Sinéad O’Connor, the gifted Irish singer-songwriter who became a superstar in her mid-20s and was known as much for her private struggles and provocative actions as for her fierce and expressive music, passed away aged 56.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time,” the singer's family said in a statement according to reports. The cause of her death hasn't been disclosed yet.
Sinéad was public about her mental illness, saying that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She posted a Facebook video in 2017 from a New Jersey motel where she had been living, saying that she was staying alive for the sake of others and that if it were up to her, she’d be “gone.”
When her teenage son Shane died by suicide last year, Sinéad tweeted there was “no point living without him” and she was soon hospitalized. Her final tweet, sent July 17, read: “For all mothers of Suicided children,” and linked to a Tibetan compassion mantra.
Recognizable by her shaved head and with a multi-octave mezzo-soprano of extraordinary emotional range, Sinéad began her career singing on the streets of Dublin and soon rose to international fame. She was a star from her 1987 debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, and became a sensation in 1990 with her cover of Prince’s ballad Nothing Compares 2 U, a seething, shattering performance that topped charts from Europe to Australia and was heightened by a promotional video featuring the grey-eyed Sinéad in intense close-up.
She was a lifelong non-conformist — she said she shaved her head in response to record executives pressuring her to be conventionally glamorous — but her political and cultural stances and troubled private life often overshadowed her music.
“Her music was loved around the world and her talent was unmatched and beyond compare,” Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said in a statement on social media.
Sinéad was born on December 8, 1966. She had a difficult childhood, with a mother she alleged was abusive and encouraged her to shoplift. As a teenager, she spent time in a church-sponsored institution for girls, where she said she washed priests’ clothes for no wages. But a nun gave Sinéad her first guitar, and soon she sang and performed on the streets of Dublin, her influences ranging from Dylan to Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Her performance with a local band caught the eye of a small record label, and, in 1987, Sinéad released, The Lion and the Cobra, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies and featured the hit Mandinka, driven by a hard-rock guitar riff and Sinéad’s piercing vocals.
“I suppose I’ve got to say that music saved me,” she said in an interview with the Independent newspaper in 2013. “I didn’t have any other abilities, and there was no learning support for girls like me, not in Ireland at that time. It was either jail or music. I got lucky.”
O’Connor’s other musical credits included the albums, Universal Mother and Faith and Courage, a cover of Cole Porter’s You Do Something to Me, from the AIDS fundraising album Red Hot + Blue, and backing vocals on Peter Gabriel’s Blood of Eden. She received eight Grammy nominations and in 1991 won for best alternative musical performance.
Sinéad announced she was retiring from music in 2003, but continued to record new material. Her most recent album was I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, released in 2014 and she sang the theme song for Season 7 of Outlander.
The singer married four times; her union to drug counsellor Barry Herridge, in 2011, lasted just 16 days. Sinéad had four children: Jake, with her husband John Reynolds; Roisin, with John Waters; Shane, with Donal Lunny; and Yeshua Bonadio, with Frank Bonadio.