Sinead O'Connor.

Firebrand veteran singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor is finally coming to New Zealand to play at Womad. She answers some selected questions from Russell Baillie

The arrangements for talking to Sinead O'Connor come with instructions: "Please refrain for any 'gossip' style of questions. Nothing about Miley Cyrus. Nothing about her recent managerial change. Nothing about mental health. To keep it as much to the music, and shows as is possible."

Well at least they didn't rule out the really interesting parts of the 48-year-old Irish singer's continually colourful existence.

Things like religion, politics (she's just drawn a flurry of attention by announcing she was joining Irish republican party Sinn Fein, then withdrawing her bid), or her private life (four kids ranging in age from 8 to 27).

But there's only so much time allowed on this late night phone call to her home in Ireland aimed to promote her appearance at the forthcoming Womad Festival.

It's her second Womad headline slot in a year. She replaced the late Bobby Womack as headliner of Womad UK last year and triumphed in the slot, which sounds like it made her hungry for more.

"I hadn't actually headlined a festival for years ... festivals are always the best ones. There's no soundcheck, you just plug in and play. So straight in, no kissing."

O'Connor's recent albums haven't commanded as much attention as they once did in the late 80s and early 90s when she broke through with The Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got then went on a long stylistic walkabout.

But last year's I'm Not Bossy, I'm The Boss was largely seen as a return to form with its punchy, yearning songs, some sounding curiously bluesy.

"I really wanted to make a pop record. The songs are three minutes and they are about love and they are romantic. I wanted to keep it lyrically simple and that is where the influence of the blues would come in."

Watch Take Me to Church from I'm Not Bossy, I'm The Boss

Why a pop record?

I don't know. Why not? I guess I had never really done love songs before and hadn't really ventured into the area of romantic songs and again I fell in love with guitars ... .you just get a feeling you want to make a particular kind of record. You don't think about it too much.

You haven't written love songs before? I'm racking my brain to prove you wrong..

I don't think I have. There's been the odd I've-been-dumped song.

Ah, the odd one?

Well, there wasn't really any recklessly romantic song.

Did you make a pop record because you felt you had something to prove?

No. I have certainly made some pop singles over the course of time. Writing songs or making records with the idea that you have anything to prove, I think you're in trouble. Your only reason for writing songs should be you are going to lose your mind if you don't.

Right.

If you are starting to think about the audience or who is going to buy it or who is going to listen to it, you're not really writing from the right place. You should only be composing because there is something inside you and you can't sit still unless you get it out.

The interesting thing about Bossy is that despite the personal title, the songs don't seem to be about you - or about the outspoken you who exists outside music.

Why would I write songs about that? Again, you would be writing songs for the wrong reasons. You'd be talking to a bunch of other people about stuff that is really not that important and you wouldn't be writing from the place I just described - that really the only reason you should make a record is you are going to lose your mind if you don't - for some personal emotion thing that is going on inside you.

I don't write records about Sinead O'Connor the controversial person that people perceive, I suppose for the same reason I don't really write songs about guys who treat me like shit, I wouldn't want to flatter them.

I suppose the other thing I had in mind when I wrote this album was how it would be live. And the thing is, people don't really buy records any more so how do we make money it's live. That's my strong suit.

So this Womad show is the first time you've been to NZ. Why it's taken so long?

No particular reason. The thing is I'm a mother. I don't even go to America much; I don't like to leave my kids for longer than necessary and if you are going to your part of the world there is no point going unless you are going for two or three weeks. I'm now going to do that, but I have never left my kids for that long in my life. I suppose I'm a part-time working mother. I've never been comfortable leaving my kids longer than a week or so.

How are you perceived these days in Ireland?

I don't know. It's a very difficult to know because I would have to speak to everybody ... I think if anything if I'm seen as a kind of sister.

People who don't like you usually don't bother to come up to tell you. My interactions with people here, they kind of think of me as the naughty sister. I think people think quite fondly of me but I haven't interviewed them all. To be honest, if I spent too much time thinking about what other people thought, it would be waste of time. The main thing is what your loved ones think about you.

You are working on an autobiography - how is that going?

It's good. I am really enjoying writing it. It's going to be good I think. I never wrote a book before so it's scary. It's unusually written. It's not written in the usual way a memoir would be written. I'm hoping it reads like a novel.

We live in an age of rock memoirs but the good ones tend not to be the ones that go "and then and then and then" ...

Yeah exactly. It's quite unusual. I don't know how to describe it. You're going to have to wait until it comes out. It's written as if everything has just happened today. On my website I have had a blog for some time and it is in the tone of the blog. I am taking stuff that has happened when I was four, five or six or whatever and writing about it in the child's voice as if it happened today. Everything goes on as if it's happened today or yesterday.

Has it been hard work?

I like hard work. It doesn't seem like hard work. Songwriting influences prose writing and I've always written prose as well as songs. If you are songwriter the way you write prose is different. It's an addiction of mine actually, writing, so it is hard work but I like it. It doesn't feel like work.

As you've gone through your life, has there been stuff that you've now got a different perspective on, now that you've had to write about it?

Yeah. Very much so. Very much so.

Like what?

I can't give it all away.

So who is going to play you in the movie of the book?

I doubt there will be a movie of the book to be honest. I don't know if there's a movie in it.

So did you get the list of stuff that I shouldn't ask about too?

No. It's my own instructions that I've asked people not to ask me about, because I just don't want to waste anyone's time or end up putting the phone down or taking shite really. I like talking about music and not the other bullshit.

So how is life treating you at the moment?

Very well indeed.

Who: Sinead O'Connor
What: Womad
Where and when: Sunday March 15, 6.30pm, TSB Bowl stage

- TimeOut