Los Angeles Times
May 28, 1990, Monday, San Diego County Edition

SINEAD O'CONNOR

FAME HASN'T DAZZLED POP STAR O'CONNOR;
MUSIC: THE IRISH SINGER-SONGWRITER HAS KEPT HER HEAD AND VALUES IN THE MIDST OF
SHOW-BUSINESS RAZZLE-DAZZLE.
By THOMAS K. ARNOLD


   Sinead O'Connor is hardly your typical pop star.

   She shaved her head so people wouldn't judge her on her looks. She doesn't
like to give interviews while on tour. And she recently bowed out of a scheduled
appearance on television's "Saturday Night Live" because the host was shock
comic Andrew Dice Clay, whom she found morally offensive.

   But even though she doesn't fit the image -- or try to fit the image --
O'Connor is a pop star.

   The brash young Irish singer-songwriter's second and latest album, "I Do Not
Want What I Haven't Got," gave her the status anyway, including the fame,
fortune and other trappings.

   The album has been No. 1 on Billboard's Top Pop Albums chart for nearly two
months, and her single, a cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U," just
finished a four-week stay on top of the Hot 100 singles chart.

   Not that any of this success means much to O'Connor, who will perform Tuesday
night at San Diego State University's Open Air Theatre.

   In a recent interview with Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn, O'Connor
said: "I'm not obsessed with fame and pop stardom. I'm glad there are fans out
there and I'm pleased if they like the record, but I am very removed from the
whole adulation thing."

   O'Connor's stardom in spite of herself can be laid to the resurgence of
interest in singer-songwriter folkies a la O'Connor and Tracy Chapman, in which
the attention is focused on the music rather than the personality.

   "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got" outshines (and has already outsold) its
worthy predecessor, 1987's "The Lion and the Cobra."

   The songs are extremely personal and introspective, underscoring something
else O'Connor told The Times: "I didn't make these records for other people. I
made them to learn things about myself."

   On the sprightly rocker "The Emperor's New Clothes," she reflects on the
recent toning down of her earlier, sharp-tongued, "angry young woman" stance,
which she attributes to insecurity and listening to the wrong people:

   "How could I possibly know what I want/When I was only twenty-one?/And
there's millions of people/To offer advice and say how I should be/But they're
twisted/And they will never be any influence on me."

   She picks up the same theme on the brooding ballad "You Cause as Much
Sorrow":

   "I never said I was tough/That was everyone else/So you're a fool to attack
me/For the image that you built yourself."

   "Black Boys on Mopeds," about the killing of a black man on a moped in a
police chase, is O'Connor's first overtly political track:

   "Margaret Thatcher on TV/Shocked by the deaths that took place in Beijing/It
seems strange that she should be offended/The same orders are given by her."

   O'Connor, 23, was born in Glenageary, in County Dublin. After her parents
divorced, she was sent to live in a convent, where she was expelled at age 14
amid allegations of embezzling money.

   O'Connor was promptly sent away to a "Borstal," a sort of juvenile detention
center, where she took up songwriting. She finished her teen years in a variety
of boarding schools.

   In the meantime, O'Connor had formed her first band, a Gaelic folk-rock
outfit called In Tua Nua. She later plied the Dublin club scene with other
bands, and it was there, in 1985, that she was "discovered" and signed to Ensign
Records.

   It took two years to record her first album, which was a stunning critical as
well as commercial success. "The Lion and the Cobra" sold a million copies in
the United States alone, and O'Connor began getting plenty of attention in the
press, which characterized her -- not altogether unfairly -- as something of a
difficult person.

   Since then, she's done a lot of growing up, and "I Do Not Want What I Haven't
Got" reflects this maturity, both as a person and as a songwriter.