Sinead O'Connor Ends 18-Day Marriage

Sinead O'Connor attends the Giorgio Armani & Cinema Society screening of 'Albert Nobbs' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images

Sinead O'Connor has ended her marriage to Barry Herridge after only 18 days. The singer announced the split on her website yesterday in a post explaining that "within three hours of the ceremony being over the marriage was kyboshed by the behavior of certain people in my husband's life."

Issues with her husband's family were only part of the problem, apparently. "[There was] a wild ride I took us on looking for a bit of a smoke of weed for my wedding night as I don't drink," she wrote. "My husband was enormously wounded and very badly affected by that experience and also by the attitude of those close to him toward our marriage. It became apparent to me that if he were to stay with me he would be losing too much to bear."

"A woman wants to be a joy to her husband," O'Connor added. "So you love someone? Set them free." Despite the sudden ending to their relationship, the singer says that Herridge is a "wonderful man" and that she still loves him. "He has been terribly unhappy and I have therefore ended the marriage," she wrote. "I think he is too nice to do so. And too nice to trap."

O'Connor married Herridge, her fourth husband, after a whirlwind romance. They wed on her 45th birthday at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas. Earlier this year, the singer went about a public search for a new man on her website, wrote a series of suicidal tweets that alarmed her fans and revealed plans to release a new album next year.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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