Fancy Restaurants, Karen O, and Frank Sinatra: An Exploration of Sinead O'Connor

Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor

We've got a lot to cover, so let's get started.

After a warm synth sustains a deeply elegiac note, O'Connor opens with a frighteningly honest line: "It's been 7 hours and 15 days / Since you took your love away." Even the first syllable aches: if ou listen closely you'll hear the tiniest grit in her voice. From there, we are introduced to a woman who cannot help but pick at her scabs. She tacitly acknowledges, in a sense, that by counting the hours since her lover's departure she is her own worst enemy. But this doesn't stop her from lobbing accusations at her subject (let's, for the sake of argument, assume that this is a man who has rejected her). Love is being actively withheld from her, after all. And when she says "hours" her voice bottoms out and you see this yawning precipice below her. We're only 16 seconds int the song, and it's already clear that this is not just a breakup song; this is an exorcism.

O'Connor then lists all of her new-found freedoms, which oddly includes fancy restaurants at which she is free to dine alone. Whatever. That's probably healthier than weeping at Taco Bell, a soggy chalupa in your hand. The important thing here is that O'Connor works very hard to make these freedoms sound believably unbelievable. They're among the most unconvincing lines in all of pop music, and they're supposed to be that way. Good singing is good acting, and O'Connor sells is beautifully. Case in point: when she delivers the doctor's advice for a broken heart, she sneers and snarls like a petulant, know-it-all teenager.

The big moment in the song comes after the lovely violin solo, during which she is clearly weighing her options. She has to lay it on the line, or she has to slink away to her fancy restaurants alone. When she steps back up to the mic, she declares that "all the flowers you planted, mama / in the backyard / all died when you went away. / I know living with you, baby, was sometimes hard / but I'm willing to give it another try." Ignoring the incongruity (and inconvenience) with "mama," these are some incredibly sung lines. Again, we get that big beautifully hollow note in "all." And when she tells him that she's willing to give it anther try, these are the thinnest notes she hits in the whole song. She's been withholding her romantic recriminations for far too long. That list of freedoms is telling: these are clearly the freedoms she never had in the relationship. When she sings that last line, she's not underlining her words for emphasis. There's barely any conviction there: she's hemming and hawing with that note. She's trying to find the voice to say something more definitive that I'm willing. You're willing? What about I want . . .? She's hoping that he takes her back, certainly, but by the end she sounds terrified at the prospect.

And the video! Made at a time when videos rarely deepened or complicated or even just handsomely complimented a song, the video for NC2U is nearly perfect in its ability to bolster an otherwise amazing song.



I can do without the lingering shots of Paris, but the way that O'Connor continually fights to summon the courage to address the camera is breathtaking to watch. When he faces the camera, she's putting on the bravest face she can muster. But she lets her mask slip: when she turns to look down or away, she looks unbelievably fragile. She looks as tender as a little bird. I think it's hard not to worry about whether or not she's going to be able to weather this storm.

And when those two tears roll down her cheek at the end, I'm a worthless puddle of tears. I actually feel flooded with both sympathy and pity, however you want to make that distinction.

Obviously, it would be ridiculous to talk about those two tears without taking about the other most famous pair of tears in music video history: Karen O's in the video for Maps. After Nick Zinner's rawkus guitar solo, Brian Chase settles into his massive stutter-step of a beat and Karen O draws circles in front her with the mic, trying with all her worthless might to keep her cheeks dry. There are actually a lot of parallels between NC2U and Maps. In fact, NC2U was Maps before Karen O was old enough to sew a pair of feathered spandex. O'Connor is ultimately more articulate than Karen O. Where Karen O can only promise that no one currently loves him as much as she does (despite her infidelity), O'Connor proves that no one will ever love him as much as she does. Karen O is simply too stunned to digest the moment of departure, so she reaches for the only weapon at her disposal: herself and her unfaithful love. O'Connor is past that moment: 7 hours and 15 days to be precise. O'Connor is too wounded (and too aware of her injuries) to make such beautifully grand statements that really function as apologies. O'Connor's steeped in her misery too long. Things are difficult now. Things will be difficult for some time. These are difficulties that Karen O can only imagine (or worst, anticipate) in her song.

But the moment that gets me every time, the moment that puts a fat lump right in my throat, occurs at 4:09 in the video (I can't post the high quality version, so you'll have to look closely). She is weakly singing the chorus for the final time, fighting back tears, and, at 4:09, she swallows them in the most heartbreakingly human way. Sinead O'Connor is really crying in the video Those are real tears. And she really swallows them because she's trying to make it through the shoot. I think it occurs to you then that this is all really happening. This is no longer just a pop song. This is a very public pumping of a very deep well of sadness.

For late term Gen-Xers like us, I think it's very easy to be jaded about music videos. They started as silly and ridiculous. Then, after promises that they could be an art form, they more or less became expensive and ridiculous. Granted, a lot of them are visually inventive (Mark Romanek, Michel Gondry, etc), but very few of them are emotional experiences. I cannot think of another video that I consider as truly moving as NC2U.

At the end of the day, NC2U promises all the standard trappings of pop music: a pleasant voice sings a pleasant melody over pleasant music. But the song delivers more than pop music is designed to hold: a wrenching portrait of someone who is in real pain and whose only recourse is her stunning voice. This is a song whose power transcends Sinead O'Connor and all that has unfortunately been associated with her. When your song is this beautiful, it's all too easy to forget the head shorn of hair or the Pope photo incident or the weird relationship with the Catholic church or the fact that Frank Sinatra threatened to kick her ass. Unlike most one hit wonders, the song itself is powerful enough to draw attention away from the backstory, even if part of it involves Sinatra's threat to "punch [you] right in the mouth." When Doug Feiger dies and he's crediting with writing "My Sharona," you'll dig the song out and listen to it and laugh a little, thinking of that time you sang it in the car to your girlfriend or the first time you watched Reality Bites. But when Sinead O'Connor is mourned, you'll listen to this song in remembrance and there won't be a trace of irony to be had because the totalizing sincerity of this song defies ironic scrutiny. And how many mainstream pop songs in the last two (or three or four) decades can you say that about?