Nothing Compares

- 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.

Thank you.

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

Oh, oh, Jerusalem

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.

How many schools did she go through?

- I'd say no more than five or six. - - 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...

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.

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...

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?

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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!

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

The emotion of the song

almost brought people to tears.

- It was stunning. - It was absolutely stunning.

In the congregation was her brother, Paul Byrne,

and then he was forming this band called In Tua Nua.

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.

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