In the bizarre position of being one of the most famous female vocalists of the '90s for reasons that have little to do with her own music, onetime shaven-headed Sinead O'Connor (b. Dec. 8, 1967, Dublin, Ireland) has made many more enemies than friends in the course of her brief career. Particularly so in America, where she has caused a non-stop series of well-publicized stirs by: 1) refusing to allow "The Star-Spangled Banner" to be played prior to her concert performance; 2) refusing to appear as booked on NBC's Saturday Night Live due to its scheduled guest host Andrew Dice Clay; 3) refusing to participate in the Grammy Awards ceremony due to her disdain for the industry it represented--despite earlier appearing on the MTV and American Music Awards shows; 4) memorably ripping up a photograph of the Pope when she finally did appear on Saturday Night Live; and, finally, 5) by being booed off the stage in 1992 as she began to sing at Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary Concert at Madison Square Garden. To add to the irony, O'Connor--who is without question a skilled singer-songwriter--became famous largely on the basis of her four-week No. 1 single of 1992, "Nothing Compares 2 U," a song penned not by her but by Prince.
The former lead vocalist of Dublin group Ton Ton Macoute, O'Connor was signed to Ensign Records in the mid-'80s, and made an appearance prior to her first album on the soundtrack to Captive, a film scored by U2 guitarist The Edge and Michael Berkeley. For most, though, her career began with the 1988 gold album The Lion And The Cobra, which established her as an alternative artist with an extremely eclectic sound merging several genres, sometimes including both hard rock and Irish folk. Her peculiar mix of sensuous vocals and strident yelps--a strange cross of punk rock queen Siouxsie Sioux and musical experimentalist Laurie Anderson--combined with her inescapable image of a skin-headed, apparent waif, and instantly became the subject of international attention. When the album entered the top 40, it appeared O'Connor was slowly laying the groundwork for what might be a major career.
No one suspected what would come with 1990's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. O'Connor's wildly emotional rendition of "Nothing Compares 2 U," written by Prince and first performed by the Family in 1985, was an absolute knockout. Its video version--which featured an extreme close-up of the face of the singer, crying as she sang--became a huge MTV favorite; it strongly helped the song quickly rise to No. 1, where it stayed for four weeks. The album, on the chart for a full year, similarly rose to No. 1 and remained there for six weeks.
Even before that staggering success, O'Connor had been deeply affected by her sudden fame, and the mostly autobiographical songs on I Do Not Want... revealed a woman in turmoil. Songs such as "Feel So Different" and "The Emperor's New Clothes" were sometimes embarrassingly open; the latter's lyrics featured the singer musing, "He thinks I just became famous/And that's what messed me up/But he's wrong/How could I possibly know what I want/When I was only 21?" Additionally laying her emotionally bare--and making the work such an emotional roller coaster--was the fact that O'Connor had given birth to a son, Jake, fathered by her drummer, John Reynolds, before completing the album.
Following much of the tumult that followed the "Star Spangled Banner" and Pope-picture brouhahas detailed above, O'Connor returned in 1992 with Am I Not Your Girl?, an ill-advised album of cover versions of standards and "favorites" that included Marilyn Monroe's "I Want To Be Loved By You," Billie Holiday's "Gloomy Sunday," and Evita's "Don't Cry For Me Argentina." The album peaked quickly at No. 29, but stayed on the chart for an extremely brief nine weeks. And while her previous album had been greatly aided by her video version of "Nothing Compares 2 U," one suspects her video to first single "Success Has Made A Failure
