It has everyone singing her most famous recording, the cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U that was accompanied by a video of the singer staring into the camera — and into our souls — as she sang. Iconic.
And on the day O’Connor’s death was announced, P!nk and Brandi Carlile sang the song in front an awed crowd. The duet is gorgeous.
Is it one of the greatest versions of the song? I think so. Let’s dive in with the best of the best:
However, O’Connor 1992 appearance on Saturday Night Live created a lightning storm of controversy and instantly became a defining moment of her career.
It’s one still remembered today as one of the genuine shocks of live television, a moment that got plenty of people upset at the time but holds particular resonance with the protest O’Connor was engaging in.
As has been customary with SNL since the show’s start, O’Connor was featured on an October 1992 episode and delivered a stunning, slightly altered a cappella cover of Bob Marley’s song “War.”
At the end of the song, she pulled out a photo of Pope John Paul II as she sang about good prevailing over evil and ripped it up, saying “Fight the real enemy” as her performance faded out.
It was her way of protesting child abuse that had been going on within the Catholic Church, a controversy that later became a major moment of reckoning within the religious body as more became reported on the topic.
However, O’Connor maintained within her 2021 autobiography Rememberings that she never had any second thoughts about the cause she was fighting for, one that took on so much more meaning in the years after that performance.
“Everyone wants a pop star, see?” she wrote (via The Guardian). “But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame.”
