The San Diego Union-Tribune May 25, 1990, Friday Style, with substance Robert J. Hawkins; Tribune Entertainment Writer People can't stop writing about Sinead O'Connor, though much to her chagrin lately it has been about the lengthening hair atop her head. Of course, she hasn't been reluctant to discuss her once-shaven dome. "They assumed I was aggressive and strong and tough," O'Connor told Rolling Stone. Well, a shaved head is a visually aggressive stance -- man or woman. The O'Connor I encountered backstage at the Grammy Awards last year could hardly be considered aggressive or tough. She was trying to call her family in Ireland shortly after she performed on stage. The look in her face reminded one of a doe being attacked by a pack of dogs and the voice was next to inaudible, unlike the gymnastic vocals she exercises on stage. Anyone seeing the compelling video for "Nothing Compares 2 U" knows that the vulnerability in those eyes cannot be denied. On her 1987 debut, The Lion and the Cobra, O'Connor showed us she is a vocal quick-change artist. In this mix of pop, rock and traditional folk songs her wails, shrieks, low mournful sighs, Celtic rumblings rise up like banshees along the road. On her recently released second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, O'Connor again proves the challenging iconoclast. Most of the 10 songs run well over five minutes, a most un-radio-conscious thing to do. It hasn't hurt. The Prince-penned "Nothing Compares 2 U" has trampled the competition as a single and video. But it shouldn't overshadow the rest of the album. O'Connor, too, has had to grapple with sudden ascent and the havoc it causes to private life. Some of her songs are so deeply, intensely personal and specific that the listener becomes almost voyeuristic. "Feel So Different" opens with the lines "I am not like I was before/I thought that nothing would change me." It is those changes that she struggles with in "The Emperor's New Clothes," a song with the same emotional resonance as Chapman's "Crossroads." Like Tracy Chapman, O'Connor puts into practice the credos from her songs. Uncompromising personal integrity is not a marketing concept. Witness her recent refusal to perform on "Saturday Night Live" when the host was vulgarian Andrew Dice Clay. O'Connor chose to forgo the invaluable exposure of "SNL" rather than be remotely associated with Clay's verbal rape and bigotry. And like Chapman and Clegg, O'Connor has had songs banned in South Africa. Her live, 75-minute performance is described as "full of drama -- but never melodramatic," not unlike her life.