Lady Sovereign, in happier times. Photograph: Sarah Lee/Guardian
Poor Lady Sovereign. Her gig at New York's Studio B two Fridays ago should have been the latest installment in her apparently promising bid to become the latest UK singer to break the massive American market. Alas, only moments into the gig she stopped performing and instead started pouring her troubles out onto the crowd. She began by telling them how she never wanted to do the show in the first place but needed the money, before revealing to the bemused audience that she was suffering from depression and was so broke that she would be homeless within two months.
Understandably, an audience of hardened Brooklyners who'd paid good dollars to see the UK grime star were not particularly impressed. In fact, they went ballistic. Sovereign compounded the ignominy by revealing that she couldn't come up with new songs or remember the old ones, and boos just rained down. After just 20 minutes, the woebegone performer fled the stage with a parting shot of "America fucks you up. Fuck America!" which will probably inflict on her career there the kind of damage sustained at Pearl Harbour. Even more worryingly for Sovereign, the entire bizarre incident has been captured on You Tube.
However, this isn't the first time a pop star has melted down in public and in fact is the latest in a long line of public hara-kiris. No less a name than the Beatles kick-started the trend in 1965 when John Lennon - delirious at their supernova success - voiced the public opinion that the Fabs were "more popular than Jesus". The remark - made to a UK journalist - was seized upon in the States, where outraged American Christians made bonfires of Beatles records. After further radio bans in Europe and even comments from the Vatican, the trouble eventually died down, but not before spoof band the Rutles sent up the affair by insisting they meant they were "bigger than Rod. Not God."
Commenting adversely on religion is always going to cause trouble, but some stars have made similar ill-advised wafflings on race. In the 70s, a highly inebriated Eric Clapton made a bigger Rod for his own back than his drink problem when he shouted that "Enoch [Powell] was right!" to a Birmingham audience. David Bowie still gets asked about the supposed "Hitler salute" he made at London's Victoria station (he's since insisted it was merely a wave, and that he was off his head on cocaine). Their careers have prospered, although Clapton didn't set foot in Brum again for a decade. However, when Nineties Britpop clown princes Kula Shaker got carried away into expressing a desire for "burning swastikas onstage" their stardom went down in flames faster than Hitler's Messerschmitts over London.
Michael Jackson (surrounding himself with small children onstage at the Brits as paedophilia stories grew - which prompted the hilarious Jarvis Cocker incident) and Mariah Carey (a very public and embarrassing nervous breakdown) have also committed very public meltdowns and their careers have just about recovered. Britney Spears' bonkers head-shaving incident may or may not have finally sunk hers. But we shouldn't be too quick to condemn - almost all such instances have arisen when hideously overworked stars were out of it, struggling with personal problems or simply under unbearable pressure.
Poor Lady Sov has already released a statement aimed at damage limitation, but the grime princess shouldn't be overly downhearted. The footage may well become a classic. It's easily the most entertaining thing she's done in her whole career.
