Naked and licking sledgehammers not cool: O’Connor to Cyrus

Singer Sinéad O’Connor has penned an open letter to Miley Cyrus after the pop star said, in a recent Rolling Stone interview, that O’Connor was the inspiration for her recent ‘Wrecking Ball’ video.

In case you’re not one of the more than 100 million people who have viewed ‘Wrecking Ball,’ the music video involves a partially and/or fully naked Cyrus writhing on a giant wrecking ball, alternating with shots of her licking a sledgehammer suggestively.

In particular, Cyrus said that the music video for O’Connor’s 1990 hit ‘Nothing Compares’ served as inspiration. The video for ‘Nothing Compares’ does begin with a close-up of an emotive O’Connor singing about the loss of her love. A similar technique is used in at the beginning of the ‘Wrecking Ball’ video. The similarities between the two videos end after that.

When asked about ‘Wrecking Ball,’ Cyrus told Rolling Stone:

It’s like the Sinead O’Connor video [for “Nothing Compares 2 U”], but, like, the most modern version. I wanted it to be tough but really pretty – that’s what Sinead did with her hair and everything.

O’Connor writes “in the spirit of motherliness and with love,” but she doesn’t hold back in her response to the comparison, saying in an open letter to Cyrus: “I am extremely concerned for you that those around you have led you to believe, or encouraged you in your own belief, that it is in any way ‘cool’ to be naked and licking sledgehammers in your videos.”

She goes on to say that big players in the music industry don’t care about stars or their well-being, they just care about making money. O’Connor writes:

I repeat, you have enough talent that you don’t need to let the music business make a prostitute of you. You shouldn’t let them make a fool of you either. Don’t think for a moment that any of them give a flying fuck about you. They’re there for the money… we’re there for the music. It has always been that way and it will always be that way. The sooner a young lady gets to know that, the sooner she can be REALLY in control.

You can read the full letter on O’Connor’s website, which was overloaded with traffic at the time writing. It’s also posted at The Guardian, here.

UPDATE: The conflict between the older pop star and the younger pop star continues. Read more about nasty tweets and the threat of legal action here.