Sinead O'Connor was the one of the most iconic female artists of the early 90s and after years of soul searching and musical experimentation she's finally hoping to get back into the charts where she belongs.Her new single 'I Don't Know How to Love Him' is released on 11th June closely followed by a brand new double- disc album. Sinead tells us about the inspiration for the album and how religion helped her write the new material.Your last album was released in 2005 so what have you been up to since then?Well it's simply not possible for me to bring out a quality album every year so I have been working on the latest album for most of that time. I've also got 4 kids to look after so 2 years is not really a lot of time.The new album 'Theology' has 2-discs, both an acoustic and electric version, why did you decide to do it this way?It was a total accident actually. I originally recorded a demo of the tracks with my friend RomTom but had no plans to use it but he pleaded with me to release it and was quite annoyed when i wasn't going to.You wrote quite a lot of the tracks yourself. Is there any one you are particularly proud of?
My favourite is a track called 'If You Had a Vineyard' because I think it is something really lovely. It is based on a scripture, I took all the lines from the book of Isaiah because I think there's something about it that flows very nice and easily.
So would you say the album was very much influence by religion?
Yes definitely. That's why it's called Theology. I have studied theology all my life and would love to write a theology book but I don't know how to write a book. Music is my thing so that's how the album came about. The scriptures were the reason for the songs to be created.
You have also been very open about the influences war has on your song writing. How is that?
There are wars being fought all over the world and this is mainly due to the way they interpret theology. They use violence to sort things out but I am showing that this does not have to be the case.
Your new single is a cover of a song from Jesus Christ Superstar. Why did you decide on this track?
Most of the album is based on the Old Testament so I thought I better pay some respect to the New Testament. There is a fine line between corny and cool when it comes to religious music and very few people have managed to make it cool. Perhaps only Bob Dylan in recent times. This is a song that I have always loved so I think it is a great one to release.
'I Don't Know How to Love Him' is released on 11th June followed by 'Theology' released on 25th June.
Caz Moss