Sinead O'Connor

Interview, August, 2000 by Hilton Als

THE IRISH FIREBRAND HEATS IT UP ALL OVER AGAIN

The brilliant, troubling, and enthralling Sin[acute{e}]ad O'Connor has a face born out of pure romance. The eyes, the changeling's smile, the perfectly shaped head and feet and hands, evoke movie dreams. Hers is a face meant to play on the big screen of our imagination, the only contemporary star we have who could carry a silent film on the strength of her expressive visage and countenance.

But silence is not what O'Connor has been known for. Since the release of her first album, The Lion and the Cobra, in 1987, she has become what we thought Joan Baez and Odetta were the last of: a politically minded troubadour. We were simultaneously amused and irritated by her public pronouncements on serious matters such as abuse (emotional and physical), and her feminism, largely because she contradicted what we wanted her to do, which was to feed our imagination with her stoic prettiness. In album after album, her themes ranged from racism to Catholicism to heartsick love (her single and video for Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U" set a standard). Each stage of her life advances O'Connor's political commitment and personal growth. Days after we met, she announced in the press that she had had intimate relationships with both women and men, thereby adding another dimension to her constantly evolving persona.

After five years more or less out of the public eye, O'Connor is back with Faith and Courage (Atlantic), a more reasoned and better expressed musical mosaic than her turbulent self has ever produced before.

HILTON ALS: It feels weird for me to interview you, because this work is so autobiographical. It seems like listening to the album tells you all about the singer.

SIN[acute{E}]AD O'CONNOR: Well, yeah, although I always write in the first person, and sometimes it's other people I'm writing about. So it's not always autobiographical, although obviously a lot of my work is.

HA: Like the beautiful song, "Daddy I'm Fine." It's so touching.

SO: Yeah, well, that's the most autobiographical song on the album.

HA: It made me think of my father. I haven't spoken to him in years.

SO: The big forgiveness is important. The people in your life who you find the hardest to forgive are the most important to forgive, really.

HA: Have you found that you haven't forgiven people?

SO: Well, I don't have the kind of relationship with my father that you do. He was always very supportive of me wanting to be a singer. But obviously he worried for me, because I was so young when I started. He is the kind of guy who was old-fashioned and academic. He was just very worried 'cause I was quite wayward.

HA: [laughs] How many children are there in your family?

SO: My mother and father had four children, and then my father remarried. I'm the third of my mother and father's children.

HA: And are your parents friends?

SO: My mother's dead.

HA: I'm sorry.

SO: I'd say they probably weren't friends when they were alive. Although they loved each other a lot. They're better friends now. [little laugh]

HA: Why haven't you released a full-length album in five years?

SO: I've been shopping for a record deal for a while. EMI closed down ten days after the Gospel Oak EP came out.

HA: You're kidding me.

SO: It was awful. They knew they were going to close down. A number of us had records come out and to this day EMI hasn't called us to tell us that they're closed down. We found out through Variety. So I spent two years looking for a record deal, 'cause it's like a marriage. I didn't want to rush into it. Before I made this deal with Atlantic I instinctively realized those other places were interested in signing me and other artists in order to shut us up rather than to actually allow us freedom. To own us, corral us all. It's quite sinister. Like record companies being owned by arms dealers. Whiskey manufacturers. It wasn't likely such a company was going to promote someone like me, who was a protest singer, see what I mean?

HA: And they feel they should be able to market you along with the liquor, right?

SO: Exactly. I don't want to get on stage and have a Seagram's fucking malt thing behind me. 'Cause I don't believe in alcohol. I'm a weedhead. I'd get up with a big weed leaf behind me. Like Cypress Hill.

HA: [laughs] You feel Atlantic is a good place to be?

SO: I just felt morally what Atlantic stood for was what I stood for as well. It's a very secure ship. It doesn't feel like a forced marriage and I'll have to have sex with someone I don't want to have sex with. [both laugh]

HA: One of the things about your music and this album in particular is that it goes directly to the soul.

SO: That was the object of the game, definitely. To make a soul record, which discussed the issue of soul.

HA: What's different about this new one, in relation to the first three?

SO: Well, obviously, a person will grow to maturity. I guess there's more of a sense of direction.

When you're young, you don't really know quite what you're aiming at. You're very impulsive and acting on impulse, which is very important and valuable. But you're kind of swimming in a blind sea. When you get older, you have more of a sense of direction. With this album, I could sit down and say to myself, "Well, what do I want to achieve with this one?" When I was younger, I wouldn't really have a plot or plan or sense of direction. Which I think was also what was great about those records. They were kind of uncontained, in a way. But there's something about Faith and Courage--it's a controlled explosion. And implosion.