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Artist News
Sinead O’Connor dies
By Andy Malt | Published on Thursday 27 July 2023
Sinead O’Connor has died, aged 56. No cause of death has yet been made public.
In a statement to Irish broadcaster RTE, her family said: “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinead. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time”.
Born in Dublin in 1966, O’Connor first gained attention as a singer fronting the band Ton Ton Macoute in the mid-1980s. Off the back of this, she branched out as a solo artist, with her first single – ‘Heroine’ in 1986 – co-written with U2 guitarist The Edge for the soundtrack of the film ‘Captive’.
Her debut album ‘The Lion And The Cobra’ was released the following year and was relatively successful, achieving top 40 chart positions in several countries, including the UK and US. However, it was the follow-up – 1990’s ‘I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got’ – that catapulted her to global fame.
The album’s lead single was her cover of Prince’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, which became one of the most successful releases globally that year.
Throughout her career it remained the song she was best known for – and her version is undoubtedly better known than the original. O’Connor has said that when she met Prince after the song came out they got into a “punch-up” over it. And last year the Prince estate refused permission for the song to appear in a documentary about O’Connor, Prince’s half-sister Sharon Nelson telling Billboard that the family “didn’t feel she deserved to use the song”.
In part, Prince’s protestations seemed less about her performance and more down to O’Connor’s emergence as a controversial figure in the music industry. Often outspoken, her most notorious incident came in 1992 when she appeared on ‘Saturday Night Live’ in the US.
On the show, she performed a version of Bob Marley’s ‘War’ as a protest against sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church. While singing the word “evil”, she held up a photo of Pope John Paul II and tore it into pieces, which she then threw towards the camera. The performance ended with silence in the studio, but was followed by over 4000 complaints to broadcaster NBC.
In her 2021 memoir ‘Remembering’, she said of the performance: “Everyone wants a pop star, see? But I am a protest singer. I just had stuff to get off my chest. I had no desire for fame”.
O’Connor continued to release music throughout her career, most recently 2020 single ‘Trouble Of The World’. However, she was often more in the public eye for her personal life and well-publicised mental health issues.
In January last year, her seventeen year old son Shane took his own life. At the time, O’Connor had been preparing to return to music with the release of ‘No Veteran Dies Alone’, her first album since 2014’s ‘I’m Not Bossy I’m The Boss’.
However, in the wake of her son’s death, the release was postponed and tour dates in support of it were cancelled. In a statement at the time, her management said that this had not been an easy decision but was for the sake of “her own health and wellbeing”.
O’Connor is survived by her three other children, Jake, Roisin and Yeshua.
