Sinéad O'Connor
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Sinéad O'Connor (born December 8, 1966) is an Irish pop singer and songwriter best known for her unconventional appearance and controversial positions.
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Early life
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.
Her parents separated when she was eight. As a young teenager she was expelled from Catholic school, arrested for shoplifting, and sent to a reform school.
At age 15 she was discovered by Paul Byrne of the Irish band In Tua Nua and began writing songs for them.
Musical 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, angry expression, and sometimes shapeless or unusual clothing.
I Do Not Want contained her biggest hit single, "Nothing Compares 2 U", a song written by Prince and arranged for her by him.
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.)
In 1992 O'Connor released Am I Not Your Girl?, an album of standards and torch songs that she had grown up listening to. Her interpretations ran from sublime to overwrought to bizarre, and the record lost all the commercial momentum her career had built up until then. 1994's more conventional Universal Mother did not succeed in restoring her mass appeal.
Garden State Arts Center controversy
On August 24, 1990 O'Connor was scheduled to perform at the Garden State Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey. The practice of the venue was to play a recording of the American national anthem before the show began. O'Connor refused to go on if the anthem was played. Venue officials acquiesced to her demand and omitted the anthem, and so O'Connor performed. But the incident made tabloid headlines the next day and O'Connor came in for heavy criticism; Frank Sinatra vowed to "kick her ass." The Arts Center then banned her from ever appearing there again.
Saturday Night Live controversy
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] (http://www.notbored.org/sinead.html). She then presented a photo of Pope John Paul II to camera and, screaming "Fight the real enemy!", tore it up before a stunned audience.
In the resultant media furor, O'Connor was booed off stages and verbally abused by audiences. For example, two weeks later, booing (and some cheering) appeared in force when O'Connor tried to perform "I Believe In You" at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary tribute concert in Madison Square Garden. She was unable to start the song, and shouted "War" again instead. Afterwards Kris Kristofferson told her to "not let the bastards get you down."
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] (http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/B0000A1HQC/) DVD, one of SNL's compilation video sets). When Comedy Central occasionally rebroadcasts the episode, the incident is replaced with Sinead holding up a picture of a smiling black child. This is likely how the song was performed in rehearsal.
This was not even O'Connor's first go-around with Saturday Night Live; earlier she had refused to appear on a show hosted by misogynistic comedian Andrew Dice Clay.
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 Bernadette Mary.
In 2003 she announced that she was going to leave the music industry [3] (http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1471518/04252003/oconnor_sinead.jhtml) 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.
In 2005 she performed at Madison Square Garden at the Jammy Awards and announced plans to release a reggae-influenced album in fall 2005.
Discography
- The Lion and the Cobra (1988)
- I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (1990)
- Am I Not Your Girl? (1992)
- Universal Mother (1994)
- Gospel Oak EP (1997)
- So Far...The Best of Sinéad O'Connor (1997)
- Faith and Courage (2000)
- Sean-Nos Nua (2002)
- She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty (2003)
External links
- http://www.sinead-oconnor.com/ - an unofficial Sinéad O'Connor websitenl:Sinead O'Connor
Categories: 1966 births | Catholics not in communion with Rome | Female singers | Gay, lesbian or bisexual people | Irish musicians | LGBT musicians
