Neuroscientists Reconstruct a Pink Floyd Song from Listeners’ Brain Activity, with a Little Help from AI

in Music, Neuroscience | August 17th, 2023

Any­one who’s worked in an oper­at­ing room knows that many sur­geons like to put on music while they do their job, and that their work­ing sound­tracks often include sur­pris­ing artists. It hard­ly requires a leap of imag­i­na­tion to assume that there are more than a few scalpel-wield­ing Pink Floyd fans out there — scalpel-wield­ing Pink Floyd fans who will sure­ly feel their musi­cal taste vin­di­cat­ed by a study that involved play­ing “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall (Part 1)” to patients under­go­ing epilep­sy-relat­ed neu­ro­surgery. After­ward, with help from arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, the researchers were able to recon­struct the song from those patients’ record­ed brain­waves.

That this turns out to be pos­si­ble offers “a first step toward cre­at­ing more expres­sive devices to assist peo­ple who can’t speak,” writes the New York Times’ Hana Kiros. “Over the past few years, sci­en­tists have made major break­throughs in extract­ing words from the elec­tri­cal sig­nals pro­duced by the brains of peo­ple with mus­cle paral­y­sis when they attempt to speak. But a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the infor­ma­tion con­veyed through speech comes from what lin­guists call ‘prosod­ic’ ele­ments, like tone.”

It is the musi­cal ele­ments of speech, one might say, that have so far elud­ed repro­duc­tion by exist­ing brain-machine inter­faces, whose sen­tences “have a robot­ic qual­i­ty akin to how the late Stephen Hawk­ing sound­ed when he used a speech-gen­er­at­ing device,” as Robert Sanders writes in Berke­ley News.

You can hear a clip of “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall (Part 1)” as gen­er­at­ed from the researchers’ AI work with brain­wave data in the Euronews video above. Indis­tinct though it may sound, the song will come through rec­og­niz­ably even to the ears of casu­al Pink Floyd fans (irked though they’ll be by the video’s accom­pa­ny­ing it with the cov­er image from The Dark Side of the Moon). They may also feel the urge to con­tin­ue lis­ten­ing to the rest of The Wall, espe­cial­ly “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall (Part 2),” with its school-choir deliv­ered dec­la­ra­tion that we don’t need no mind con­trol. But as for just-dawn­ing tech­nolo­gies that allow us to con­trol things with our minds — well, that would­n’t be so bad, would it?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Neu­rosym­pho­ny: A High-Res­o­lu­tion Look into the Brain, Set to the Music of Brain Waves

Music in the Brain: Sci­en­tists Final­ly Reveal the Parts of Our Brain That Are Ded­i­cat­ed to Music

Hear a Neu­ro­sci­en­tist-Curat­ed 712-Track Playlist of Music that Caus­es Fris­son, or Musi­cal Chills

The Neu­ro­science of Bass: New Study Explains Why Bass Instru­ments Are Fun­da­men­tal to Music

How Pink Floyd Built The Wall: The Album, Tour & Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Paul Simon Plays a Partially-Finished Version of “Still Crazy After All These Years” for Dick Cavett, Then Tries to Figure Out How to Finish It (1974)

in Music, Television | August 16th, 2023

It’s hard to imag­ine one of today’s nation­al­ly known singer-song­writ­ers vol­un­tar­i­ly shar­ing an unfin­ished com­po­si­tion on late night TV, then ask­ing for advice on how to wrap things up.

That’s exact­ly what Paul Simon did on The Dick Cavett Show on Sep­tem­ber 5, 1974, when he shared the first two vers­es of “Still Crazy After All These Years,” accom­pa­ny­ing him­self on acoustic gui­tar:

I met my old lover

On the street last night

She seemed so glad to see me

I just smiled

And we talked about some old times

And we drank our­selves some beers

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

I’m not the kind of man

Who tends to social­ize

I seem to lean on

Old famil­iar ways

And I ain’t no fool for love songs

That whis­per in my ears

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years


Next, he pre­sent­ed Cavett and the stu­dio audi­ence with options, warn­ing that they would be musi­cal choic­es, “because lyri­cal­ly, I real­ly don’t know what I have to say.”

