Broadcasting Corporation,
103.8 every Friday.
We're electric, y'all.
[upbeat drum music]
[John] She was really shy
and she was living down in east London with her auntie.
She didn't know anyone, and so we just hung out.
We did a lot of driving around London, you know,
with the stereo on, just having a great time actually,
just being kids, to be honest.
[Mike] Ensign wanted Sinéad to be a musical commodity.
[Sinéad] They wanted me to grow the hair long
and wear short skirts and high heels,
makeup and the whole works,
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.
[Mike] That led to her deciding to shave off all her hair.
[mysterious music]
[Clodagh] At the time, I was her closest female friend.
I think... I went to see some friends,
and when I got back to her flat,
she wouldn't open the door.
She just said, "I can't, I can't.
You got to look through the letter box,
I've done something and you're going to kill me."
I looked through the letterbox and there she was
with a completely shaved head.
[dramatic music]
[John] The label were trying to brand Sinéad
with those really obvious generic female labels.
Obviously she was having absolutely none of it.
You just looked at somebody and went,
"We know now what we're dealing with."
It's a powerful statement for a woman because she says,
"Don't fuck with me."
[Sinéad] Me and John were friends for a year
before, you know, we ever went out with each other.
We were both going out with different people and everything.
And then we just kind of drifted into it,
and then within a month I was pregnant.
The record companies in those days had their own doctors
that they sent you to.
The doctor announces that the record company have spent
a hundred thousand pounds making your record,
you owe it to them not to have this baby.
[Mike] Ensign tried to dissuade her
from carrying on the pregnancy and giving birth to Jake,
and thankfully, she obviously stood her ground,
but they did put pressure on her to terminate the pregnancy.
[Sinéad] That was the final straw for me.
I was sick of the fuckin' record anyway.
I hated the fuckin' record.
[Mike] There was a big fallout.
Fachtna O'Ceallaigh was working very hard
to persuade the label to just give her scope,
to just change tack.
Basically they said, "Have a go."
[Sinéad] In my part, it was a response to them
telling me I owe it to them to not have my baby.
And I was like, "well, it ain't worth it
for a shit fuckin' record."
I just knew that I didn't want any man telling me
who I could be or what I could be or what to sound like.
I came from a patriarchal country
where I'm being told everything I can and can't do
because I'm a girl.
I figured, well, if I didn't take it from the system
and I didn't take it from my daddy,
I ain't taking it from anybody else.
Can I do two?
[humming]
[John] The whole of "The Lion and the Cobra"
was completely scrapped and we started again.
That was a really important turning point in that record.
The second version was fresher, younger, and spontaneous.
Put your hands on me
Put 'em on, put 'em on Put 'em on me
Hands, gimme love
Hands, gimme those
I want your
Gimme, yes
Gimme this
[Sinéad] When we got the first album cover,
I was frozen like a rabbit in the headlights
getting my picture taken.
Put on the album and got me to scream along with the album.
So that's why there's the picture of me
looks like I'm screaming,
which they wouldn't use in America
because it was too aggressive-looking
as far as they were concerned.
[Kate] I didn't realize that they'd have to do
a different one for America.
It was only when it came out and I thought,
"Yeah, of course they couldn't have
a picture of her screaming."
You know, that would scare too many people.
I had to photograph her for the cover
from the shoulders up
because the record company didn't want to see her pregnant.
Once we had got the pictures
that we knew the record company needed,
we just did what we wanted.
It was, you know, a joy to photograph
this little girl with her bald head and her big belly,
amazing looking.
[Peaches] I think her image screamed more than feminism,
beyond feminism at the time.
I think it was just like non-binary,
incredible intersectional feminist attitude.
Her fashion sense was like 35 years ahead of the time.
[Maybury] People found it problematic just because
they read the language of skinhead into the shaved head.
It suggested some kind of aggression,
but actually the beauty of her features,
the quality of her eyes,
it created a fantastic contradiction.
As a filmmaker, gave me a very graphic, powerful image
from the get-go.
[Sinéad] Anytime I worked with John Maybury,
it was amazing 'cos he came with
a whole gang of glorious queens.
The set makers, stylists, the makeup people, you know,
and they like genuinely adored me.
[audience cheering]
I felt so safe and looked after.
I felt like I had like a hundred daddies.
[relaxed music]
You do
Something to me
[Maybury] She recognized in us kind of a sense of
some kind of kindred spirit, but there was no judgement.
There was no critiquing in any kind of personal terms.
And she was free to be who she wanted to be within that
because everyone else was free to be who they wanted to be.
[Sinéad] I had never, until I went to London, seen gay people.
They were so inspiring and still are to me,
especially the ones that were dressing like women.
You couldn't do that in Ireland.
You'd have the shit kicked out of you, you know?
Let me live 'neath your spell
Do do that voodoo
That you do so well
For you do
Something to me
That nobody else
Can do
That nobody else
Can do
[crowd cheering]
Why I like performing and why I like singing loud
and stuff like that is because
I am quietly spoken and quite withdrawn...
and into myself, and in my, sort of, normal life,
so it's quite a release to climb on the stage and scream for an hour.
At the end of my day
Nothing would
Please me better
Than I find that you're there When I wake
Just like you Said it would be
Will you be my lover?
Will you be my mama?
I said Will you my my mama?
[Sinéad] There are a lot of songs that I've written
about my mother's death or in response to her death.
And " Troy," I think was the first one.
It's also the first song I've wrote
where I'm telling anybody about anything that's happened.
I'll remember it
Dublin in a rainstorm
And sitting In the long grass in summer
Keeping warm...
One of the very traumatic things
that happened to me growing up,
was that my mother had me living in the garden.
