O’Connor’s most famous transgression came in October 1992, when she went on “Saturday Night Live” and ripped up a photograph of the pope. The singer was protesting all sorts of things, among them the fact that the Irish courts had tried to prevent a 14-year-old rape victim from leaving the country to get an abortion. Say what you like about O’Connor’s politics, but she certainly has guts: she had nothing to gain by taking on the church and, as it turned out, a lot to lose. Two weeks after “SNL,” O’Connor walked onstage at Madison Square Garden and got booed by a bunch of Dylan fans who should have known better. Then the album she’d just released, an ill-advised collection of standards, fell off the charts. (“Am I Not Your Girl?” sold just 250,000 copies here, whereas 1990’s “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” sold 3 million.) Last year–after having a breakdown and being spurned by Peter Gabriel–she tried to kill herself with sleeping pills.
In general, pop stars seem capable of making us forget even the most sorry, sordid scandals. Axl Rose has been accused of beating two women. Michael Jackson has been accused of molesting a young boy. Snoop Doggy Dogg has been accused of murder. But it’s O’Connor who has become the unforgiven. Maybe it’s because she did what she did on national television, so that it wasn’t just a matter of speculation. Maybe it’s because she’s a woman, or because she’s had such contempt for the fame game. (As she once sang, “And, of course, I’m like a wild horse/But there’s no other way I could be.”) In any case, O’Connor is an outsider who has been left outside. A clip from one of her old videos met with scattered jeers at the recent MTV Awards; Michael Jackson got a standing ovation.
O’Connor’s fine new album, “Universal Mother,” just debuted in the top 40, which suggests that she’s got a devoted core of fans. But the prognosis for the album isn’t good. It’s a private, uncommercial record–an extraordinarily frank open letter to the singer’s family, much of it accompanied by hushed piano figures and strings. O’Connor has made a video for the more upbeat and electric “Fire On Babylon,” a chilling rant against her late mother, who she says abused her sexually and otherwise. MTV hasn’t shown much interest in it, though: in four weeks, they’ve aired it twice.
“Universal Mother” isn’t perfect. In fact, the album slows to a crawl when O’Connor sings two melancholy a cappella songs in a row, digging a little Death Valley that’s not easily crossed. Still, many of the tunes here are surpassingly lovely. O’Connor sings “Red Football” to her father, who stopped speaking to her last year (“I’m not no red football to be kicked around the garden, no, no / I’m a red Christmas-tree ball and I’m fragile”). She sings “John I Love You” to a lover she hopes will wait while she sifts through her demons. She sings “My Darling Child” to her 7-year-old son, Jake. Listening to these songs, you can’t help but think that if O’Connor is permanently exiled from the mainstream, it’ll be our loss, not hers. Rumor has it MTV asked why O’Connor hasn’t made a video to accompany her whispery cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies.” No doubt she would if she were interested in making nice. Fortunately, that’s always been the least of her concerns.
