Sinead O'Connor Quotes

When you are signed to a major label, everyone wants to have a say in who you are and what you are doing.

Being a pop-leaning, female artist, you'd think that I'd have my record company breathing down my neck and trying to control everything I'm doing. Actually, they've just kind of let me take the wheel.

It is hard, though, 'cos record labels love to boss you around. I won't let them do that anymore.

The record company stay out of my way. Whenever the record is finished, they take it.

I don't like to deal with studios.

I suddenly realized that in order to do what I wanted to do, I had to become that which I hated - which is the head of a record company or a digital media conglomerate - and just do whatever you want.

I am not going to be dictated to by fans, certainly. I am dictated enough to by my record company to last me a million years.

I never had many problems to do my music and to give it to a record company. Rarely do they try to argue with me about my music, probably because it's still too far-out.

I've been lucky to be able to make the records I've wanted to make. The record company has never pressured me to cut certain songs.

It was, 'If you don't do 'The Show Goes On,' your album's not coming out.' I had nothing to do with that record - nothing. I was literally told how I should rap on it. But I'm a bastard, 'cos I'll turn around and put it back in your face.

It's always push and pull with a record company.

I was never your average artist, happy to do whatever the record company told me.

Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.

You don't necessarily pick the singles that you want when you're making a record, but for the most part it's the same process. You're the artist - you make the music that you want to make.

When you fight, anger drives up testosterone in both men and women.

I was literally told for 'The Show Goes On' that I shouldn't rap too deep. I shouldn't be too lyrical. It just needs to be something easy on the eyes. Like a record company telling Picasso that we don't need these abstract interpretations of life, where people have to sit down and look at it and break it down.

I've pretty much run the circle of labels and dealing with that whole kind of battle, because you're the one creating the music, but you're not the final say. That's always been hard.

And then there's all these other creeps that surround your band and suck off you like leeches and try to manipulate you and your business. You have to watch like a hawk. I'm always ready to fight. I see it very much as a battle.

My responsibility is to the artist first. There's something that artists intrinsically know about their music and their fanbase that neither the record company nor the producer really knows.

A lot of things encouraged me to start my label. I think it's very important for an artist to know how many records they've sold and where they've sold. I know that I have never been treated the way I'm supposed to be treated - like an artist. That's why I do things for myself. I feel like I'm a free man.

I'm not interested in forcing my music on people, and that's what the whole music industry nowadays is based on is forcing stations to play it, forcing people to listen to it.

I will never sign to a major record label again. If, by some mega fluke, a record of mine looked like it might break big, I'd try and do it via an indie or somehow license it. I'm not having my music owned by those corporate bastards again.

Goddamn bitch set me up!

I always wanted to do things on my own terms, and unfortunately in this industry, that's not something that is easily given. You're at the mercy of other people, but then you still have that drive to continue on. That's an equation for a lot of heartbreak.

I find it so funny how people that don't write the music, and have no involvement in it, can make such huge decisions on behalf of artists.