So once when I was eight-and-a-half,
I lived in the garden 24/7 for a week or two.
I'm talking in that song about that experience,
the whole thing of sitting in the long grass in summer
trying to keep warm.
So I'm out in the garden in the fucking dark
and when it's coming to dusk and I still hate dusk
to this day, I don't mind if it's day or night,
but dusk, I don't like.
And I'd be looking up at the only window
at the side of the house where she'd have a light on
and I'd be screaming, begging her to let me in.
And she wouldn't let me in, the light would go off,
the house go dark.
Every other song I'm writing is about somebody else
or from the point of view of somebody else.
"Troy" is the first song I've written about me.
It's not a song, it's a fucking testament.
And you should've Left the light on
You should've Left the light on
Then I wouldn't have tried You'd never have known
And I wouldn't have Pulled you tighter
No, I wouldn't have Pulled you close
I wouldn't have screamed
No, I can't let you go
If the door wasn't closed
No, I wouldn't have Pulled you to me
No, I wouldn't have kissed Your face
You wouldn't have Begged me to hold you
If we hadn't been there In the first place
Oh, but I know you Wanted me to be there
Oh, oh
Every look That you threw told me so
"Troy" is not safe.
I don't need to dig that up again.
It's like trauma therapy.
There would've been no point writing
and/or going around the world screaming "Troy"
into microphones, if there wasn't going to come a day,
one day that I didn't need to do that anymore.
Make no difference What you say
You're still a liar
[crowd cheering]
[John] Sinéad was pregnant all through the making
of "The Lion and the Cobra."
And I think in many ways, actually,
it was quite grounding to have a baby very young.
In some way, I think it probably kept us sane.
There's nothing more deep and real than a baby.
And there's nothing more fake and unimportant
than fame, really.
Dana Dane making her first appearance on Top of the Pops.
Here's another lady making her first appearance.
She's got an excellent new album out at the moment
called "The Lion and the Cobra",
and a single Mandinka at 22 in the charts.
This is Sinéad O'Connor.
[crowd cheering]
[Clodagh] I remember watching
Sinéad on Top of the Pops.
It's just seemed quite surreal to be honest,
because she was just my friend,
but she was this other person in other people's eyes.
I'm dancing the seven veils
Want you to pick up My scarf
See how The black moon fades
Soon I can give you My heart
[vocalizing]
I don't know no shame
I feel no pain
I can't see the flame
But I do know Mandinka
I do know Mandinka
I do
[John] When "Mandinka" was released,
it just jumps out of the radio, it was one of those songs.
Oh, oh, oh
I do, oh, oh, oh
I said I do
I swear I do...
[John Grant] You know, it was almost like she had always been there
once she came on the scene because you really
couldn't imagine your life without her at that point.
I do Mandinka...
[John Grant] I heard "Mandinka" at a club in Boulder, Colorado.
I just remember hearing the voice and it's nothing
other than something that stops you in your tracks.
Soon I can give You my heart...
[John Grant] I hear that voice and I feel comforted.
[crowd cheering]
[John Grant] And that first album, like,
the entire thing was just stunning.
Telling me he'd be home
Sailed the seas For a hundred years
Leaving me all alone
[Bill] "The Lion and the Cobra" was an amazing album
just because there was no filler on it.
So as a critic, you know, that was one of the first things
that drew me to it.
She also has a very singular voice and perspective
and very strong personality-wise.
To me, it was like the whole package.
I remember the day The young man came
He said, "Your Jackie's gone We got lost in the rain"
And I ran to the beach
And laid me down...
[Elaine] The thing about "The Lion and the Cobra" is,
you don't get that as a debut album every day.
Those things come like once in a lifetime.
Like the back of his hand
He'll be back sometime
Laughing at you...
[interviewer] And many times in your performances,
there's an intensity, almost a rage burning inside of you.
Where does that come from?
You're a small, demure, quiet sort of person.
I don't know.
Perhaps there's something twisted about me
that I haven't realized yet.
You've also said that non-traditional Irish musicians
seem to have to leave Ireland to make it.
If you're a woman in particular, and unless
you're very sort of timid and you want to make
nice Irish music, which I respect and everything,
life can be very difficult for you because people
can't actually handle a woman doing anything different.
When I leave Ireland, it's virtually unheard of
for a woman to be making her own living
and independent of men.
The Irish fucking constitution still contains the wording
that a woman's place is in the home.
So I was very lucky, from 1985 I was making my own living.
So many people in this country, women in particular,
had to say no when they wanted to say yes to themselves,
or be open about their anger.
At that time in Ireland, women weren't allowed to be angry.
And I think that might've been hard for some of them
because, you know, they had spent their whole life
saying no to themselves.
[women singing]
[man] Tonight, the Grammy awards are presenting
best rock vocal performance female.
Our first performer is 21 years old,
comes from Ireland and with her very first album,
"The Lion and the Cobra", she has served notice
that this is no ordinary talent.
Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Sinéad O'Connor.
[crowd cheering and clapping]
I'm dancing the seven veils
Want you to pick up My scarf
See how The black moon fades
Soon I can Give you my heart...
[John] I remember talking to her the next day and she said,
"Oh, my God, I went on stage and Stevie Wonder
was sitting in the front row."
And we were Stevie Wonder freaks.
So this was quite a leap, you know.
I don't know no shame
I feel no pain
I can't see the flame
But I do know Man-din-ka
[Sinéad] You know, you're there and you're looking
at all these people that you've watched on the television
and there's people like Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder
and I was just like... [gasps]
I do know Mandinka...
As I sang Mandinka, I had "Jake's baby girl"
on the back of my pants and I had Public Enemy logo painted
into the side of my head.
