Sinead O'Connor didn't come across in the most flattering light last month when she pleaded for psychiatric help on Twitter. But the Irish singer is in control in a new chat with USA Today to plug her first album in four years, How About I Be Me (And You Be You), out Tuesday.
The title is pure O'Connor - lyrical and confrontational.
"I've spent all my life as an artist being told what I should be and what I shouldn't be - basically, why don't you just be somebody else," she explains. "I just got sick of it, because I was having so much fun doing what I was doing, and I was being me. . . . I was going to call it just How About I Be Me, but I thought that was selfish, and that I should express that I don't mind you being you, either." Fans may be shocked to learn the record includes those most un-O'Connor of things, love songs. "I never did love songs, and I'm really surprised that came out," she says, warning that they're not about her fourth husband, Barry Herridge, whom she dumped after 18 days.