Acclaimed Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor, known for hits such as “Nothing Compares 2 U” and for shredding a photo of the pope while hosting “Saturday Night Live,” has died. She was 56.
A cause of death was not immediately given. The singer had lost her son, Shane, to suicide in January 2022, after which she was briefly hospitalized following a string of tweets in which she said she planned to “follow my son.”
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad,” her family said in a statement confirming her death to Irish broadcaster RTE. “Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”
In one of her last posts on social media, dated July 17, O’Connor expressed her ongoing grief over the death of her son.
“Been living as undead night creature since,” she wrote. “He was the love of my life, the lamp of my soul. We were one soul in two halves. He was the only person who ever loved me unconditionally. I am lost in the bardo without him.”
“The bardo” refers to the Tibetan concept of the state between life and death/rebirth. O’Connor was raised Catholic but converted to Islam in 2018. In her Twitter bio, she referred to herself as an “amateur theology student.”
Born in Dublin, Ireland on Dec. 8, 1966, Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor was named after Irish author Sinéad de Valera and Saint Bernadette.
Deemed a delinquent at 15 for truancy and shoplifting, O’Connor was sent for 18 months to a Magdalene asylum, a reform school run by the Catholic Church. O’Connor would later claim she was severely abused as a child, particularly by her mother, and attributed her time at the school as instrumental in her development as an artist.
While her first album, 1987’s “The Lion and the Cobra,” was moderately successful in the U.K. and earned her a Grammy nod, it wasn’t until her second album, “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” that O’Connor would reach international stardom. She went on to release 10 studio albums during her decades-long career.
Her famed cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” was named the No. 1 World Single at the inaugural Billboard Music Awards in December 1990. The song also garnered O’Connor several Grammy nominations and won Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards. In 1991, Rolling Stone named her Artist of the Year.
However, O’Connor boycotted the 1991 Grammy Awards on grounds that they primarily rewarded material gains more than artistry.
Earlier this year, O’Connor received a standing ovation at the RTÉ Choice Music Awards while receiving the first-ever award for Classic Irish Album for “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.”
She dedicated the award to “each and every member of Ireland’s refugee community,” noted The Irish Times, who first reported her death.
O’Connor notoriously tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II during a 1992 appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” calling it a protest against widespread allegations of child abuse in the Catholic Church — presaging the public revelations by about a decade.
While much of the world saw the move as a career-killer, O’Connor saw the opposite. She would later write in her memoir, “Rememberings,” that it was having a No. 1 song that threw her career off track, and the photo shredding is what put it back.
“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she told The New York Times in 2021. “But it was very traumatizing. It was open season on treating me like a crazy b—h.”
She expounded on that in the 2022 Showtime documentary on her life and art, “Nothing Compares.”
“It was just such a shock to me to become a pop star,” she said in the film. “It’s not what I wanted. I just wanted to scream.”
O’Connor is survived by her remaining three children — Jake Reynolds, 36; Roisin Waters, 27; and Yeshua Bonadio, 16 — and 8-year-old grandson.
With News Wire Services