They decided they wouldn't go to the Grammy's
quite rightly because they were protesting.
[Chuck D] I protested the Grammy's in 1989
because they refused to recognize
rap music and hip-hop
as a legitimate musical category.
I thought it was like admirable
when she put the Public Enemy logo on her head.
With Sinéad O'Connor, you didn't get the sense
that she was just being pretentious,
that she was fake.
It was like, yeah,
she seriously has issues with this.
This is what's going to drive her artistry,
she's committed to that.
[crowd cheering and clapping]
[Elaine] It was a brilliant performance.
At that point, she was the darling of everyone.
[Sinéad] In one way, I loved it.
Obviously I was a very young woman
and you kind of fantasize about being famous.
In another way, I was frightened by it.
What maybe was difficult for me was the timing
of the success thing, it meant that I suddenly had
this identity and I didn't feel like it was really me.
To be honest, I also had very little self-esteem.
I couldn't understand why anyone liked my records.
Let me tell you how stupid I am. Um...
Okay.
We were sitting here doing this interview
and I had accepted the fact that your head was shaved
and didn't even think about it very much.
Well, that's good, that means we don't have to talk about it.
I know, but I see, everybody else in America
is looking at me saying,
"Why doesn't that idiot ask her why her head is shaved?"
So now I'm doing it.
I just cut my hair because I wanted to cut my hair, you know?
It's like, you know, I wear red knickers one day
because I want to wear red knickers, you know?
And then black another day.
We wouldn't call those knickers though, we'd call it--
-No. -[mellow acoustic guitar]
[John] We got married at the spiritualist centre in Sloane Square
and we'd been going to the spiritualist centre a lot
because obviously, Sinéad lost her mom,
I'd lost my dad and a sister.
And we were kind of trying to make
some kind of spiritual connections if we could.
It was a sort of a therapy for us in a way.
We had an amazing time there, so we got married there.
It was brilliant, it was a great day.
[music playing]
[Margo] In 1989, we filmed Hush-a-Bye Baby in Derry.
And it was in that film Hush-a-Bye Baby
that Sinéad made her acting debut.
She came over with John.
She was fairly newly married, I think.
She brought her little son, Jake,
who was just a toddler at that stage.
Of course, I only have eyes for Lecce Loves.
[both laugh]
[both scream and laugh]
Jesus Christ, Nigella.
We'll be barred and it'll be your fault.
Sloppy tit, going on about what's his face.
[Margo] We were trying to contribute to the debate
that was raging in Ireland at the time about abortion rights
and women's sexuality and how women were being treated.
And I think she had exactly the same feelings
like so many thousands of other women,
especially young women.
[Sinéad] It's about a 15-year-old school girl who gets pregnant
and about the obvious trauma and awfulness
that she goes through because of the fact
that she's pregnant and the fact that teenage pregnancy
is just the worst thing that could possibly happen
and people aren't very supportive about it in general.
And girls are made to feel as if they're sluts
and they're some sort of whore, you know,
for sleeping with somebody and things like that.
And because of things like the church
and the contraceptive laws and all that sort of thing
and the abortion laws.
[Margo] In the 80s and 90s and obviously the decades before that,
women were treated abominably in Ireland.
Women's lives were patrolled and investigated and surveilled
and tampered with every minute of their lives.
It was appalling.
[women chanting]
[Roísín] There was a sense of being in this
little backward place, you know,
where the light wasn't really shining brightly
and you couldn't get contraception,
you couldn't get condoms, so this was a big issue.
You didn't talk about sex and you certainly didn't talk about abortion.
[man] It's quite a similar story to your own, isn't it?
No.
[man] You had a baby when you were very young.
Last time you told me that there were certain attitudes in Ireland.
Yeah, except I had a baby when I was 20
and I was living in London and I had enough money
to get a nanny and I had a boyfriend who was living with me
and I wasn't in school.
And I was in a society that doesn't look down on pregnancy
as much as Ireland does.
So I don't think you can compare that to a 15-year-old girl
who has no money and no boyfriend and no support
from anybody, you know what I mean?
I think I was in very... nice circumstances
compared to those girls.
[rock music playing]
It seems years Since you held the baby...
[Sinéad] When you put your first album out,
you don't really expect anything to happen.
You don't have any expectations in you when you do that.
You're not aware of the whole world
of goodies and baddies
to be discovered.
And I remember I was quite taken aback by the whole thing,
amused at the idea of me sitting and doing press conferences
and things like that because it was just
like completely ludicrous.
You know, at the time that I had my baby
and put my album out I was 20,
which was extremely young.
And now I'm 23 which is still extremely young
and I'm still developing my "personality", in inverted commas.
And I'm still discovering things about myself
and about the world, you know?
So naturally, I'm not going to be the same
as I was when I was 20.
[John] When the album "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got",
was finished, we took it into Nigel Grange in Ensign
and he said, "This is like reading somebody's diaries.
I'm not putting it out."
Sinéad just said, "Well, that's it,"
you know, end of story.
Didn't compromise it in any way.
Well, I am far more proud of this album
than I was of the last one.
I feel that it's much more truly reflective
of me than the last one was.
And I've had much more involvement in it
than I had in the last one.
[Maybury] The way she grew in confidence
was something else.
She's a powerful, sexual being.
I think she was enjoying playing with the gender roles,
the kind of toughness of the leather jacket
and the toughness of denim or the Dr. Martin boots
or whatever it was that she was bringing at the time.
There's always still this beautiful woman,
beautiful girl inside of that.
So she was playing with gender herself.
