Pick a Day

Sinead O'Connor is born in Glenageary, County Dublin, Ireland.

Sinead O'Connor, 18, signs with Ensign Records. She releases her debut album, The Lion And The Cobra, two years later.

Sinead O'Connor, 20, releases her debut album, The Lion And The Cobra. It earns her a tour with INXS and a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female. Her next album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, is a global sensation.

Sinead O'Connor releases her second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. The single "Nothing Compares 2 U," written by Prince, propels her to stardom.

Sinead O'Connor's cover of the Prince song "Nothing Compares 2 U" goes to #1 in America, where it stays for four weeks. It thrusts O'Connor into the spotlight, which she quickly rejects, finding the rituals of fame vapid and materialistic. Two years later, she makes news for tearing up a picture of the Pope on live TV.

Sinead O'Connor refuses to appear as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live in protest of the guest host, comedian Andrew Dice Clay.

After soundcheck for her concert in Saratoga Springs, New York, Sinead O'Connor dons a disguise and joins protesters outside the venue. The hubbub is over her concert from a week earlier when she asked that the National Anthem not be played before her performance.

Sinéad O'Connor refuses to perform at the Garden State Arts Center in New Jersey until they agree not to play the US national anthem before the show.More

Sinead O'Connor is named Worst-Dressed Woman of 1990 in Mr. Blackwell's annual list.

Public Enemy and Sinead O'Connor are nominated for Grammy Awards, but skip the ceremony: PE has beef because the rap award isn't televised; Sinead says they "respect mostly material gain." She wins anyway, taking the trophy for Best Alternative Music Performance for her album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got.More

The "Sinead Brigade," a group supporting Sinéad O'Connor, who tore up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live a few weeks earlier, protests outside of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, where Cardinal John O'Connor is holding mass. Wearing masks of O'Connor, they mimic her display by tearing up photos of the Pope.

Sinéad O'Connor is booed when she takes the stage at Bobfest, a Bob Dylan tribute at Madison Square Garden. O'Connor had torn up a picture of the Pope 13 days earlier on Saturday Night Live, making her the most polarizing person in music. At Bobfest, she keeps going against the grain, scrapping her expected Dylan cover and shouting out a protest song instead.More

Sinéad O'Connor, famous for her hit song "Nothing Compares 2 U," goes way off script during her Saturday Night Live appearance, declaring "Fight the real enemy" and tearing up a picture of the Pope.More

Organized by Sarah McLachlan, the all-female Lilith Fair tour kicks off with a show in The Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington State. The lineup includes Jewel, Suzanne Vega and Paula Cole, with Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow and Fiona Apple joining on subsequent stops.More

Sinead O'Connor records the first ever single via the Internet in a BBC studio as part of the Tomorrow's World program. The song is a cover of Bob Marley's "Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)" recorded for the War Child charity.

Sinead O'Connor is ordained in Lourdes, France, as the first female priest in the Latin Tridentine Church, a dissident Roman Catholic group.

The all-star tribute concert Here There and Everywhere: A Concert For Linda is held at London's Royal Albert Hall, where Paul McCartney, George Michael, Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders), Elvis Costello and Sinead O'Connor raise money for animal charities while remembering Paul's wife Linda, who has recently succumbed to breast cancer.

Sinead O'Connor releases Faith and Courage, her first studio album in six years.

The day after Curve magazine runs an interview with Sinead O'Connor declaring she's a lesbian, the Irish singer appears on The Rosie O'Donnell Show to perform her anthemic single "No Man's Woman."

Sinead O'Connor comes out as a lesbian during an interview with Curve magazine, saying, "I would say that 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." She marries a man the following year and says she's "three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay."

In Las Vegas, Sinead O'Connor gets married for the fourth time, this time to a drug counselor named Barry Herridge. The couple split up a few weeks later.

Arsenio Hall files a $5 million defamation suit against Sinead O'Connor after the singer posts a message on Facebook suggesting he was the recently deceased Prince's drug dealer. She later apologizes and Hall drops the suit.