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| Birth Name(s) : Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor |
Date of Birth: N/A |
| Status:
Single
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Partner:
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| Profession:
Singer-songwriter |
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Full Sinead O'Connor Biography
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor (IPA: /ʃɪ'neɪd oʊ'kɑ.nɚ/) (born December 8, 1966) is a Grammy Award winning Irish singer and songwriter.
O'Connor's time as singer for Ton Ton Macoute brought her to the attention of the music industry, and she was eventually signed by Ensign Records. She also acquired an experienced manager, Fachtna O'Ceallaigh, former head of U2's Mother Records. Soon after she was signed she embarked on her first major project, providing the vocals for the song "Heroine", which she cowrote with U2's guitarist The Edge for the soundtrack to the film Captive. While she was building bridges she was also burning them. O'Ceallaigh, who had been fired by U2 for complaining about them in an interview, was outspoken with his comments about music and politics, and O'Connor began to adopt the same habits; she made controversial comments about the IRA and even directing negative remarks towards U2, who nonetheless admired her music.
O'Connor's first two albums (1987'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 voice and her original songs. She was also noted for her appearance: her shaved head, angry expression, and sometimes shapeless or unusual clothing.
The following year, O'Connor joined The The frontman Matt Johnson as a guest vocalist on the band's album Mind Bomb, which spawned the duet "Kingdom of Rain."
In 1992, she contributed a cover of "You Do Something to Me" to the Cole Porter tribute/AIDS fundraising album Red Hot + Blue. This was followed by the release of Am I Not Your Girl?, an album of standards and torch songs that she had listened to while growing up. The record lost her much of the commercial momentum her career had built up until then.
After spending nine years dividing her time between London and Los Angeles, O'Connor returned to her home town of Dublin in late 1992 to live near her sister and focus on raising her son Jake, then six years old. She spent the following months studying Bel Canto singing with teacher Frank Merriman at the Parnell School of Music. In an interview with The Guardian published May 3, 1993 she reported that her singing lessons with Merriman were the only therapy she was receiving, describing Merriman as "the most amazing teacher in the universe."
The 1993 soundtrack to film In the Name of the Father featured "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart," with significant contributions from U2 frontman Bono.
In 2003, she contributed a track to the Dolly Parton tribute album Just Because I'm a Woman, a cover of Parton's "Dagger Through the Heart". That same year, she also released a double album, She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty. The album contained one disc of demos and previously-unreleased tracks and one disc of a live concert recording. Directly after the album's release, O'Connor announced her retirement from music.
Ultimately, after a brief period of inactivity and a bout with fibromyalgia, this proved to be short-lived - O'Connor stated in an interview with Harp that she only intended to retire from making mainstream pop/rock music, and after dealing with her fibromyalgia, chose to move into other musical styles. The reggae album Throw Down Your Arms appeared in late 2005 and was greeted with very enthusiastic reviews, critics considering it one of O'Connor's best albums. It was based on the Rastafarian culture and lifestyle, O'Connor having spent time in Jamaica in 2004. She performed the single "Throw Down Your Arms" on The Late Late Show in November. She also made comments critical of the war in Iraq and the role played in it by the Ireland's Shannon Airport.
O'Connor released two songs from her album Theology to download for free from her official website - If You Had a Vineyard and Jeremiah (Something Beautiful). The album, a collection of covered and original Rastafari spiritual songs, was released in June 2007. The first single from the album, the Rice/Lloyd Webber classic 'I Don't Know How To Love Him,' was released on April 30, 2007. She appears on two tracks of the new Ian Brown album, due to be released in September.
Two weeks after the infamous Saturday Night Live appearance, she was set to perform "I Believe in You" at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary tribute concert in Madison Square Garden. She was greeted by a thundering mixture of cheers and jeers. During the booing, Kris Kristofferson told her not to "let the bastards get you down," to which she replied, "I'm not down." The noise eventually became so loud that O'Connor saw no point in starting the scheduled song. She called for the keyboard player to stop and the microphone to be turned up, and then silenced the audience with an improvised, shouted rendition of "War". This time, she sang the song, stopping just after the part in which the lyrics talk about child abuse, emphasizing the point of her previous infamous action. She then looked straight to the audience for a second and left the stage. Kristofferson then comforted her, as she cried.
O'Connor has been married twice. Her first marriage was to John Reynolds, a record producer and musician who co-produced several of her albums, including Universal Mother. They split up on good terms and continue to work together. Her second marriage was to journalist Nicholas Sommerlad in 2002. |
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