Sinead O’Connor is feeling pretty good about herself these days. She’s currently promoting her 2012 album How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? in London, where she’s given a series of interviews saying that she’s happy to have the focus squarely on her music instead of her sometimes chaotic personal life – bipolar episodes, four marriages, a stint as a priest and as a lesbian, etc. etc.

“I think I’m having a great time making music… so long as I just keep my mouth shut and behave myself,” Sinead told a British talk show host last week.

“I always say to my kids the only purpose God put you on earth for is to be you, 100 percent you, and you are and that’s success.  I mean, you may not have fame or a good name or money or stuff but that’s not necessarily success.”

Speaking of her four kids, she says that all of them have music in their blood in some way or other.  Her eldest, Jake, 25, is a chef in London – his father is John Reynolds, Sinead’s current producer and manager. 

“He’s more into the production end of music,” his mother says. “My daughter Roisin is almost 17 and she’s mad for musicals. My son Shane, he’s only eight-and-a-half and he loves drums.”  

Her youngest, Yeshua, six, could be the one who follows in his mom’s footsteps.  “I think he’s the rocker. He’s the one who sneaks out of bed and plays my guitars in the night,” she says.

The singer has some U.K. gigs lined up this month to promote the album, and then more in April and May throughout Europe. Ireland isn’t on her itinerary as of now, which perhaps isn’t surprising as she gave a recent interview to the U.K. Independent saying she’d gladly leave the land of her birth if it wasn’t for her kids.  Sinead resides in Bray, Co. Wicklow with her three youngest ones.

“I don't leave because I have children with men who still live there," she says. "And their needs come first. But otherwise, I'd leave immediately. I absolutely f*** hate it there. OK, sure, it's a safer environment for younger children than it is perhaps in London, but at least in London you can be anybody you want, and nobody takes any notice of you. 

“In Ireland, I cannot be an ordinary person. Everybody wants something of me, everybody has their fucking opinion. It's exhausting.”