The Observer writer first met the young Dublin singer before fame struck. Then they started hanging out together off-duty. He recalls her as a fierce outsider and a beguiling free spirit
On a bright wintry afternoon towards the tail end of 1989, I met Sinéad O’Connor in a flat on All Saints Road in west London. I was there to interview the 23-year-old singer for the Face magazine about the making of her imminent second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. Its title, Sinéad was keen to point out, reflected a newfound calmness and serenity following what had been a turbulent few years following the release of her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, in 1987.
She was, she said, no longer “this desperately unhappy and fucked-up person” who had been “bolshy and aggressive to everyone”. Instead, the new songs were “prayerful – not literally, but insofar as they give off a religious feeling – spiritual happiness”. By the time my feature was published as a cover story in February 1990, her second single from that album, Nothing Compares 2 U, had become a worldwide hit, transforming her life and utterly disrupting that short-lived serenity. The fame it brought in its wake was, for Sinéad, akin to an emotional tidal wave: unmooring and almost capsizing. She fought against it as if fighting for her life.