She came to understand the nature of what we were doing
with pop videos and also, obviously, at a certain point
with a certain video, we came to understand just how much
the videos could change the perception of the music
and her as a musician.
[John] "The Nothing Compares To You" video,
she came back with all the rushes on a VHS
and we've stuck it into the video machine, I was watching it.
And that's when I thought, "Wow, this is really,
really special."
[Jerry] The video was shot both in studio and it was shot
in the Parc Saint-Cloud, which is this beautiful
18th-century park just outside of Paris.
The extraordinary close-up work that John did
with the lighting camerawoman, Dominique Le Rigoleur,
who we chose particularly because we wanted a female
to create a relationship between Sinéad and the camera.
[gentle music]
[Maybury] In between takes,
Sinéad would click on some really heavy duty dub reggae
and light up a spliff, and be bopping around the studio.
We weren't in a kind of particularly sombre mood.
Looking into my monitor, looking down that lens,
I saw right there, this connection coming down the camera...
It was like, "Oh, okay,
this is really something else.
It's not my direction, it's not the cinematography,
it's entirely her."
[Sinéad] If you don't
identify emotionally with a song, you can't sing it.
I didn't know I was gonna cry singing it.
I didn't cry in the studio,
it was just because of the big eye on me
in the form of a camera.
Every time I sing the song, I think of my mother.
I never stopped crying for my mother for, Jesus,
I couldn't face being in Ireland for 13 years.
I never even called home, I just cut myself off entirely
but it took me, I would say, 25 years to stop crying.
So yeah, I was thinking of her and I suppose my subconscious
was thinking of that little girl that sat in the garden.
I think it's funny that the world fell in love with me
because of crying and a tear.
I went and did a lot of crying
and everybody was like, "Oh, you crazy bitch,"
but actually, hold on.
You fell in love with that tear, that was a mirror.
[audience clapping]
Sit yourself down, well done.
-The hair is growing! -Just a little bit.
Just a little bit, a wee bit.
How are you then?
I'm grand, I'm a bit tired, but I'm fine.
A little bit tired, yeah. So we're told.
Good to see you. Will you be number one on Monday?
I don't know, you know.
[audience cheers]
You're all very kind.
I don't want to count my chickens.
You know what I mean?
Half of me sorta says, oh, well, you know,
it doesn't really make a difference,
but then the other half is sort of going,
-oh, please, God, please. -[audience laughing]
It would be nice, wouldn't it?
We shouldn't even be thinking about this.
Shouldn't even be thinking about it, okay.
When will you know?
Ten to three on Sunday afternoon.
[audience laughing]
But I've got to try not to think about it.
[John] The song went number one,
everywhere in the world pretty much.
Then everything changed overnight.
And the winner is... Sinéad O'Connor.
-Sinéad O'Connor.
[audience cheering]
I don't really know what to say,
except thank you very much.
You know, peace.
[upbeat music]
[man] It's Sinéad O'Connor.
Sinéad, "Nothing Compares To You."
[Claire] The level of when "Nothing Compares To You"
became a hit was extraordinary.
It really was off the scale.
She was the biggest thing.
I mean you think of artists like Billie Eilish now
or Amy Winehouse,
you know that level of intensity that's on you.
And also if you're incredibly iconic in your look
and your style and your passion,
then there's a lot of focus on you.
I didn't realize how huge the single and the album were.
I really didn't.
And I looked in some magazine the other day
and it said that the record had been
something like the fourth biggest record in America,
I nearly dropped dead.
I didn't have the slightest idea.
[Marco] The single went to number one in America.
She was suddenly a major act.
[audience cheering]
[rock music]
Hello!
The tour got bigger and bigger instead of theatres,
we got into arenas and stadiums.
[singing and rock music]
It seems like years Since you held the baby
While I wrecked the bedroom
You said it was Dangerous after Sunday
And I knew you loved me...
[Marco] She seemed to take it all in her stride.
There were some days when she was sort of like,
"Oh, this is a bit much," most of the time she seemed to enjoy it.
There was obviously a feeling of like,
"Oh, well, this is going to be great."
It was going to be good anyway,
but this is going to be really good.
[drums playing]
I am stretched On your grave
And will lie there forever
If your hands were in mine
I'd be sure we'd not sever
My apple tree My brightness
It's time we were together
For I smell of the earth
And am worn By the weather...
[Marco] About halfway through the tour,
we did a place in New Jersey.
It was an open air venue.
For some reason,
they always played the National Anthem before the main act.
Sinéad got to hear about it, and said
"There's no way.
I'm not going on stage if you play the National Anthem."
So there was a bit of an argument between management
and management of the venue,
but in the end, the venue relented, they said,
"Alright, alright. If you don't want it played,
we won't play it."
And I thought, "Oh, this is going to be everywhere tomorrow."
Going down to breakfast, you hear the immortal words.
"Oh, God, have you seen the papers?"
[newsreader] First, the explosion, then the fallout.
Hi, 95.5 PLJ, it's Fast Jimmy,
and you will hear no Sinéad O'Connor on this radio station.
[newsreader] Sinéad O'Connor is being shaved
from the airwaves because of a recent refusal
to perform in concert if the National Anthem was played.
With American soldiers on foreign soil
poised for conflict,
patriotism is running at fever pitch.
We decided Monday morning, that since we played
the National Anthem on our station
to support the troops over in the Middle East,
that she probably wouldn't welcome
being played on our station either.
The wrong time, the wrong place
and the wrong way to throw a tantrum.
Someone should just have said to her,
within her own management,
"Sinéad, shut up."
[caller 1] You don't like America, then get the hell out.
My opinion is she should go back to Ireland
or wherever the hell she is from.
Don't tell my country, you can't play the National Anthem.