Simon quick­ly demon­strat­ed what a fol­low up might sound like in G major or G sharp minor, explain­ing that the wis­est move from a music the­o­ry stand­point, would be an as yet unused C nat­ur­al or C sharp, to sub­lim­i­nal­ly refresh listener’s ears, a tac­tic he likened to the comedic Rule of Threes.

When the song was released the fol­low­ing year, the key had gone up to G and the gui­tar had mor­phed into piano backed by the Mus­cle Shoals Rhythm Sec­tion, with a jazzy sax solo after the bridge.

All in all, a slick­er, less intro­spec­tive sound.

In an inter­view with Amer­i­can Song­writer, Simon not only delves fur­ther into Still Crazy’s chord pro­gres­sions, he pegs its famous­ly enig­mat­ic lyrics as an unhap­py assess­ment of his per­son­al life at the time of their writ­ing:

That was a long time ago. I’ve long since stopped feel­ing that way. I prob­a­bly wouldn’t describe myself that way. I prob­a­bly wouldn’t think that way at all.

The words are per­son­al. It sounds like I was talk­ing about where I was then. I have the same instinct as all writ­ers: if some­thing from my life works, I use it. If I have to change it and exag­ger­ate it because that works, I’ll change it and exag­ger­ate it. 

I’m not com­mit­ted to telling the truth. I’m com­mit­ted to find­ing what the truth is in the song. But that’s not a com­mit­ment to telling every­one what’s going on with you. That’s very com­mon.

True. But would he still agree to per­form the song in a turkey suit if threat­ened with the sobri­quet “Mr. Alien­ation”?

Here are the lyrics that stuck, from the album that shares the song’s title:

I met my old lover

On the street last night

She seemed so glad to see me

I just smiled

And we talked about some old times

And we drank our­selves some beers

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

I’m not the kind of man

Who tends to social­ize

I seem to lean on

Old famil­iar ways

And I ain’t no fool for love songs

That whis­per in my ears

Still crazy after all these years

Still crazy after all these years

Four in the morn­ing

Crapped out

Yawn­ing

Long­ing my life away

I’ll nev­er wor­ry

Why should I?

It’s all gonna fade

Now I sit by my win­dow

And I watch the cars

I fear I’ll do some dam­age

One fine day

But I would not be con­vict­ed

By a jury of my peers

Still crazy

Still crazy

Still crazy after all these years

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Jazz Vir­tu­oso Oscar Peter­son Gives Dick Cavett a Daz­zling Piano Les­son (1979)

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Nina Simone’s Flawless Tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach on The Ed Sullivan Show (1960)

in Jazz, Music | August 11th, 2023

Some 80 years ago, in a small North Car­oli­na town, Eunice Way­mon, a musi­cal­ly gift­ed, nine-year-old black girl, began tak­ing piano lessons in the home of an exact­ing Eng­lish­woman named Muriel Maz­zanovich.

At first, young Eunice — the giv­en name of jazz super­star Nina Simone — felt intim­i­dat­ed, recall­ing in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, I Put a Spell on You, that they “only played Bach and he seemed so com­pli­cat­ed and dif­fer­ent:”

In those first lessons, it seemed like the only thing she said was, “You must do it this way, Eunice. Bach would like it this way. Do it again.” And so I would.

As time went on I under­stood why Mrs. Maz­zanovich only allowed me to prac­tice Bach and soon I loved him as much as she did. He is tech­ni­cal­ly per­fect… Once I under­stood Bach’s music I nev­er want­ed to be any­thing oth­er than a con­cert pianist. Bach made me ded­i­cate my life to music.

Her tal­ent, com­mit­ment, and progress were such that oth­er cit­i­zens of Try­on, North Car­oli­na pitched in to help her afford a sum­mer ses­sion at New York City’s famed Juil­liard School, pri­or to audi­tion­ing for Philadelphia’s Cur­tis Insti­tute of Music.

“I knew I was good enough, but (the Cur­tis Insti­tute) turned me down,” she says in the doc­u­men­tary, What Hap­pened, Miss Simone? “And it took me about six months to real­ize it was because I was Black. I nev­er real­ly got over that jolt of racism at the time.”

