O'Connor, Sinead Albums for song lyrics and biography.

Sinead O'Connor is an Irish pop singer and songwriter best known for her unconventional appearance and controversial positions. She was born on the 8th of December 1966 in Glenageary, a suburb of Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. Her father is John O'Connor, a barrister. The author Joseph O'Connor is her brother. Sinead's 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. She has claimed to have been physically, sexually and mentally abused by her mother, who was killed in a car accident when Sinead was 17. Her claims have been disputed by other members of her family.

O'Connor's first two albums, "The Lion and the Cobra" and "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. She later guested on Broken China, a solo album by Richard Wright of Pink Floyd. In 1992 Sinead 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.

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On 24 August 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.

O'Connor's career received a significant blow in October 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.". 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. When Comedy Central occasionally rebroadcasts the episode, the incident is replaced with Sinead holding up a picture of a smiling black child. On 22 September 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 Saint Augustine, by saying "Anger is the first step towards courage."

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In the late 1990s, Sinead 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 RTE's Late Late Show, during which she told the presenter 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 and train to be a catechist, or 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. Her second marriage was to Nicholas Sommerlad, a journalist said to be related to the Queen of Sweden (whose maiden name is Sommerlath). 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. In a magazine article and in a programme on RTE, she outed herself as bisexual, stating that while most of her sexual relationships had been with men, she had had three relationships with women.