I didn't put the marine green on to listen to some bald-headed Irish girl
tell me I can't hear my National Anthem.
She wants the money, the fame and the glorification.
But she's going to have to be sensitive to some issues.
[Irish newsreader] One extreme patriot is Frank Sinatra,
who said he would like to kick her ass.
"At his age, he couldn't lift his leg high enough
to kick her ass", says Sinéad 's father, John O'Connor.
[Claire] As soon as someone highlighted
that it had to be played, she would say,
"Well, you can't censor me. This is my show
and why are you telling me what to do?"
America is the land of free speech, and they're telling her
she's not allowed to have her free speech.
Issue number 3, the bald chick. What's with her head?
Let's start with the chick. What gives, Cue ball?
I'm looking at you. I'm thinking 14 in the side pocket.
[audience laughter]
I can't believe you're talking
about my hair with all the bloody starvation
and the suffering in the world right now.
-[imitates violin sound] -[laughter]
Come on, swing baby, you're platinum. Forget the head.
Put a bag over it and do your business.
[Sinéad] I think that, certainly, the industry
can be extremely patronizing towards women.
You're supposed to have long hair wear push-up bras
and lip gloss, you know, and shut up and sing.
Maybe if I was a man, there wouldn't be such a fuss about it
you know what I mean?
It's just not expected of women, I don't know.
But then nothing about me, particularly, in people's minds,
conforms to what a woman should conform to.
But I don't know if it's so much a conscious problem
that they have because I'm a woman.
I think it's because I'm not a conformist on any level.
You know what I mean?
[Gay] Tell me about this row about the National Anthem,
were you right to get into that?
I don't think it was a situation being wrong or right.
It was a situation of, I acted at the time
in the way that I felt would be most true to myself.
I didn't mean to offend anybody.
I did it because I have a huge problem
with the censorship movement
that's happening in America at the moment.
It has terrible implications.
The idea that artists, you know,
painters, photographers, musicians, poets,
and people like that
are being told what they may and may not say
and what they may or may not write about.
-[Gay] Where is that happening? -In America,
in particular among the Black community it's happening.
So, I have two problems with it.
First of all, that I don't think censorship should happen
at all to anybody.
But secondly, I think that a lot of the time
there's a lot of White artists
who are very offensive as well,
and they don't get censored.
So it leaves me thinking that it's
a slightly racist problem as well.
So, you know, if it happened now,
I might've reacted in a different way,
I didn't realize that people would take such offence to it.
Because I didn't mean offence. You know what I mean?
[Gay] The problem is that a lot of people would say,
well, you didn't not take the money.
You know, if they asked me for the money,
I would gladly have given it to them.
You would, you would. All the money?
-Absolutely. -All the money, Sinéad?
Can't go through life giving back the money.
I don't perform or make records or do anything
in order to make money.
It's not the thing that I hold
most important in my life.
Well, I heard that she doesn't like Ireland
and she doesn't like the USA.
So they're going to be handing out American flags.
So we're going to wave it at her and see what she does.
Controversy surrounds her wherever she is.
[interviewer] Why do you think that is?
Just because of who she is.
I don't think she gets a fair... because of the way she looks,
I don't think people treat her fairly.
[Sinéad] It's a very patriotic country.
And a lot of people have been told
that I have some sort of anti-American feeling,
which is very irresponsible on behalf of the media,
because that does put a person in a situation
where literally their life could be at risk.
You know what I mean?
[atmospheric music]
[John] When the press started to attack her
that was really difficult.
They arrived at the door in London and Jake was with me
and he was only very young
and they started to fire questions,
you know, while Jake was next to me.
And I just, I just was... I was absolutely furious.
[singing]
Margaret Thatcher on TV
Shocked by the deaths That took place in Beijing...
[John] She's always championed justice.
You know, if something wasn't right,
she would step in and try and do something about it.
[singing]
[Gay] Listen, this song that I heard,
"Black Boys on Mopeds"
about the treatment of Black people in England.
Very political, Sinéad.
Well you can't really talk about racism
without being political.
[Gay] Yes. True, true.
England's not The mythical land
Of Madame George and roses
It's the home of police
Who kill Black boys On mopeds
And I love my boy
And that's why I'm leaving
I don't want him To be aware that there's
Any such thing as grieving
Young mother Down at Smithfield
5:00 a.m., looking for food For her kids...
[John] We were living in Stoke Newington
when she wrote that song, you know, it was around us,
you know, that kind of police versus the Black community.
It was ugly at that point,
particularly in that part of London.
The police are picking on children!
[Sinéad] I write songs about things
that I feel strongly about.
It's not consciously to write a political song
or consciously to make a statement about anything.
And I think that that's what every person's duty
to themselves is, is to act on their feelings and to say,
when they think something's wrong.
It doesn't matter whether they're, you know, a singer, or whatever they are.
[Gay] Yes, and take the consequences.
I imagine so.
[violin music]
I'm an Irish artist,
and there's a tradition among Irish artists
of being agitators and activists.
You know, whether they're playwrights or poets.
An artists job is sometimes to create
the difficult conversations that need to be had.
And it's none of my business,
what anyone thinks of me when I do that.
[chanting]
[newsreader] The right to choose an abortion,
the right to information on where to obtain one.
In Dublin's O'Connell street, singer Sinéad O'Connor
speaks out against her country's stringent abortion laws.
Abortion will be legalized in this country very soon.
Let's have another referendum
when only women of childbearing age vote
for the right to choose their own destiny.
What I believe is that you cannot take away
a person's right to choose.
It is not a pro-abortion or an anti-abortion issue.
The issue is the right to choose.
