Sinéad O'Connor

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Faith & Courage Sinéad O'Connor

Throughout much of her career, Sinéad O'Connor's personal torments and passions have been played out in public, frequently overshadowing the poetry of her music. The tabloid-fueling antics that led up to Faith and Courage created the perception of a woman on the fringe, but this album redirects attention back on her considerable talents. Faith and Courage unveils the rebellious Irishwoman as a sexy, vulnerable, emotional artist who's stared down her demons and is ready to revel in her triumphs. The album's you go, girl sentiment is pumped up by strong R&B and hip-hop elements. Its crisp acoustic guitar arpeggios and air-tight beats (think TLC's Fanmail) snap like the crack of a belt on "Daddy I'm Fine," "'Til I Whisper U Something," and "Dancing Lessons." Brian Eno, Eurythmic Dave Stewart, bassist Jah Wobble, and Wyclef Jean help O'Connor leverage the album's radio-ready rhythms into everything from power pop to Celtic mysticism. Lyrically, O'Connor acknowledges her periodic lack of judgment, but makes no apologies, opting instead to carry the torch for feminine sexuality, financial independence, soul searching, and her right to shave her head, wear leather boots, rock out, and still be a good mother. In other words, Sinead brings home the bacon and fries it up in a pan, millennium style. --Beth Massa

Amazon.com's Best of 2000
As a controversial artist who's confounded and even repelled fans, Sinead O'Connor returns with a pop triumph. Demonstrating an ability to move fluidly from raucous rock to ethereal reggae, O'Connor's pop sensibilities sparkle without sacrificing her hard-won wisdom and spiritual enlightenment. Faith and Courage shows us both. --Kevin Cole

So Far...The Best Of Sinead O'Connor Sinéad O'Connor

With a distinctive voice and controversial statements, Sinead O'Connor was briefly in the limelight and quickly in the doghouse. But even her opinionated politics can't take away from the beautiful work she's contributed to the post-punk canon. O'Connor's poignant delivery of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U," is still heart-wrenchingly painful. "Troy" is equally evocative. So Far... The Best of Sinead O'Connor provides a thorough sampling of O'Connor's early years. Emotionally charged rockers like "Emperor's New Clothes" and "Mandinka" are essential inclusions, as are her rhythmic explorations with Bomb The Bass, "Empire," and the early "I Want Your (Hands On Me)." Sadly, her Cole Porter contribution to Red, Hot, And Blue was omitted. But O'Connor proves she rightfully deserves diva status with her rendition of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." As if there were ever any doubts. -- Steve Gdula

The Sinéad O'Connor Site

I know that I have done many things to give you reason not to listen to me  -- Sinead O'Connor 2000 -

You can find information about Sinéad O'Connor here. The site contains pictures, lyrics, news, a discography, real audio-files, mp3, and much more. 

Sinead O'Connor

A slick site all about Sinead O'Connor in both English and Czech.

Sinead O'Connor

From First Cut

Excerpt:

She's mad, she's bald, and she's got a voice that can bend steel or float like a butterfly. And back in 1987, there was no one like Sinead O'Connor.

In 1989 she released her second album, which featured the hit single "Nothing Compares 2 U," and sent her soaring to stardom -- maybe faster than she should have at the age of 22.

It wasn't long after that that Sinead got a reputation, starting with when she tore up the Pope's picture on Saturday Night Live. From that point on, the world would never look at her the same way, and her career took a sharp turn downwards. There were rumors of fights, drugs, and suicide attempts...

Interview with the British TV station ITV

Excerpt:

"I did the album "Am I Not Your Girl" because I like the music but principally I used the fact of being able to make an album of music that I like, in order to create the circumstances under which I could conduct my own fight against what I see as being evil. And the tools that I can use are the fact that I am a famous person and therefore can attract a lot of attention and can create a lot of discussion, which I obviously did by ripping up the picture of the Pope..."

Faith and Courage and Sexuality

This site includes an article by Desmond Sampson about Faith and Courage, plus Sinéad's sexuality.

Excerpt:

Although she hasn't released an album since 1994, she's hardly been out of the headlines, with the innermost details of her suicide attempts, abortion and sexual abuse splashed across the newspapers. It's publicity she seems always to have courted. Her extraordinary, extracurricular activities - burning effigies of the Pope on TV; informing the police that her friend, Shane McGowan from The Pogues, was in possession of drugs; becoming a priest in her own religious order and fighting an acrimonious and very public custody battle over her daughter Roisin - have ensured she's stayed in the spotlight. She stages protests, reveals intimate details of her life to anyone who asks and is as reviled as she is revered. In fact, few celebrities have conducted their private lives as publicly as O'Connor. "It's hard living your private life in public," she sighs. "But it's often been my fault because (in the past) I've been naive and too honest; if someone asked me my opinion about something I'd tell them."  Hoping to leave all those trials and tribulations behind to concentrate on promoting her impressive new album, Faith and Courage, her plans were soon stymied by revelations she was gay. "I'm not a lesbian," counters O'Connor. "I'm bi-sexual. I've had relationships with both men and women. But it's not something that I think too much about, because everyone's bisexual - there's no such thing as being gay or straight," she asserts. "Anyway, my sexuality is nobody's business...

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