And yet, she per­se­vered, becom­ing active in the Civ­il Rights move­ment and using the pro­ceeds from her debut album, Lit­tle Girl Blue, to fur­ther her clas­si­cal train­ing.

On Sep­tem­ber 11, 1960, Simone, who had scored a Top 20 hit the pre­vi­ous year with a cov­er of “I Loves You, Por­gy” from George Gershwin’s Por­gy and Bess, made her nation­al tele­vi­sion debut on The Ed Sul­li­van Show.

Per­form­ing before an all-white stu­dio audi­ence, she paid trib­ute to both her ear­ly train­ing and the genre that would make her a star, imbu­ing the 1928 jazz stan­dard “Love Me Or Leave Me,” above, with a coun­ter­point solo in the style of Bach’s Inven­tions.

It was a skill she had devel­oped dur­ing a stand­ing piano gig at Atlantic City’s Mid­town Bar and Grill. Its own­er demand­ed that she sing as well as play, and she agreed out of neces­si­ty, impro­vis­ing, exper­i­ment­ing, and occa­sion­al­ly allow­ing her­self flights of clas­si­cal fan­cy that did not go unno­ticed by local music afi­ciona­dos.

She prid­ed her­self on bring­ing a clas­si­cal musi­cian’s absolute con­cen­tra­tion to these per­for­mances, and expect­ed the audi­ence to abide by a sim­i­lar code, tak­ing her hands off the keys if a row­dy drunk talked over her, not­ing that “if they don’t want to lis­ten, I don’t want to play:”

When you play Bach’s music, you have to under­stand that he’s a math­e­mati­cian and all the notes you play add up to some­thing — they make sense. They always add up to cli­max­es, like ocean waves get­ting big­ger and big­ger until after a while so many waves have gath­ered you have a great storm. Each note you play is con­nect­ed to the next note, and every note has to be exe­cut­ed per­fect­ly or the whole effect is lost.

Through­out her sto­ried career, she found ways to weave Bach-like fugues and oth­er clas­si­cal ref­er­ences into her work. Wit­ness her 1987 per­for­mance of “My Baby Just Cares For Me” at the Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Nina Simone Became Hip Hop’s “Secret Weapon”: From Lau­ryn Hill to Jay Z and Kanye West

Nina Simone Writes an Admir­ing Let­ter to Langston Hugh­es: “Broth­er, You’ve Got a Fan Now!” (1966)

Nina Simone’s Live Per­for­mances of Her Poignant Civ­il Rights Protest Songs

Nina Simone Song “Col­or Is a Beau­ti­ful Thing” Ani­mat­ed in a Gor­geous Video

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Band’s Classic Song, “The Weight,” Sung by Robbie Robertson (RIP) and Musicians Around the World

in Life, Music | August 10th, 2023

Yes­ter­day Rob­bie Robert­son, the Cana­di­an song­writer and gui­tarist for The Band, passed away at age 80 after a long ill­ness. As a trib­ute, we’re bring­ing back a video that pays homage to “The Weight,” a song Robert­son wrote for The Band’s influ­en­tial 1968 album, “Music from Big Pink.” The video fea­tures cameos of Robert­son him­self, and also Ringo Starr and oth­er spe­cial guests. Enjoy…

Rob­bie Robertson’s “The Weight,” the Band’s most beloved song, has the qual­i­ty of Dylan’s impres­sion­is­tic nar­ra­tives. Ellip­ti­cal vignettes that seem to make very lit­tle sense at first lis­ten, with a cho­rus that cuts right to the heart of the human predica­ment. “Robert­son admits in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy,” notes Patrick Doyle at Rolling Stone, “that he strug­gled to artic­u­late to pro­duc­er John Simon what the song was even about.” An artist needn’t under­stand a cre­ation for it to res­onate with lis­ten­ers.