The church deliberately distract us from that,
by making it into an either anti or for,
you know what I mean? But it's not that.
It's the right to choose your own destiny.
And it's none of anybody else's business,
not your mother or your father or anybody else.
Or your priest.
[Elaine] I never felt that Sinéad would cave
to any pressure. Ever.
Then she just seemed to become really controversial about everything.
[newsreader] Two weeks before the Grammys,
O'Connor threw down the gauntlet to her peers
announcing she would not attend the ceremonies
because the music industry was driven by greed
and artists were not speaking out
against the war in the Gulf.
It is the creative community that are driven by greed.
That's why none of them are saying anything
because they're afraid their careers
are going to be in jeopardy.
It's why nobody has said anything about the war.
[Elaine] When Sinéad refused to perform at the Grammys,
I was under a lot of pressure to change her mind.
As if that were even possible.
It wasn't like threatening-threatening,
but I felt that my career could certainly be in jeopardy,
and Sinéad's as well.
These were powerful people in the industry.
[Chuck D] I didn't think that the powers that be were ready for her.
Where she's from,
artists had always stepped forward and said things,
but maybe in different genres,
and not so much as a pop superstar.
And Sinéad O'Connor, well, she was becoming a pop superstar.
Okay, so this is my favourite place in the universe,
which is St. Mark's place.
All the Rastas live there,
and all the Irish people live here, which is why I like it,
because Rastas and Irish people should live together,
since they're both the same.
And this is Siné.
The object of my game coming into the music business was
I really saw it as something like a bit of a chess game.
Could I get from one side of the board to the other
and still be myself and still be true to my reasons
for being in the music business?
And also, I suppose, spiritually true to myself,
do you know what I mean?
The music business can be a bit of a vampiric arena.
[Sinéad] That's Charlie.
The first one's Charlie, and that's Charlton.
-Say hello to Jake. -Hi, Jake.
[Sinéad] Gary.
-Yes? -Say hello to Jake.
-Him Jake. -[Sinéad] That's Gary.
Maybe we'll get to see you, Jake.
[Sinéad] He's really mad.
Hi, Jake, how're you doing?
-[Sinéad] Say hello to Jake. -Jake. How are you?
[Sinéad] You can go around trying to please everyone
as if you're in a popularity contest,
and yeah, that might get you lots and lots of money,
but that's not necessarily going to be keeping the contract
that you made with yourself.
[instrumental music]
That was the last one, wasn't it?
[man] That was the very last one.
Okay, can we go on from a bit before?
-[man] Yes. -[Sinéad] I didn't want to fall into that trap then
of you know, the follow up album to the number one, single.
And so I was kind of buying myself some time really,
creatively speaking.
Because you've had that hit record,
all of a sudden you could go in there
and tell them you want to make a record of farts,
and they'll say, "Yeah, sure. Okay."
[trumpets blasting]
Let's listen back and make sure we love this arrangement.
-Okay? -[John] I think there's a huge pressure from labels
when an artist has a worldwide number one.
And I think with the, "Am I Not Your Girl" album,
this was a great antidote, really to what happened.
And it had the most amazing team of arrangers, musicians,
and of course, legendary Phil Ramone producing.
It was just such a joy that record.
We used to go out walking
Hand in hand
You told me all The big things
You had planned...
[Sinéad] I did love the record, and I loved making it.
It was just astonishing being in a room
with that band every day. It was just like, "Oh, my God."
I was quite intimidated actually.
I was quite scared to open my mouth
because the band were just so ridiculously brilliant
and I couldn't see myself as being anyway good.
Am I not your girl?
Am I not
[Sinéad] There were things going on in my own life.
Things I was discovering that my mother had done
that I didn't know about.
And then 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.
Basically fucking everything I had been raised to believe was a lie.
You know, that everything about the Catholic church was a lie.
Ave, ave, ave Maria
[Announcer] At the end of the line of bishops, walked the Pope.
And as the crowd noticed him, they broke into cheering and clapping.
[crowd cheers]
[Sinéad] I took two things out of my mother's house.
One was her cookery book,
and the next was a picture of the Pope,
which had been on her bedroom wall.
[Pope John Paul II] Young people of Ireland,
I love you.
[crowd cheers]
[Sinéad] He didn't fucking love me.
And I could fuckin' cry right now saying it.
You know, it was such a lie.
Now we know what a lie that was.
He was so involved in covering up
what happened to everybody.
And I had a right to fight that evil
because I loved the church.
I'm going to go on Saturday Night Live
and I've got fuck all to lose
because no one could do jack shit to me
that hasn't been done already.
[Elaine] I had booked her on Saturday Night Live.
Now this was for her third record,
which was, "Am I Not Your Girl."
It's a great booking, the record was just coming out,
and this would really help it.
Ladies and gentlemen, Sinéad O'Connor.
[crowd applauds]
Until the philosophy
Which holds one Race superior
And another
Inferior
Is finally
And permanently
Discredited...
[Sinéad] The song is also very important.
You know, it's a Rastafari song.
It's a speech that the Emperor Haile Selassie
had made at the United Nations, and then Bob Marley
turned it into a song.
First class and second class Citizens of any nation
Until the colour Of a man's skin
Is of no more significance
Than the colour of his eyes
I've got to say war...
...war
War in the east
War in the west
War up north
War down south
There's war
And rumours of war
Until that day
There is no continent Which will know peace
Children, children
Fight
We find it necessary
We know we will win
We have confidence
In the victory
Of good
Over evil
Fight the real enemy.
[Elaine] Nobody knows what to do.
My blood has run cold.
She blows a candle out, she goes off stage,
she goes into her dressing room and she's so happy.
You know, she had pulled this off.
And 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."
