Lorne Michaels, the creator of Saturday Night Live, has said that had she lived, Sinead O’Connor would have been asked to perform Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” on the SNL50 special that was held earlier this year.
“If she were still alive, I would have asked her to sing that song,” Michaels recently told Puck. The song was instead performed by Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard.
O’Connor passed away in July of 2023 at the age of 56. But back in 1992, the Irish singer appeared on SNL and famously tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II while performing Bob Marley’s “War,” an act of protest against the Catholic Church which was then dealing with accusations of child abuse and subsequent coverups. She told audiences then to “fight the real enemy.”
As a result, O’Connor was harshly criticized by media and was not invited back to SNL ever again. Just two weeks after the incident, she appeared at The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, an event honoring Bob Dylan. She was introduced by Kris Kristofferson with the following: “I’m real proud to introduce this next artist whose name became synonymous with courage and integrity. Ladies and gentlemen, Sinead O’Connor.”
O’Connor was then booed by the crowd.
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Other episodes of SNL took aim at O’Connor. When Catholic actor Joe Pesci hosted the show, he said he would’ve liked to grab O’Connor “by the eyebrows” and “[give] her such a smack.” At another point, Madonna tore up a photo of Joey Buttafucco, a convicted rapist, and used the same “fight the real enemy” line.
In 1993, Michaels opened up about what happened.
“I thought [it] was sort of the wrong place for it, I thought her behavior was inappropriate,” he said then to Spin (via The Daily Beast). “Because it was difficult to do two comedy sketches after it, and also it was dishonest because she didn’t tell us she was going to do it.”
Sinead O’Connor Did Not Regret Her Choice
In the decades that followed the picture-tearing, O’Connor stood by her decision.
“I had a pretty good feeling,” she said to People in 2021. “And part to me just as an artist, particularly an Irish artist — there’s a tradition in Irish art, particularly among playwrights, there used to be riots in the streets over the plays. This is a tradition in Irish art of the type of, ‘Let’s see what happens if.’ So there was a part of me that was curious to see what would happen.”
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Gallery Credit: Corey Irwin