A read of “The Weight”’s lyrics make its poignant themes evident—each stan­za intro­duces char­ac­ters who illus­trate some sor­row or small kind­ness. The cho­rus offers what so many peo­ple seem to crave these days: a promise of rest from cease­less toil, free­dom from con­stant trans­ac­tions, a com­mu­ni­ty that shoul­ders everyone’s bur­dens…. “It’s almost like it’s good med­i­cine,” Robert­son told Doyle, “and it’s so suit­able right now.” He refers specif­i­cal­ly to the song’s revival in a dom­i­nant musi­cal form of our iso­la­tion days—the online sing-along.

Though its lyrics aren’t near­ly as easy to remem­ber as, say, “Lean on Me,” Robertson’s clas­sic, espe­cial­ly the big har­monies of its cho­rus (which every­one knows by heart), is ide­al for big ensem­bles like the globe-span­ning col­lec­tion assem­bled by Play­ing for Change, “a group ded­i­cat­ed to ‘open­ing up how peo­ple see the world through the lens of music and art.” The group’s pro­duc­ers, Doyle writes, “recent­ly spent two years film­ing artists around the world, from Japan to Bahrain to Los Ange­les, per­form­ing the song,” with Ringo Starr on drums and Robert­son on rhythm gui­tar. They began on the 50th anniver­sary of the song’s release.

The per­for­mances they cap­tured are flaw­less, and mixed togeth­er seam­less­ly. If you want to know how this was achieved, watch the short behind-the-scenes video above with pro­duc­er Sebas­t­ian Robert­son, who hap­pens to be Rob­bie’s son. He starts by prais­ing the stel­lar con­tri­bu­tions of Larkin Poe, two sis­ters whose root­sy coun­try rock updates the All­man Broth­ers for the 21st cen­tu­ry. But there are no slouch­es in the bunch (don’t be inti­mat­ed out of your own group sing-alongs by the tal­ent on dis­play here). The song res­onates in a way that con­nects, as “The Weight”’s cho­rus con­nects its non-sequitur stan­zas, many dis­parate sto­ries and voic­es.

Robert­son was thrilled with the final prod­uct. “There’s a guy on a sitar!” he enthus­es. “There’s a guy play­ing an oud, one of my favorite instru­ments.” The song sug­gests there’s “some­thing spir­i­tu­al, mag­i­cal, unsus­pect­ing” that can come from times of dark­ness, and that we’d all feel a whole lot bet­ter if we learned to take care of each oth­er. The Play­ing for Change ver­sion “screams of uni­ty,” he says, “and I hope it spreads.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jeff Bridges Nar­rates a Brief His­to­ry of Bob Dylan’s and The Band’s Base­ment Tapes

Stream Marc Maron’s Excel­lent, Long Inter­view with The Band’s Rob­bie Robert­son

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Live Music Archive Lets You Stream/Download More Than 250,000 Concert Recordings–for Free

in Internet Archive, Music | August 10th, 2023

The Inter­net Archive main­tains an enor­mous Live Music Archive of con­cert record­ings, not all of them by the Grate­ful Dead. There are more than 17,000 such record­ings in its Grate­ful Dead col­lec­tion — 2,000 more than when last we fea­tured it here on Open Cul­ture — but one must com­pare that fig­ure to the 250,000 items now in the whole of the LMA. “It would be a great sto­ry to have the first item as part of the col­lec­tion to be some rare Grate­ful Dead record­ing from 1968,” says a post at the Inter­net Archive blog reflect­ing on the twen­ti­eth anniver­sary of the LMA last year, “but it is actu­al­ly an unas­sum­ing Rust­ed Root audi­ence record­ing from August 24, 2001.”

In addi­tion to Rust­ed Root and the Grate­ful Dead, you can stream or down­load a wealth of record­ed live shows from bands like Lit­tle Feat, Blues Trav­el­er, My Morn­ing Jack­et, Los Lobos, and the Smash­ing Pump­kins, as well as singer-song­writ­ers like War­ren Zevon, Elliott Smith, Jack John­son, Robyn Hitch­cock, and John May­er.

How wide or nar­row a vari­ety of musi­cal expe­ri­ences these names con­jure up will, of course, depend on your per­spec­tive. But if they do share a major char­ac­ter­is­tic in com­mon, it’s the fact, to their true fans, their live per­for­mances count for as much as — or, often, more than — their stu­dio record­ings. The truest (or at least most tech­ni­cal­ly adept) such fans have donat­ed their time and skills to make these live per­for­mances freely acces­si­ble and end­less­ly reliv­able on the LMA.

