On Sunday night, Miley Cyrus and Nashville’s Brittany Howard hit the stage at “SNL50: The Anniversary Special” to perform a soulful, rousing tribute to Sinead O’Connor.
Actress Aubrey Plaza introduced the performance, making her first public appearance following the death of her husband, film director Jeff Baena.
The pop star and the Alabama Shakes singer and guitarist performed O’Connor’s song “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a hit that Prince penned in the ’80s.
Backed by the Roots, Cyrus took the mic first for a stirring rendition of the first verse and chorus before handing it over to Howard, who sang as she played electric guitar. Among soaring guitar licks, the two took turns belting out the lyrics.
O’Connor, an Irish singer, songwriter and activist, died in 2023 after an over-30 year career.
She only performed on “SNL” once as the musical guest in 1992, and was subsequently banned from the show for using the platform to criticize the Catholic Church.
Prince, on the other hand, appeared as an “SNL” musical guest four times throughout his career.
What Miley Cyrus said about performing with Brittany Howard, the Roots
Cyrus took to social media to share what hitting the stage with Howard meant to her.
“Singing beside Brittany has been a dream of mine,” she said on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“She is vocally the best of the best and as the performance grew closer I started questioning my choice to stand next to her and perform. At every rehearsal (which was very few) I was completely blown away. It doesn’t get better than BH. Thank you to @theroots for supporting us and rocking it as you always do.”
Watch Sinead O’Connor’s only ‘SNL’ performance
“Nothing Compares 2 U,” O’Connor’s biggest hit, appeared on her 1990 album “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.” It spent four weeks on top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
And despite O’Conner taking the stage herself at “Saturday Night Live,” she didn’t perform the track on the “SNL” stage.
Instead, she took the opportunity to perform Bob Marley’s 1976 song “War” as an act of protest against child sex abuse in the Catholic Church.
A cappella, O’Connor sang “Until the philosophy which hold one race / Superior and another Inferior/ Is finally / And permanently / Discredited / And abandoned / Everywhere is war.”
At the end of the performance, she held up a photograph of Pope John Paul II and tore it to pieces in front of the camera.
“Fight the real enemy,” she said.
Audrey Gibbs is a music reporter at The Tennessean. You can reach her at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Miley Cyrus, Brittany Howard sing Sinead O’Connor song on ‘SNL50’
