(Wednesday, July 26, 2023), the death of singer/songwriter/actor/activist Sinéad O’Connor at age 56 was confirmed by her longtime friend Bob Geldof, the Irish musician and activist, and her family in a statement released by the BBC and RTE. Her surviving siblings include two brothers, Joe and John, and one sister, Eimear; she also has three stepsisters and a stepbrother. O’Connor wrote in her memoir that she had been married four times and had four children: three sons, Jake, Shane and Yeshua, and one daughter, Roisin.
“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 to The Irish Times and the BBC. A cause of death was not given.
Sinéad O’Connor, who was often in the limelight during her extensive career, achieved international recognition with her 1990 cover of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 the same year. An outpouring of grief and tributes came in from distinguished personalities. Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar posted a tweet stating he was sorry to hear of her death and that her musical talent was unparalleled. Irish MMA champion Conor McGregor also paid tribute, expressing that the world has lost an artist with a heavenly voice.
“Ireland has lost an iconic voice and one of our absolute finest, by a long shot,” McGregor said. “And I have lost a friend. Sinead’s music will live on and continue to inspire! Rest In Peace, Sinead you are home with your son I am sure.”
American hip hop icon and actor Ice T also praised O’Connor. “Respect to Sinead….. She stood for something… Unlike most people…. Rest Easy,” he tweeted.
Canadian professional wrestler and WWE star Sami Zayn said “a chill ran through my body reading that Sinéad O’Connor has passed away.”
“She dealt with a lot. I don’t know why but I always felt a strong connection to her. Very, very sad. RIP Shuhada,” Zayn tweeted.
American and Scottish rock band Garbage wrote, “This disgusting world broke her and kept on breaking her.”
“Godspeed dear fragile dove,” the band wrote on Instagram. “Thank you for all the beauty and all the wise teachings you offered up to us.”
The British musician Tim Burgess, of the band Charlatans (known in the United States as the Charlatans UK), wrote on Twitter on Wednesday: “Sinead was the true embodiment of a punk spirit. She did not compromise and that made her life more of a struggle.”
On December 8, 1966, O’Connor was born in Glenageary, Dublin, Ireland. She was the third out of five children, and her father, John, worked as an engineer and her mother, Johanna, was a dressmaker. O’Connor has discussed the issues she faced during her childhood in her memoir and interviews, including the physical abuse she suffered from her mother, the separation of her parents when she was 8, and her rebellious behavior that resulted in her being taken to reform school. At the age of 15, O’Connor was discovered by Paul Byrne, a drummer from the band U2, when she sang “Evergreen” at a wedding. She recorded a song with them, but was deemed too young to join the band. Through an advertisement she put in Hot Press, she found Colm Farrelly, who helped her to form the band Ton Ton Macoute. The band moved to Waterford and then to Dublin, where their performances were well received. The band’s sound was heavily influenced by Farrelly’s interest in world music, and O’Connor’s singing and stage presence were praised.
The singer’s work with Ton Ton Macoute attracted the attention of the music industry and she was eventually signed by Ensign Records. Her manager, Fachtna Ó Ceallaigh, formerly of U2’s Mother Records, organized her first major assignment – providing the vocals for the song “Heroine” which she co-wrote with U2’s guitarist the Edge for the film “Captive.” Ó Ceallaigh, who had been fired due to his criticism of U2, inspired O’Connor to adopt the same habits; she supported the actions of the Provisional IRA and proclaimed U2′s music was “bombastic.” Later, she retracted her IRA comment, stating she was too immature to understand the situation in Northern Ireland. At 16, O’Connor left boarding school and supported herself by waitressing and performing “kiss-o-grams” in a French maid costume. In 1985, when she was eighteen, her mother perished in a car accident after losing control of her car on an icy road and crashing into a bus.
No matter how much attention O’Connor got for her musical career, her activism and provocations were just as noteworthy. She devoted her time to taking Bel canto singing lessons with Frank Merriman at the Parnell School of Music. In an interview with The Guardian in 1993, she said her classes with Merriman were the only therapy she was getting and that he was “the most amazing teacher in the universe.” A year prior, she had declared she would boycott the Grammy Awards since she felt they only gave recognition to the most commercially successful. In 1992, she lent her voice to Peter Gabriel’s “Come Talk To Me” and “Blood of Eden” from his studio album “Us”. Gabriel then invited her to join him on the Secret World Tour in May 1993. O’Connor obliged and was seen with him at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards that September. However, while in Los Angeles, she ingested a lot of sleeping pills, prompting speculation about a suicide attempt, which she denied. She left the tour abruptly, leaving Gabriel to find someone else to take her place. Years later, she wrote in her memoir “Rememberings” that she left Gabriel because he didn’t take the relationship seriously and would not make a commitment.