“For years, con­cert-goers record­ed and trad­ed tapes, but in 2002, the Inter­net Archive offered a reli­able infra­struc­ture to pre­serve per­for­mances files,” writes the Inter­net Archive’s Car­alee Adams in a blog post mark­ing the upload­ing of 250,000 record­ings. “Part­ner­ing with the etree music com­mu­ni­ty, the Live Music Archive was estab­lished to pro­vide ongo­ing, free access to loss­less and MP3-encod­ed audio record­ings.” Over the past 21 years, “more than 8,000 artists have giv­en per­mis­sion to have record­ings of their shows archived on the Live Music Archive, and users from around the world have lis­tened to files more than 600 mil­lion times.” Whether or not you’re into jam bands, if you’ve ever enjoyed live music, have a look through the LMA’s 250 ter­abytes of record­ings made in venues from sta­di­ums to neigh­bor­hood cof­fee shops. There’ll be a con­cert for you, no charge for admis­sion.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jam­Base Launch­es a New Video Archive of 100,000 Stream­ing Con­certs: Phish, Wilco, the Avett Broth­ers, Grate­ful Dead & Much More

Stream 385,000 Vin­tage 78 RPM Records at the Inter­net Archive: Louis Arm­strong, Glenn Miller, Bil­lie Hol­i­day & More

Stream a Mas­sive Archive of Grate­ful Dead Con­certs from 1965–1995

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San­ta Bar­bara

BBC Launch­es World Music Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Watch Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with a Modern, New Electronic Soundtrack (1927)

in Film, Music | August 9th, 2023

From sound artist Tomer Baruch and drum­mer Alex Bra­jković comes a new elec­tron­ic sound­track for Fritz Lang’s cen­tu­ry-old clas­sic film, Metrop­o­lis. The new score comes with this pref­ace:

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant themes in the dystopi­an fea­ture is the blurred-to-nonex­is­tent line sep­a­rat­ing man and machine; Human-like machines, Mechan­i­cal-humans, real-life android deep­fakes, and above all the city of Metrop­o­lis, an enor­mous machine and with­in it men, slaved to main­tain its oper­a­tion. The theme that was dis­turb­ing in the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry is as rel­e­vant as ever with the lat­est devel­op­ments in AI, forc­ing us to rethink again what makes us human.

In anal­o­gy to that the sound­track is based on archive record­ings of ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry machin­ery, on top of which Tomer Baruch and Alex Bra­jkovic play ana­log syn­the­siz­ers and drums. They inter­face with the machines and embody a relent­less­ly repet­i­tive mechan­i­cal motion, one which is usu­al­ly sequenced or pro­grammed. By cre­at­ing music which is in itself blur­ring the line between man and machine, by sub­ject­ing them­selves to machine-like pat­terns, the musi­cians become a part of Metrop­o­lis, cre­at­ing a dis­il­lu­sioned, inten­si­fied and dark­er than ever sound­track for the film.

Baruch and Alex Bra­jković cre­at­ed the sound­track for the Sounds of Silence Film Fes­ti­val, Den Haag in 2019. Stream it above.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

If Fritz Lang’s Icon­ic Film Metrop­o­lis Had a Kraftwerk Sound­track

Read the Orig­i­nal 32-Page Pro­gram for Fritz Lang’s Metrop­o­lis (1927)

See Metrop­o­lis‘ Scan­dalous Dance Scene Col­orized, Enhanced, and New­ly Sound­tracked

Behold Beau­ti­ful Orig­i­nal Movie Posters for Metrop­o­lis from France, Swe­den, Ger­many, Japan & Beyond

Watch Metrop­o­lis’ Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Inno­v­a­tive Dance Scene, Restored as Fritz Lang Intend­ed It to Be Seen (1927)

