Sinead O’Connor has explained the reasons why she cancelled all her planned tour dates for 2012 after citing health reasons.
The singer posted a lengthy message on her fan website describing her ongoing battle with bipolar disorder and the split with her manager, Fachtna O’Ceallaigh.
She writes that instead of receiving treatment for her bipolar disorder, her condition was misunderstood by her management. “I was treated as if it was my own fault I wasn’t managing and I was responsible for it,” she said. “Expectations of me were unreasonable in my opinion and even at times inhumane.”
“It is of course accurate to state Fachtna is the best music BUSINESS manager alive,” she writes. “However being a manager involves more than setting up the business end of things in the fantastic way he absolutely did. ??It involves caring for your client on a personal level and being above all the best friend your client has in the lonely and exploitative world of showbusiness??.”
She added:
“While it is accurate to state that the business end of matters was set up most excellently, it is also accurate to state that my widely documented and extreme illness of the last nine months, which involved a suicide attempt on January 10, 2012, was not taken into consideration at any stage during recent scheduling of my promo tours or concert tours concerning my most recent album.”
When announcing the cancellation of her tour last month (April 24) she said that she had suffered a “very serious breakdown” between December 2011 and March of this year and would not be touring for the rest of 2012. She was advised by her doctors not to tour in support of her new album, How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?, but went ahead anyway, a decision she now regrets.
O’Connor has endured a difficult year, admitting in January that she took an overdose days before issuing her cry for help on Twitter.
How About I Be Me (And You Be You)? was released in February and is the ninth studio album of O’Connor’s career.