Sinéad O'Connor (born December 8, 1966) is an Irish pop singer and songwriter. Her biggest hit single was "Nothing Compares 2 U", a cover of a song written by Prince, and arranged for her by him.
She was born in Glenageary, a suburb of Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. Her father is John O'Connor, a barrister. Her brother is the author Joseph O'Connor .
Early Career
O'Connor's first two albums (1988's The Lion and the Cobra and 1990's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got) gained considerable attention and mostly positive reviews. She was praised for her unique voice and her original songs. She was also noted for her appearance: her shaved head and sometimes unusual clothing.
In 1990 she joined many other guests for former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters' massive performance of The Wall in Berlin. (Later, in 1996 she guested on Broken China , a solo album by Richard Wright of Pink Floyd.)
Saturday Night Live
O'Connor's career received a significant blow—especially in the United States—on October 3, 1992, when she appeared on Saturday Night Live as a musical guest, hosted by Tim Robbins. She was singing an a cappella version of Bob Marley's "War" when, significantly, she changed a lyric from "racial injustice" to "sexual abuse." [1]. She then presented a photo of Pope John Paul II to a camera and, saying "fight the real enemy", tore it up.
Saturday Night Live had no foreknowledge of O'Connor's plan, and has resisted invitations to rebroadcast the incident (however, it is available on volume four of Saturday Night Live - 25 Years of Music[2] DVD, one of SNL's compilation video sets). In the resultant furor, O'Connor was booed off stages and verbally abused by audiences. However she continued to have hit records in her native Ireland and in the United Kingdom.
On September 22, 1997, O'Connor was interviewed in Vita, a Italian weekly newspaper. In the interview she asked the Pope to forgive her. She claimed that the tearing of the photo was "a ridiculous act, the gesture of a girl rebel." She claimed she did it "because I was in rebellion against the faith, but I was still within the faith." She went on to quote St. Augustine, by saying "Anger is the first step towards courage."
Ordination
In the late 1990s, she was controversially ordained into a splinter Catholic group, by Irish bishop, Michael Cox , in disregard for the prohibition on the ordination of women within Catholicism. As a result she was automatically excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Cox contacted her to offer ordination following her appearance on the RTÉ's Late Late Show, during which she told the presenter, Gay Byrne, that had she not been a singer, she would have wished to have been a Catholic priest. After her service of ordination, she indicated that she wished to be called Mother Mary Bernadette.
In 2003 she announced that she was going to leave the music industry and train to be a catechist (teacher of the Catholic religion to school children).
O'Connor has been married twice. Her first marriage was to John Reynolds, a record producer, writer and musician who co-produced several albums, including her fourth, Universal Mother , in 1994. Her second marriage was to Nicholas Sommerlad , a journalist said to be related to the Queen of Sweden (whose maiden name is Sommerlath), in 2002 but they separated in 2003.
In a magazine article and in a programme on RTÉ (Ryan Confidential, broadcast on RTÉ 1 on May 29, 2003), she outed herself as bisexual, stating that while most of her sexual relationships had been with men, she had had three relationships with women. She has three children, a son, Jake, by her first husband, a daughter, Roisin, by The Irish Times columnist John Waters, and a son, Shane.
She has claimed to have been physically, sexually and mentally abused by her mother, who was killed in a car accident when Sinéad was 17. Her claims have been disputed by other members of her family.
Discography
External links
- http://www.sinead-oconnor.com/ - an unofficial Sinéad O'Connor website
Last updated: 05-07-2005 14:18:03
Last updated: 09-12-2005 02:39:13