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Sinéad O’Connor’s Raw Isolated Vocals for “Nothing Compares 2 U”

in Music | August 2nd, 2023

Prince first record­ed a demo of “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U” in 1984. Then Sinéad O’Con­nor made the song her own … and made it famous. Chris Bir­kett, who co-pro­duced and engi­neered the 1990 track, remem­bers the cir­cum­stances behind the record­ing: Speak­ing to Sound on Sound, he recalls: “I think the inten­si­ty of Sinéad’s per­for­mance came from the breakup of her lat­est rela­tion­ship.” “She had been dat­ing her man­ag­er, Facht­na O’Ceal­laigh, who’s a real­ly good guy and had been instru­men­tal in get­ting her deal with Ensign Records. How­ev­er, their rela­tion­ship had gone pear-shaped and they were in the process of break­ing up when we record­ed ‘Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U’, so that’s prob­a­bly why she did such a good vocal. She came into the stu­dio, did it in one take, dou­ble-tracked it straight away and it was per­fect because she was total­ly into the song. It mir­rored her sit­u­a­tion.” In the iso­lat­ed track above, you can hear all of the raw­ness of the moment, cap­tured just as Bir­kett heard it that day.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Sinéad O’Connor Makes Her First US Tele­vi­sion Appear­ance: Watch Her Sing “Mandin­ka” on Late Night with David Let­ter­man (1988)

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Hear a 19-Year-Old Prince Crush­ing It on Every Instru­ment in an Ear­ly Jam Ses­sion (1977)

 

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Sinéad O’Connor Makes Her First US Television Appearance: Watch Her Sing “Mandinka” on Late Night with David Letterman (1988)

in Music | July 31st, 2023

On Sep­tem­ber 7, 1988, a skin­ny, near bald, 21-year-old moth­er took the mic mid­way through Late Night with David Let­ter­man and blew the socks off both the live stu­dio audi­ence and the folks view­ing at home.

She also appeared as an unwill­ing par­tic­i­pant in a cheesy green­room sketch with fel­low guests come­di­an Robert Klein, croon­er Jer­ry Vale, and a female day play­er cos­tumed as a sexy cig­a­rette girl from anoth­er era.

It’s a stu­pid, ret­ro­grade bit that’s become even worse with age, but young Sinead O’Connor’s refusal to play along with the prob­lem­at­ic premise was as true to form as her howl­ing per­for­mance of Mandin­ka off her first album, The Lion and the Cobra.

Per­form­ing in a stud­ded jean jack­et and Claddagh ring, she made her live US tele­vi­sion debut with eyes most­ly closed.

Let­ter­man intro­duced her as a “remark­able, young singer and writer from Ire­land.”

It’s fun to see the truth of that canned line hit­ting the house band as the song pro­gress­es. Band­leader Paul Shaf­fer looks espe­cial­ly tick­led by the feroc­i­ty of O’Connor’s per­for­mance and her con­fi­dent musi­cian­ship.

In her mem­oir Remem­ber­ings, O’Connor explains that the song was inspired by the 1977 tele­vi­sion adap­ta­tion of Alex Haley’s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal his­tor­i­cal nov­el Roots:

I was a young girl when I saw it, and it moved some­thing so deeply in me, I had a vis­cer­al response. I came to emo­tion­al­ly iden­ti­fy with the civ­il rights move­ment and slav­ery, espe­cial­ly giv­en the theoc­ra­cy I lived in and the oppres­sion in my own home.

She reprised Mandin­ka sev­er­al months lat­er at the Gram­my Awards. She may have lost Best Female Rock Vocal Per­for­mance to estab­lished leg­end Tina Turn­er, but the LA Times wag­gish­ly declared her “black hal­ter top, bare midriff, torn, fad­ed blue jeans and large black work shoes” the “out­fit of the evening”:

The lat­est addi­tion to her shaved-head look is a tat­too of mil­i­tant rap group Pub­lic Ene­my’s insignia–a view through a tele­scop­ic gun sight–over her left ear. None of which detract­ed from her elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mance of her song “Mandin­ka.”

“I thought it was a lit­tle odd that they asked me to per­form, because of the way I look,” a ner­vous-look­ing O’Connor told the press back­stage. “But I find it encour­ag­ing that they asked, because it’s an acknowl­edg­ment that they are pre­pared not to be so safe about the music and push for­ward with peo­ple slight­ly off the wall.”

