Where To Watch Nothing Compares, The 2022 Sinéad O'Connor Documentary
The world suffered an enormous loss earlier this May when it was announced that Tina Turner had passed away, and again last week when Tony Bennett died at 96. And now, one more extraordinarily bright musical light has been snuffed. The radical, pioneering Irish musician Sinéad O'Connor has died at the age of just 56.
She burst on the scene bald, brazen, and with unmatched lyrical ferocity in 1987 with her debut album "The Lion and The Cobra." The album became an overnight international sensation, and with "Nothing Compares 2 U," the Prince-penned lead single of her 1990 follow-up "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got," she became a star. The world hadn't seen anyone like Sinéad O'Connor before her time, and it's hard to imagine her ever being replaced. From tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II live on the "Saturday Night Live" stage to becoming an enrobed priest to recently changing her name to Shuhada' Sadaqat after converting to Islam, O'Connor seemed constitutionally predisposed to breaking apart the expectations imposed on her during her lifetime.
Her death comes at an especially sad time, as the past few years have seen a push and pull between sickness and breakdowns in the artist's personal life, and an opposing resurgence of interest in her trailblazing career. She released a memoir called "Rememberings" in 2021, and 2022 saw the release of "Nothing Compares," a documentary chronicling her turbulent life and work. It seemed like a promise that things could turn around for O'Connor. But in death, at least we have this document of her wondrous life.
An unstoppable force
"Nothing Compares" isn't much more than your standard musician-as-martyr piece of rockstar hagiography. Director Kathryn Ferguson weaves together archival footage of O'Connor performing, old interviews, a new interview, snapshots of headlines announcing whatever latest conservative group was boycotting her, and the disembodied voices of musicians like Kathleen Hanna and Chuck D testifying to her influence. The whole may not transcend the parts, but that's mainly because the parts themselves are so incendiary and electrifying. O'Connor's public presence in the 1990s was so genuinely radical that no account of her protests, pickets, and iconic performances can capture how powerful they are when viewed in their raw forms.
O'Connor begins with the abuse she suffered at the hands of her cold, hypocritical mother. With her signature wisdom and fearlessness, she connects the trauma being suffered at home to the large-scale traumas being inflicted on girls across her home country of Ireland. When O'Connor was 14, she was sent to a childcare center run by the Church and sanctioned by the state. The Sisters of Our Lady of Charity laundry was one outpost in a vast, malignant network of such institutions known as the Magdalene Laundries, now infamous for their mass crimes.
O'Connor survived abuse at the hands of her family and her country to become a passionate advocate against injustice wherever it cropped up, no matter how fierce or beloved the perpetrator. She was the kind of public figure who gave so much of herself, unable to stand the fact that others had much less, to the point that she had nothing. She was a punk icon, a dauntless advocate for the broken and needy, and a brilliant artist. She will forever be missed.
"Nothing Compares" is currently streaming on Paramount+ with a Showtime subscription.