It was perhaps the most shocking crash and burn in pop music history. With her 1987 debut, The Lion and the Cobra, 20-year-old Sinead O'Connor staked her claim as one of the most powerful voices of her generation — a potential that was fully realized three years later when the follow-up, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, became an international sensation. But after engaging in some high-profile squabbles with everyone from Frank Sinatra to the Grammy Awards, in 1992, O'Connor tore up a photograph of the Pope on Saturday Night Live and declared, "Fight the real enemy"; the next week she was booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert, and her album of standards, Am I Not Your Girl? (recorded years before Rod Stewart made such things commercially viable), disappeared from sight. One of rock's brightest stars had become persona non grata overnight.

O'Connor retreated from the public eye for a few years, but she has refused to let that episode define her subsequent life. Over the last seven years, she has steadily and quietly released six albums, including projects exploring traditional Irish music and roots reggae. Her new album, Theology, is a two-disc set offering parallel versions — one disc acoustic, one with full-band arrangements — of new compositions by O'Connor that interpret Biblical texts, plus a few appropriate covers. The afternoon following a stellar performance at a small New York City nightclub, O'Connor — now a 40-year-old mother of four — settled in over coffee and cigarettes to discuss her musical, spiritual and personal journeys.

eMusic: This album seems to work as a summary of your recent interests — studying different religions, Irish folk music, reggae. Does it feel that way to you?

Sinead O'Connor: Yeah, totally. It was something that was growing in my mind for some years, and based on certain influences. With traditional Irish music — when you start dealing with those songs, there's nowhere else to go besides spiritual music of some kind. You can't really climb back down from there. I also had the idea, because of the inspiration I had from the Rasta movement, to do some kind of religious thing. So yes, it's pretty much an expression of all of the things I was interested in, gathered together.

eMusic: The different texts on the album add up to a kind of Judeo-Christo-Rasta blend. Do you differentiate between religions, or do they all meld together for you?

SOC: Well, Rastafari is not a religion for a start, it's really more of a movement. Whereas Judaism and Christianity are religions. By birth, I'd be a Christian — which makes me partly Jewish if you think about it, because Christianity could not exist if not for Judaism. But the Rasta movement itself is kind of a Judeo-Christian movement, too. So I don't feel any contradictions or conflicts between any of the religions, because it's all the same God. People call it different things, but everyone is basically singing about the same thing.

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