[host] What effect do you think
this is gonna have on your career, Sinéad?
I don't know.
Do you care?
Um, well, it depends on what you mean by...
I don't know. You'd have to say what you meant.
Do you think what you have done
will make you more popular with your fans?
Less popular with your fans?
Or will it just be something that Sinéad O'Connor did
in a rash moment?
Well, I can't really say. I don't know.
Are you prepared to accept the consequences,
which you said don't seem to be negative, right?
Of what you're doing?
What consequences?
Well, look at the alternative.
[narrator] Sinéad O'Connor is no stranger to controversy.
A master of the shock tactics.
But this time some are questioning whether she went too far.
No response yet from the Pope,
but church spokesmen say that he will no doubt
forgive Sinéad O'Connor for her bout of Vatican bashing
on NBC's Saturday Night Live.
The controversy for singer Sinéad O'Connor
as she strikes a sour note with Catholics.
[reporter] NBC has been at pains to stress
it doesn't condone what she did.
[reporter 2] The network says O'Connor's tirade caught them off guard.
NBC logged a thousand complaint calls...
[man] Her actions Saturday night were spontaneous,
certainly unauthorized by NBC,
and NBC was offended by what she did.
[reporter] The Catholic league for religious and civil rights
is pressuring record stores to stop selling recordings
by O'Connor and her record company.
During the lunch hour, they passed out leaflets,
urging customers to join their boycott.
Some didn't need any encouragement.
I thought it was repulsive.
[man] Anyone that sends us in their tapes,
we're going to chop up these tapes.
Actually, we were just going to send them to her.
Someone said, don't send the tapes new.
Break them up, 'cause she'll sell them again.
So we're going to break them up
and put them in a trunk,
and have someone deliver them to her
in Ireland or wherever she may be.
[audience applauds]
I would've grabbed her by her eyebrows.
[audience laughs]
Sinéad O'Connor... [gags], you know and so on.
Or you just don't like that she tore up a picture of the Pope.
Oh, no, Sinéad O'Connor is completely a robot brain.
She has messages... She's like Victorian,
she has messages where she slaps onto art like labels.
But I'll tell you one thing, she was very lucky
it wasn't my show.
'Cause if it was my show, I would've gave her such a smack.
[audience cheers]
Sinéad O'Conner, who's big theme is child abuse...
-All right? -It all comes from child abuse.
In the case of Sinéad O'Conner, child abuse was justified.
[John] I got a little bit worried,
you know when things were going really badly in the press for her.
It was a terrible time for us.
And just created this hatred.
It was unbelievable.
[Claire] I had fan letters with death threats to myself,
death threats to Sinéad,
and one day I took in a sack load of letters
that were directly threatening either to her
or to me, or any of our team.
[Kathleen] I was watching it with some friends as it happened.
And we were all applauding and cheering and were like,
"Feminist performance art, on TV.
When does that ever happen?"
[Roísín] I can't sit here and tell you that I was all like,
"Oh, no, Sinéad O'Connor is an icon. She's ahead of her time."
I don't think I was saying that then.
I think I probably was joining in, "Oh, God, what's she doing now?"
There was this idea that she was a bit of a joke.
Fight the real enemy.
[Phil Hartman] When she does a concert in New York city,
if she has the guts to ever do a concert
in New York City again,
after one of her songs,
I'm going to jump up on stage
and tear up a photo of Uncle Fester.
[audience laughs]
[reporter] Do you enjoy shocking people?
[Sinéad] No, but I enjoy a good debate.
[reporter] Did you realize the consequences at the time?
I don't think it's a good idea to talk about it here, tonight.
[reporter] So you don't want to talk about it at all.
Some other time, I'll talk to you about it.
[reporter] But obviously you don't have any regrets.
No, absolutely not.
[Kris Kristofferson] I'm real proud...
to introduce this next artist
whose name's become synonymous with courage,
and integrity.
Ladies and gentleman, Sinéad O'Connor.
[crowd cheers]
Thank you.
[Sinéad] I'm on stage and the audience start making this
mad noise where half of them are booing
and half of them are cheering.
And it's the fucking weirdest noise
I've ever heard in my life. And it makes me want to puke.
[crowd booing]
[crowd cheering]
[Sinéad] My song that I was supposed to sing
at Madison Square Garden was "I Believe in You."
This song was to be sung in a whisper,
and I knew that I couldn't
because I wouldn't be heard,
I would have been drowned out and I couldn't have that.
"Are you going to stand by me"
was almost what I felt God was saying to me.
"Are you going to fucking stand by me,
or are you going to pussy out here
and walk off stage."
[crowd cheering]
Okay, turn this up.
Until the philosophy
Which holds one Race superior
And another inferior
Is finally
And permanently discredited
And abandoned
Everywhere is war
Until there's no longer
First class or Second class citizens
Of any nation
Until the colour Of a man's skin
Is of no more significance
Than the colour of his eyes
I've got to say war
Until, the basic Human rights
Are equally Guaranteed to all
Without regard to race
I say war
And until
The ignoble And unhappy regime
Which holds all Of us through
Child abuse, yeah
Subhuman bondage
Has been toppled
Utterly destroyed
Everywhere is war
[Kathleen] Everything kind of coalesced into that moment.
Someone who grew up in a household
of abuse and rejection,
then being rejected,
by what probably felt like the whole entire world,
re-traumatizing her in front of the world,
it made me feel demoralized, as a woman.
[John] People that would boo Sinéad O'Connor,
what were they doing at a Bob Dylan concert?
She's taken quite a beating, in the world,
because, the world does not take kindly,
to having its program interrupted.
The smooth flow of entertainment must not be interrupted.
