Dressed in red leather trousers and a green sweat top embellished with the Christian fish logo, Sinéad herself is similarly unaffected. Her face is free of make-up, and her dark, cropped hair is sprinkled with the first signs of grey. She looks great, but as we settle down to talk, she says she can only get away with being this casual because Róisín isn’t here. “She nags me to dress nicely – she puts make-up on me and makes me stagger around the shopping centre in my stilettos!” Devastatingly beautiful and terrifyingly provocative’ ... O’Connor in the Netherlands. Photograph: Michel Linssen/Redferns

For her, she once said, the Holy Spirit was a bird, free to fly and land where it chose. I hope that Sinéad’s spirit now has that freedom. ‘She coped with sadness and rage through song’ A still from Nothing Compares, the 2022 documentary directed by Kathryn Ferguson. Photograph: AlamySinéad says she believes happiness is a person’s natural birthright. Happiness is a choice. You can get up every day and you can choose to be miserable, or you can choose to be happy. When people said that to me when I was younger, I used to think, ‘What do you know? I’ve got plenty to be unhappy about.’ But now, I feel differently.” Like so many of her fellow Catholics, especially women, Sinéad found the church oppressive at times and life-affirming. She recalled the nun who gave her her first guitar, and a priest who listened to her confession, and told her it was blasphemy to tell him how awful she was when God had made her the way she was.

As her global smash hit Nothing Compares 2 U reached No 1 on the UK charts in February 1990, Sinéad appeared on what was, and remains, Ireland’s biggest television talkshow, RTÉ’s The Late Late Show. Wearing a Dublin Aids Alliance T-shirt, she used her platform to highlight the stigma facing people living with HIV. Things could be worse, she adds. “There’s no bad vibes, we haven’t had a bad word between us, we haven’t been mean to each other, there’s nothing but niceness. So I can’t complain.” We’ve met a few times over the years, Sinéad and I, and we’ve always got on well. But there’s no denying that she can be fragile emotionally. When we arranged this meeting, she’d just got married, and I’d been looking forward to an upbeat, happy chat about her new album and new love. Now, I’m dreading becoming a voyeur to her misery. But it turns out I’ve been worrying needlessly. Sinéad opens the door with a smile and a hug and turns out to be on top form, full of that impish tendency towards mischief that has been so misunderstood over the years. She put a thing on Facebook saying she was looking for a new manager – I thought it was a joke, to be rude to her old manager. But she was serious, and there was no one I’d rather manage. The history of pop is not great music, only – it’s great imagery, which isn’t enough either. So when those two things dovetail, you become a huge artist. In my mind, there were two things with Sinéad – one, the incredible first hit record, and then the extraordinary thing that happened on Saturday Night Live when she tore up the picture of the pope. To me, that’s when she became a superstar; that was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen.

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Dublin Aids Alliance, now the charity HIV Ireland, was then a collective of community and voluntary organisations working with, and advocating for, people living with HIV and Aids. Sinéad’s decision to wear the T-shirt, which she probably considered a small gesture of solidarity, had a far-reaching impact on the community of people living with HIV in Ireland.

Today, the house is empty except for Sinéad and her cute little Yorkshire terriers, Susan and Katie. “They’re filthy, I’m afraid,” she says. “They haven’t had a bath for days. I love them, though. They’re so funny. All they care about is food, sleep and snuggles. They’re like new babies.” Inside, the house is warm and homely, full of the cheerful clutter and chaos of family life. Spend any time at all with Sinéad and it’s clear that her children are the most important things in her life. Her relationships with their fathers have sometimes been complicated, but somehow, she’s made it all work. “It’s easy if you both want to.” She shrugs. “And it’s selfish not to. I’m a compartmentaliser.”

The fabulously outspoken singer

Finally, I broach the subject of her brief marriage. “Look.” She shrugs. “I know this might seem dreadfully cold-hearted, but I actually do see the funny side of it all. There’s no point crying. I’ve had enough practice. I know what happens when you break up. You feel shit for an hour or two, then you’re all right, then you’re shit for another hour or two, and then one day, you’ll wake up and you’ll be grand. The best way to get over one man is to get under another!” She’s learned to cultivate a better relationship with the press in recent years – “They’re very fond of me because I’m good copy, I’m colourful”– but also perhaps to use her internal edit button more often, to protect herself a little better. Although her faith is as strong as ever, for instance, she tends to see it now more as a personal matter than something to be discussed at length in the media. But ‘compromise’ is still not a word that features often in her vocabulary, and she’s now reached an age where people have come to respect her for simply remaining completely, unashamedly herself. Sheryl Garratt A decade or so ago Sheryl Garratt was often awake at dawn, dancing in nightclubs and drinking vodka shots. She is still often up early, but these days you’ll find her foraging in the fields for mushrooms or for seaweed on the shores of Deal in Kent, where she now lives. The former editor of The Face… read more Portraits by Sinéad was really soft spoken, but she had a clear vision of what she wanted to put out into the world. She was really honest and kind – sometimes it’s hard to be those things at the same time, but she was able to do it. She asked a few rap artists to support her when she performed live. I think she appreciated the genre for its honesty, and for the ability of those in it to speak a language that was not accepted by the mainstream. We didn’t care! I think that she was very much like that, too. Had it been a different time, and if she didn’t sing as well as she did, she might have rapped to get her message across. She wanted to speak about what went on inside of her, she wanted to be honest even when lots of folks didn’t agree with it. At least you can rest easy knowing you’ve said what needed to be said.

O’Connor on the Italian TV show Che tempo che fa in 2014. Photograph: Stefania D’Alessandro/Getty Images ‘She was prophetic’ Sinéad O’Connor’s voice is one of the most extraordinary you will ever hear – whether in full flight as a singer, or full flight as a woman, mother, activist, writer and friend. Sinéad was a keener – crying for Ireland and our woes, our warrior queen. She was intensely spiritual and under the armour was a kind, generous and sweet woman. When she protested against the church’s cover-up of priests’ sexual abuse of children by tearing a photo of Pope John Paul II into pieces live on US TV in 1992, the gesture scandalised numerous Catholics. Seven years later she outraged many of them again when she joined the Latin Tridentine church – not recognised by the Vatican – and was ordained a priest, something the official church banned because of her gender.Sinéad O’Connor photographed for the Observer New Review in 2014. Photograph: Pål Hansen/The Observer ‘The power of her voice broke the mic’ I’ve known Neil since I was 19 or 20, and I always had a crush on him, before he was married, or before I met Frank. And they all knew it. I’m never going to act on it – it’s just a funny song about how one might fantasise occasionally about one’s boyfriend’s best friend! And I love the idea of being this old lady but still being this loving, sexual creature. Being 80, and sensually all wrapped up in the man I love.” I first met Sinéad when she was still in school in the early 80s. She came along to Eamonn Andrews’ recording studio in Dublin to make a demo of her song Take My Hand with our band In Tua Na – she loved being part of it all. She walked in carrying her canvas school bag. I remember her hero Kate Bush’s name carefully etched in marker on it. We talk, for a while, about her battles with depression. Seven years ago, after her son Shane was born, she was feeling very low, even suicidal. Shane’s father, the traditional Irish musician Dónal Lunny, was married at the time, and things were difficult. “I felt it was my fault. I was really depressed.”