Sinéad, why pose like this if you’re the Boss?

PERHAPS the irony of Sinéad O’Connor’s new album title, I’m Not Bossy I’m The Boss, is that when it comes to her record company, she doesn’t seem to be in charge at all. Her new album cover shows Sinead as we have never seen her before – as an eyecatching va-va-voom glamour puss. In her black PVC jump suit, wig of jet black hair, severe fringe and smokey eye make-up, she cradles her guitar to her body, looking like a cross between Morticia Adams and a Uma Thurman clone in one of those Quentin Tarantino films.

It’s quite a turnaround for the musical legend who has always kicked against the entertainment industry and its crass, prepackaged ideals of beauty and female sexual allure. When other stars capitulated to the expectation that they become identikit Barbie dolls or resorted to exhibitionistic displays of semi-nudity to flog their wares, Sinéad made authenticity her hallmark and a no-frills androgyny her signature style. Of course, being a natural beauty meant that she could afford to ignore the marketing men.

Her distinctive looks and piercing eyes helped her image of shaven-headed minimalism become instantly recognisable and turned her version of Nothing Compares 2 U into a hit. And while middle age and medications have taken their toll, she still has a distinctive look, one that underscores her independent spirit and makes her a rare bird in a business where even big name stars submit to the cult of eternal youth.

So what’s Sinéad doing now at the age of 47, promoting an image of herself that is photoshopped to the nth degree and which even she admits is entirely fake? ‘In real life I only really look like I look on my album sleeve from the neck down,’ she wrote with typical candour on her official website. But is honesty an excuse for her submission to an industry for which she has on several occasions professed such a sturdy loathing?

She explains her capitulation as a trade-off with her record producers. She wanted to change the name of her album when she heard of Sheryl Sandberg’s campaign to promote leadership among young women. The chief operating officer of Facebook had come up with the catchphrase I’m Not Bossy I’m The Boss to draw attention to the insidiousness of the word ‘bossy’ and how it is applied solely to girls to stop them asserting themselves at school or in the playground.

BUT it was too late to call her album after the campaign… until an opportunity arose for compromise. ‘ When the record company received the promo shots – which included the cover shot you now see – they asked could they change the planned cover to the current one. And that allowed me the opportunity of changing the title,’ explains Sinéad.

The result is that, paradoxically, while the album bears a gung-ho feminist slogan, its image is of a musical legend who has for long been a beacon of female independence and non-conformity bending to the dictates of record moguls with an image that is not just hackneyed but has the effect of making Sinéad O’Connor look spookily interchangeable with a range of other female stars.

In a line-up that included Katy Perry or one of Jessie J’s characters, the new look Sinéad O’Connor would be almost indistinguishable – and that says something when you consider how she made her name on being a one-off. It also raises questions about the pride she took in being a mother figure to younger stars, including Miley Cyrus, who she famously warned against letting herself be pimped by the music industry.

A few months ago, she explained that her anti-glamorous image was an act of rebellion against the demands of record executives.

‘I got put into the record business at a time when record executives were a little frisky. Put it that way,’ she said. ‘You had to protect yourself straight off. The executives wanted me to grow my hair really long and wear mini-skirts and all that kind of stuff, because they reckoned I’d look much prettier.

‘So I went straight around to the barber and shaved the rest of my hair off to make myself as unattractive as I possibly could.’ Fair play to her for having the guts to dictate terms to her record bosses. She was an neophyte but she was the boss.

Now that she’s in her late 40s and has made a fortune for the record companies, she can’t use the neophyte excuse. It tells us all we need to know about the primacy of youth in the entertainment game.