Handed by Wayne

Sinéad O'Connor Comes Out; Talks New Single, Video

Irish singer Sinead O' Connor has publicly come out as a lesbian during an exclusive cover story and interview with "Curve" magazine, scheduled to arrive on newsstands June 27, two weeks after "Faith And Courage," her first album in six years, will be released.

O'Connor, who spoke with the nation's best-selling lesbian magazine earlier this month, is the mother of two children: a twelve-year-old son named Jake, and a three-year-old daughter named Roisin, of whom she shares custody with "Irish Times" journalist John Waters.

"I'm a lesbian," O'Connor told the magazine. "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."

O'Connor's comments to "Curve" bring an added dimension to her new single and video, "No Man's Woman." The singer made it clear to MTV News that the track isn't a musical form of male-bashing.

"It talks about a soul," O'Connor said of the song. "A female soul who does not want to be a girlfriend or a wife, but wants to be single, really, but who is very much in love with the spirit of men and wants to conduct a relationship with the spirit of men.

"The song also honors the woman's soul, [which] feels that her teachers will be men, her guides will be men, and her rescuers have been men. Not romantically, though, but spiritually.

"The video shows kind of a symbolic death and rebirth which takes place," she continued, "and which helps this woman's soul to become more of herself by following the guidance of particular male religious instructors. It's very much a song that honors man.

"It's interesting how people think if you reject men sexually, that this means you're somehow rejecting them entirely. But in fact, sometimes it's easier to be intimate with men when there isn't that threat of sexuality or whatever."

Sinead O'Connor's "Faith And Courage" LP, which features production work from the Eurthymics' Dave Stewart, Wyclef Jean, and Kevin "She'kspere" Briggs, will be released on June 13.

<<< BACK TO ARTICLES