Curve Magazine Sinead O'Connor

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Sinéad O'Connor is No Man's Woman
By Diane Anderson-Minshall

(Read the entire coming-out interview in the current issue of Curve, on newsstands June 27 - August 22, 2000.)

When Sinéad O'Connor hit the pop culture radar in the late 1980s, she was a bald-headed, controversy-courting, angry banshee whose vocal acrobatics could put most performers to shame. She thumbed her nose at conventional notions of female beauty and brazenly spoke her mind about child abuse, racism and war. She was the boldest, baddest Irish singer that America had ever seen — and lesbians couldn't get enough of her.

O'Connor first stirred talk about her sexual orientation with a Prince-penned, male-voiced song, "Nothing Compares 2 U". But the Irish-born, London-bred singer had a baby in tow and boyfriends galore ...

Now, more than a decade later, and on the heels of a new album (Atlantic's "Faith and Courage"), the 33-year-old says she's finally at peace. O'Connor, who is raising her 12-year-old son Jake, and shares custody of her 3-year-old daughter Roisin with journalist John Waters, refuses to be reduced to caricature by pundits and she says she refuses to live a life that's not rooted in the truth. And, not unlike Melissa and k.d. before her, she's ready to tell the world, "I am a lesbian."

READ ON for some exceprted quotes below, and find out what else Sinéad had to say in the upcoming issue of Curve:

"I'm a lesbian ... although I haven't been very open about that and throughout most of my life I've gone out with blokes because I haven't necessarily been terribly comfortable about being a lesbian. But I actually am a lesbian."

"I don't think I necessarily paved the way for anyone, but other people paved the way for me. ... that love is politics. That love is really the only politics and the only rebelling and revolution.

"When I was younger, I had very little self-esteem and I didn't feel like I deserved what I had ... the chance to have fun. So now, I still want to be a soul singer, which is what I think I am. And I'm an album artist, I'm not a chart artist. But a huge part of me is just a girl who wants to waggle her butt and have fun."

(Read the entire coming-out interview in the current issue of Curve, on newsstands June 27 - August 22, 2000.)

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