Irreverent mother
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Sinead O’ Connor earlier this year, in Dublin.
Photo: Supplied
She’s had four children to four men, recorded 10 albums in two decades, and changed religion several times. Sinead O’Connor tells Paula McGinley that turning 40 has finally brought her peace of mind.
Now here’s a thing. She once tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II and, some years later, was ordained as Mother Bernadette Marie by a breakaway Catholic sect. Opprobrium stuck to Sinead O’Connor like a nylon chasuble. But next month, the singer will have the chattering classes spluttering into their tea again with an appearance on the BBC’s Songs of Praise.
O’Connor’s Irish tour manager Paddy, can’t believe his luck. “It’s great, isn’t it?” he twinkles. “You’ll have to dress up,” he says, eyeing O’Connor in her navy tracksuit pants and scuzzy slippers that might have been white once. She frowns and draws on her cigarette: mainstream exposure comes at a price.
O’Connor lives in Monkstown, an unprepossessing Dublin suburb. The gaudy statue of Our Lady on the doorstep of the imposing Georgian house gives a clue to the rebel within. Inside, it’s reassuringly messy: toys strewn over the floor, two bouncy labradors vying for attention and children’s drawings stuck on walls and kitchen units. O’Connor’s bearded 20-year-old son, Jake, makes tea. He’s a strapping lad, all skateboarder chic, and next to him O’Connor stands like his awkward kid sister.
She is polite but edgy, shooting darting glances around the kitchen - a big-eyed woodland creature disturbed from its nest. Stripped of make-up, her skin is unlined, although the trademark crop now comes with titanium streaks.
When she does eventually make eye contact, you’re taken back with a jolt to the Nothing Compares 2 U video and that luminous close-up of her beautiful face.
There’s a perceptible tremor in her hands as she lights up again. She explains she was very upset by an interview the day before, so upset and depressed that she went straight to bed after it was over. “I was crying my eyes out this morning,” she says huskily. After 25 years of making her music, O’Connor still doesn’t understand why the things she’s said and done in the past make her an easy target.
This could be a little disingenuous - tearing up pictures of the Pope live on television is meat and drink to the media - but O’Connor is genuinely puzzled by the reaction she engenders.
“This Italian woman interviewed me yesterday and she was half my f—ing age and she’s sitting here telling me what a bizarre, crazy person I am. It’s like they think I’m going to jump up and hit them,” she says, puffing furiously. “It’s insulting. My kids are running around in the kitchen and I’m sitting here with someone telling me I’m crazy and I can’t stand up for myself. If I do stand up for myself, I’m proving these people right so I just go quiet and I don’t know what to do.”
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