In October 1992, she infamously tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II and said, “Fight the real enemy,” while performing as a musical guest on “Saturday Night Live.” She explained the move was in protest of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
The move was met with an onslaught of high-profile criticism, with actor Joe Pesci threatening to smack her in his “Saturday Night Live” monologue and Madonna mocking her on the same stage by ripping up a photo of Long Island sex offender Joey Buttafuoco, saying, “Fight the real enemy.” Frank Sinatra went as far as to call her “one stupid broad.” The move was also criticized by the Anti-Defamation League.
“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” O’Connor said to The New York Times in 2021. “But it was very traumatizing,” she added. “It was open season on treating me like a crazy bitch.”
In June 1993, O’Connor wrote a public letter in The Irish Times which asked people to “stop hurting” her: “If only I can fight off the voices of my parents / and gather a sense of self-esteem / Then I’ll be able to REALLY sing …” The letter repeated accusations of abuse by her parents as a child which O’Connor had made in interviews. Her brother Joseph defended their father to the newspaper but agreed regarding their mother’s “extreme and violent abuse, both emotional and physical”. O’Connor said that month, “Our family is very messed up. We can’t communicate with each other. We are all in agony. I for one am in agony.”
In 1991, despite not being a mainstream pop star, she was nominated for several Grammys and won for the best alternative music performance for “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got”. The Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church (an Independent Catholic group not in communion with the Catholic Church) ordained O’Connor as a priest; however, the Roman Catholic Church does not consider women’s ordination to be valid. This came to be after her appearance on the RTÉ’s Late Late Show, on which she expressed her desire to be a Catholic priest. Calling herself Mother Bernadette Mary, O’Connor revealed in a 2000 Curve magazine interview that she was lesbian, though later she retracted the statement and said she was three-quarters heterosexual and a quarter gay. On Oprah Winfrey’s television show in 2007, O’Connor revealed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had tried to kill herself on her 33rd birthday. However, in 2012, she told People magazine that she had been misdiagnosed and was suffering from PTSD due to her history of child abuse. She added that “Recovery from child abuse is a life’s work”.
It is believed that she has complex PTSD, borderline personality disorder, and agoraphobia. In 2015, she argued that her hospital’s rejection to offer her hormone replacement therapy after her hysterectomy was the cause for her psychological issues, claiming that she “was thrown into surgical menopause” and “felt the need to take her own life”. In 2016, she was admitted to rehab for her cannabis addiction. In 2017, she altered her legal name to Magda Davitt, expressing in an interview that she desired to be “free of the patriarchal slave names. Free from the parental curses. Subsequently, in 2018, O’Connor embraced Islam and changed her name to Shuhada Sadaqat.
“This is to announce that I am proud to have become a Muslim,” she wrote on Twitter on October 2018. “This is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey. All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant.”
Throughout her career, Sinead O’Connor was known for her openness regarding her spiritual life, political stance, and struggles with men. She had four children and was married and divorced four times. In 1987, her first son Jake was born to her first husband, music producer John Reynolds, with whom she collaborated on her album Universal Mother. A year later, she had an abortion, and wrote the song “My Special Child” about the experience. In 1996, Brigidine Roisin Waters was born to Irish journalist John Waters, and the two parents began a long custody battle that ended with O’Connor’s agreement for the child to live with Waters in Dublin. In 2001, O’Connor married British journalist Nick Sommerlad in Wales, but the union ended 11 months later. In 2004, she had her third child Shane with musician Donal Lunny, and her fourth child Yeshua Francis Neil Bonadio with Frank Bonadio in 2006. O’Connor married a third time in 2010 to Steve Cooney, but separated in 2011. Her fourth marriage was to Irish therapist Barry Herridge, but this also ended in a short time. In 2015, her first grandson was born to her son Jake Reynolds and his partner Lia.
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