SINEAD O’CONNOR, Irish musician, was born (d: 2023); Grammy Award winning Irish singer-songwriter, her 2002 album, Sean-Nós Nua, marked a departure in that O’Connor interpreted or, in her own words, “sexed up” traditional Irish folk songs, including several in the Irish language. In Sean-Nós Nua, she covered a well-known Irish Folk song, “Peggy Gordon”, interpreted as a song of Lesbian love. In her documentary, Song of Hearts Desire, she stated that her inspiration for the song was her friend, a lesbian who sang the song to lament the loss of her partner.

In a 2000 interview in Curve, O’Connor outed herself as a lesbian, “I’m a lesbian … 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.”

However, soon after in an interview in The Indepenent, she stated, “I believe it was overcompensating of me to declare myself a lesbian. It was not a publicity stunt. I was trying to make someone else feel better. And have subsequently caused pain for myself. I am not in a box of any description.” In a magazine article and in a program on RTE (Ryan Confidential, broadcast on RTE 1 on May 29, 2003), she stated that while most of her sexual relationships had been with men, she has had three relationships with women. In a May 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly, she stated, “I’m three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay. I lean a bit more towards the hairy blokes.”

She posted a video of herself in the middle of what could only be described as a nervous breakdown. She subsequently made an appearance on Dr. Phil’s Show.