Two years lat­er, her cov­er of Prince’s Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U, abet­ted by her defi­ant appear­ance, made her a house­hold name. Nom­i­nat­ed for four Gram­mys, she declined an invi­ta­tion to per­form at the cer­e­mo­ny. She also declined her award for Best Alter­na­tive Music Per­for­mance.

In a let­ter to the spon­sor­ing orga­ni­za­tion, the Record­ing Acad­e­my of the Unit­ed States, she argued against the music industry’s pri­or­i­ties, its overt ten­den­cy to rank artists based on their com­mer­cial suc­cess:

As artists I believe our func­tion is to express the feel­ings of the human race–to always speak the truth and nev­er keep it hid­den even though we are oper­at­ing in a world which does not like the sound of the truth. I believe that our pur­pose is to inspire and, in some way, guide and heal the human race, of which we are all equal mem­bers.

Those look­ing for ear­ly-90s exam­ples of man-splain­ing might appre­ci­ate Record­ing Acad­e­my Pres­i­dent Michael Greene’s response, in which he over­looked the Let­ter­man appear­ance, claim­ing the Gram­mys pro­vid­ed O’Con­nor with her first nation­al­ly tele­vised expo­sure in the States:

We applaud that Sinead feels so strong­ly about these issues and believe that her con­vic­tions only add to the seri­ous­ness of her work. But she may be mis­guid­ed. We respect her immense­ly as an artist… But I’m afraid that Sinead may not be prop­er­ly informed about the dif­fer­ence between the overt­ly com­mer­cial aspects of pop­u­lar­i­ty con­tests as opposed to the Gram­mys, which are vot­ed on by the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty.

O’Connor dou­bled down, attempt­ing to ral­ly her fel­low musi­cians to shine a light on society’s ills, telling the LA Times that “It’s not enough any more to just sit in your chair and say, ‘Yeah, it’s ter­ri­ble.’:”

Musi­cians are in a posi­tion to help heal this sick­ness, but I’d say 90% of the artists in the music busi­ness fail in that respon­si­bil­i­ty. You must acknowl­edge if you are an artist that you are a role mod­el for young peo­ple, whether you like it or not. If you don’t want to accept that respon­si­bil­i­ty, you shouldn’t be an artist. With pow­er comes respon­si­bil­i­ty.

The indus­try, includ­ing awards shows, sends out the mes­sage that sell­ing more records is good rather than telling the truth.

Hon­or­ing com­mer­cial suc­cess is the obvi­ous pur­pose of the Amer­i­can Music Awards tele­cast, but it’s also the intent of the Gram­mys as well.

I think if artists were to be award­ed for what they had achieved in so far as telling the truth … as far as heal­ing the human race, then I’d say Van Mor­ri­son or Ice Cube, peo­ple like that should be hon­ored.

That state­ment lends an extra poignan­cy to our view­ing of O’Connor and Morrison’s 1995 Let­ter­man appear­ance, when, backed by the Chief­tans, they duet­ted on Have I Told You Late­ly?

In the wake of O’Connor’s death at 56 last week, the media remind­ed us of the time she ripped up a pic­ture of Pope John Paul II on Sat­ur­day Night Live as a way of draw­ing atten­tion to the Catholic church’s coverup of sex­u­al abuse by the cler­gy.

They remind­ed us of the time Frank Sina­tra claimed he’d like to “kick her ass” when she wouldn’t sub­mit to singing the Nation­al Anthem before a con­cert.

They remind­ed us of her cor­re­spon­dence with Miley Cyrus, where­in she warned the younger singer not to “obscure (her) tal­ent by allow­ing (her)self to be pimped” either con­scious­ly or uncon­scious­ly.

Mean­while, Let­ter­man bassist Will Lee react­ed to the news by revis­it­ing that 1987 appear­ance on his Insta­gram:

Sinead O’Connor RIP — I always felt her pain, but now I don’t have to. She is free. Her death comes as a shock to the sys­tem because I always hoped she would find resolve, but she went too soon….

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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