Often troubled but always brilliant, the Irish singer possessed one of the greatest voices of her generation. O’Connor’s family issued a short statement on Wednesday confirming her passing.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad,” the statement read. “Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”
O’Connor’s death comes less than two years after the loss of her teenage son, Shane, who died after leaving a hospital while on suicide watch. The singer also had three other children.
O’Connor first rose to global prominence in 1990 with her acclaimed second studio album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, which proved very popular in Australia, topping the ARIA Albums Chart and becoming certified platinum in the country.
Her second album contained her extraordinary cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”, arguably one of the very few covers that effortlessly supersedes the original.
A stunning ballad with few equals, O’Connor’s version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” earned her the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance, but she refused to accept the award.
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Standing up for what she believed in marked O’Connor’s career and life just as much as her beautiful music.
She infamously ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992, to protest the Catholic Church’s history of sexual abuse in Ireland and beyond, but the Dubliner’s career never really recovered from the incident.
In her later years, public reappraisal of the singer finally happened. A 2022 documentary, Nothing Compares, carefully chronicled O’Connor’s fearless outspokenness on the Church, and many other targets that lead her to be vilified.
The year before, O’Connor’s memoir, Rememberings, vulnerably detailed the childhood abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, who passed away in a car accident in 1985, as well as her battles with mental health.
And earlier this year, O’Connor received the inaugural award for Classic Irish Album at the RTÉ Choice Music Prize Awards, which she dedicated to Ireland’s refugee community.
