As far as I'm concerned, I'm now in the business of making spiritual records and using my voice for that purpose. I'm not going to be singing songs that I made in the past. I closed the door on that incarnation of Sinead O'Connor.
Generally I don't listen to sad songs if I'm sad. I listen to happy songs.
I guess there's a song for absolutely everything that could possibly happen to a person.
What I hope is to really focus on being a songwriter. I'd love to write songs for other people; that's something I'd really like to start doing.
There's a standard of songwriting that, when you start immersing yourself in those types of songs, it raises your own bar as a songwriter. There's also simplicity in the songwriting. It's much harder to be simple than it is to be complicated.
Songs are like ropes that you can kind of hang on to or pull yourself up on.
We have a tradition of passing our history orally and singing a lot of it and writing songs about it and there's kind of a calling in Irish voices when they're singing in their Irish accent.
I love songs, and I love songwriting, and there's a standard of songwriting within Chicago blues in particular. I don't like the sad blues, necessarily; the Chicago blues is what I like, which is the kind of blues you can dance to.
I listen to, like, funky Chicago blues. I love blues, but I love the funky, happy blues. There's a song about pretty much everything, including kidney stones, believe it or not. So there's something there for whatever you happen to be suffering, you know?