To hear the celebrity media tell it, Sinead O'Connor is practically unhinged — a capricious, troubled woman who calls off her marriage after 16 days, one who puts out a plea for psychiatric help on Twitter saying, "I'm really unwell."
In conversation, though, the 45-year-old Irish singer comes across as forthright and engaging, by turns spiritually minded, bawdy and even a bit vulnerable. She lets people in quickly, perhaps more readily than she should.
Those qualities also are present on How About I Be Me (And You Be You), out Tuesday. It's also part of what's behind the title of the new album, one she initially intended to call Home.
"I've spent all my life as an artist being told what I should be and what I shouldn't be — basically, why don't you just be somebody else," says O'Connor, who had a No. 1 hit in 1990 with Nothing Compares 2 U but hasn't released a new album since 2007's Theology.
"I just got sick of it, because I was having so much fun doing what I was doing, and I was being me. … I was going to call it just How About I Be Me, but I thought that was selfish, and that I should express that I don't mind you being you, either."
The album, produced by longtime collaborator (and first husband) John Reynolds, recalls O'Connor's 1987 debut, The Lion and the Cobra. It presents a complex artist who thrives on stories, anger, spirituality and sex. Some of it's even downright romantic.
"I never did love songs, and I'm really surprised that came out," she says. The songs, however, shouldn't be interpreted as being about O'Connor's fourth husband, Barry Herridge, whom she married in December, then split with days later. (They've since reconciled.)
"I wrote them during a time when I was going out with a man who's the father of my youngest child (Frank Bonadio, the dad of her 5-year-old son, Yeshua). He's still one of my best mates."
The album also contains several character sketches, including that of an apparently penitent junkie in Reason With Me, on which she sings, "I don't want to waste the life God gave me, and I don't think that it's too late to save me."
"It's someone I happened to see a lot of the journey that he took, a 12-step journey," O'Connor says. "By the time he got to step eight, step nine, the man was reborn. He's alive, and he was undead."
O'Connor saves her harshest words for those who hold themselves in high esteem at the expense of others. The unnerving Take Off Your Shoes imagines the Holy Spiritexcoriating the Pope over the Catholic Church's handling of its pedophilia scandal, while album closer V.I.P. draws stark contrast between self-congratulating celebrities standing behind velvet ropes and children with "a face that never was nor will be kissed," the real VIPs.
O'Connor's personal life threatened to overshadow her new music. Her tweets in January about seeking psychiatric help set off a round of potentially embarrassing stories, although O'Connor says medical professionals commended her for taking her needs public.
"I was really pleased that the hospital people wrote and said thank you so much for tweeting, because it's really important for people to reach out. I got a lot of help, and now it's all good."
She has since deleted her Twitter account. "Twitter is sadly not safe for people who do what I do for a living," she wrote on her website last week.
O'Connor is currently undergoing something of a creative resurgence. Lay Your Head Down, the song she sings on the Albert Nobbs soundtrack, earned a Golden Globe nomination. She covered Bob Dylan's Property of Jesus for the new Amnesty International Chimes of Freedom project, and plans to post performances of all Dylan's Christian songs to YouTube.
"The reason I'm alive is that people gave me hope," she says. "Bob Dylan, in particular, you know what I mean?"
"Artists keep people alive. We're meant to give people hope. … Where you have war, you have a spiritual problem. So the spiritual leaders of the world are failing. I believe the job of artists is to be the emergency fire force. As well as shaking our (breasts)."