KEY POINTS:
Once she was the bad girl who caused one of the biggest rock and roll outrages since John Lennon described the Beatles as bigger than Jesus Christ. Now Sinead O'Connor, the young singer who ripped up the Pope's portrait, has returned as a mellowed, middle-aged mother who puts psalms to music.
Her new album, Theology, out next month, will feature Psalm 33, with minor textual changes of no great theological significance. Where the Bible refers to a "ten string lyre", for instance, O'Connor has substituted a "bass amp". There is also a version of Rivers of Babylon, a song based on Psalm 137, and of the Tim Rice/ Andrew Lloyd Webber song I Don't Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar.
Each song is performed twice. On the "Dublin side" of the album, it is sung with just an acoustic guitar, while on the "London side", it is done with full orchestra. O'Connor has said she hopes the album is "on the right side of the line between corny and cool."
It is an interesting departure for the singer who once deliberately offended Catholic opinion, and scandalised Middle America, with her appearance on Saturday Night Live, in 1992. She performed an anti-war song by Bob Marley, but adapted it to refer to child abuse.
As she sang the word "evil", she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II and threw the fragments at the camera. She said later she did it to protest about the way the Catholic church had ignored child abuse, and because "I was wondering what would happen".
What happened was her singing career went into the doldrums, especially in the US, where she had difficulty performing without being booed off stage.
O'Connor was born in Dublin in 1966. When she was 8, her parents had a very public divorce, which they debated on television. Her mother was given custody of the children, although - according to O'Connor - she abused them.
O'Connor began recording when she was 20 and pregnant, and broke into international stardom in 1990, with the single Nothing Compares 2 U, which was accompanied by a four-minute video consisting of almost nothing but a close up of her face.
She had already courted controversy with remarks about the IRA, and disparaging comments about Ireland's top band, U2.
In 1990, she refused to go onstage in New Jersey while the US national anthem was being played, for which Frank Sinatra threatened to "kick her ass".
She caused another uproar in Ireland in 1999, by announcing she had become a priest and wished to be known as Mother Bernadette Mary. The Catholic Church does not recognise women priests.
She had been ordained in Lourdes by the breakaway Latin Tridentine Church, to which she made a large donation.
In 2000, she announced she was a lesbian, but changed her mind and told the Independent "I believe it was over-compensating of me to declare myself a lesbian." The next year, she married a male journalist, Nick Sommerlad, who was distantly related to Queen Sylvia of Sweden. The marriage later broke up.
She has four children - Jake, 20, Roisin, 11, Shane aged 2, and Yeshua, born last December - each by a different father.
In 2002, she retired from rock music, suffering from fibromyalgia, a chronic fatigue illness brought on by stress, but she returned with a reggae album last year.
She has recorded Theology with an independent label, fearing that a mainstream record company would put pressure on her to go back on the rock and pop circuit. Next month, she will embark on a world tour starting in California and taking her through 14 countries, ending at the V Festival in Chelmsford in August.
- INDEPENDENT
