To promote her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, O’Connor had tried the traditional route, traveling across Europe and sitting for upwards of ten traditional press interviews a day, while also caring for her son, Jake, who was only a few months old. She was exhausted and painfully self-conscious, and, unlike Madonna, terrible at self-promotion.
But she was excellent at expressing herself through her music, an asset not lost on John Maybury, an edgy young director who got his start working with the experimental filmmaker Derek Jarman. Whereas the first music videos were low-budget affairs, they had since become high-concept films with sophisticated plots and storylines, something Maybury could work with.
When he met up with O’Connor in Dublin to direct the music video for her lead single, “Troy,” Maybury recognized that her look was central to her brand. Rather than concealing it, he suggested that she shave her buzzcut hair completely, then filmed her set against a pitch-black background, and then again in an open field that was deeply saturated in black and white.
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