[Sinéad] "My name is Sinéad O'Connor,
and I'm learning to love myself.
I am deserving,
I deserve to be treated with respect,
I deserve not to be treated like dirt,
I deserve to be listened to.
My name is Sinéad O'Connor,
I am a woman, I have something to offer,
I am and have always been carrying a lot of grief,
from my lost childhood,
and for the effects of its horror and violence on my life.
I find it hard to be myself,
to show my feelings.
To get to the joy,
I need to release the pain, which is blocking me.
If I do not do this, I will not survive.
I was angry before, because I was frightened,
but I know that if you could really listen,
you'd see that we do not know what we are doing,
when we mock the expression of human feeling.
When we scoff at the sound of our children's keening,
there's a mirror into which we are not looking.
There's no way I'm going to shut my mouth,
I am a battered child,
and the whole bloody world is gonna know about it,
the same as they are gonna know about every other battered child.
They are not going to be able to shut us up,
just because they don't want to hear about it.
[Peaches] We all have, mental health issues,
you know, on one level,
and it's very important for us to recognize that,
and I think that's something that Sinéad O'Connor
did way before anybody else.
[Sinéad] I was always being crazied by the media,
made out to be crazy.
I don't blame anybody, for thinking I was crazy,
or for hating me for it, or whatever,
'cause they didn't know, I mean, it was a crazy idea,
I mean, this bitch is saying that,
priests are raping children,
I mean, Jesus Christ,
of course it seemed crazy to them.
[Skin] Sinéad was put into isolation.
She, was still making great music,
still making great records,
but we didn't hear them and we didn't see them.
In those days, if the press weren't talking about you,
if you weren't on the radio, if you weren't on TV screens,
you might as well have not existed.
Which is what happened with Sinéad,
she just disappears.
[Sinéad] I have about a ten-year period
I don't remember much,
because it suddenly became a free for all
for everybody around me,
personally and publicly to treat me like shit basically.
They didn't like what they saw on the mirror,
I understand that now,
but when I was younger, I was just hurt.
[Dr. Sinéad Kennedy] The willingness to tell her story,
to share her personal pain, her struggles,
to share them, with Ireland and with the world,
I think has given people, the courage to do the same.
[Enda Kenny] On behalf of this state,
the government and our citizens,
deeply regret, and apologize unreservedly,
to all those women,
for the hurt that was done to them,
for the, any stigma they have suffered,
as a result of the time they spent,
in the Magdalene Laundries.
Today, we live in a very different country,
with a very different consciousness,
and a very different awareness.
[crowd cheering]
An Ireland where we have more compassion,
more empathy, more insight, more heart.
We do, because at last, we are learning those terrible lessons.
We do, because at last we're giving up our secrets.
In Ireland, it's being called a quiet revolution,
and a victory for women.
The once conservative nation, voted yes
to repeal a constitutional ban on abortion.
[crowd cheering]
[women chanting]
[woman] Yeah, I'm proud to be Irish today
I think Ireland's coming so far,
in the last ten years, and I think it's really showing
that we're not so influenced
by the church as much anymore.
[Roisin] Wherever there's that righteous anger
of a woman now, who is making a difference,
who's changing things,
who's standing up and being courageous.
That is where the little sparks of Sinéad are.
[music playing]
We are seeing the rights that people fought for being pulled back,
being diminished,
and... to look at the power of speaking out,
and she is the absolute epitome of what that power is.
We need to keep showing how effective it is,
and how important it is.
[crowd chanting]
Women's bodies are under attack!
What do we do? Stand up, fight back!
[Chuck D] There's a lot of artists that came afterward,
that were able to say and speak their mind,
and spill their soul.
She broke the ice for a whole decade
or two decades of artists after her.
[upbeat music]
[reporter] A government inquiry last year
found some Irish bishops
put their church's reputation
before the interests of their flock,
actively covering up clerical child abuse for 30 years.
But the scandals go far beyond Ireland,
and touch the Vatican directly.
Last week, it was alleged that Pope Benedict,
then known as Cardinal Ratzinger,
had prevented the church trial,
of an American paedophile priest, in the 1990s.
The church in Ireland, must acknowledge before the Lord
and others, the serious sins committed
against defenceless children.
[Kathleen] Sinéad O'Connor as an artist, forged her own path
in a world that just was not ready for her.
This young upstart,
with the most beautiful voice you can imagine,
showed up, and just rocked the shit out of the horse cart.
I don't want to see her as a martyr,
because she's a three-dimensional human being.
She makes mistakes, she's a weirdo, she's great,
she's a lot of different things.
She did not deserve what she got.
[calm music]
[Sinéad] I regret that people treated me like shit,
and I regret that I was so wounded already
that that really, really killed me and hurt me.
You know?
They all thought that I should be made a mockery of
for throwing my career down the drain.
I never set out to be a pop star,
it didn't suit me being a pop star.
So I didn't throw away any fucking career that I wanted.
Didn't change my attitude.
I wasn't sorry, I didn't regret it,
it was the proudest thing I've ever done as an artist.
They broke my heart and they killed me, but I didn't die.
They tried to bury me,
they didn't realize I was a seed.
Thank you for hearing me
Thank you for loving me
Which means forsaking me
Thank you for seeing me
And for not leaving me
Thank you For staying with me
Thanks for not hurting me
You are gentle with me
Thanks for silence with me
Thank you for holding me
And saying I could be
Thank you For saying, "Baby"
Thank you for holding me
Thank you for helping me
Thank you
Thank you for helping me
Thank you For breaking my heart
Thank you For tearing me apart
Now I've a strong
Strong heart
Thank you
For breaking my heart
[vocalizing]