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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Sylvia Patterson

Nothing compares: how Sinéad O’Connor’s fearless activism helped change the world

portrait of Sinéad O'Connor in Nothing Compares.
Sinéad O'Connor in Nothing Compares. Photograph: Andrew Catlin/Showtime

In October 1992 in New York’s Times Square, an industrial steamroller crunched over a pathway littered with Sinéad O’Connor CDs as onlookers cheered and journalists filmed the protest. Today, a building overlooking the square bears an enormous photo of the singer’s famous shaven head. Her Bambi eyes gaze out across the city – and a wider country which vilified, mocked and banned her.

When Kathryn Ferguson, director of a new documentary about the singer, came across the picture while walking through Manhattan, she stopped in her tracks. “There she is, this monolith!” she says. “I cried. Like a phoenix from the flames, she’s back.”

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