On Wednesday, Sinead O’Connor, the vocalist of Nothing Compares 2 U, passed away suddenly.
Irish singer Sinead O’Connor passed away unexpectedly on Wednesday at the age of 56, it was reported. The singer passed away abruptly in January 2022, one year after Shane, her son, was discovered dead in Ireland. “We are really saddened to let you know that our beloved Sinéad has passed away. Her family and friends conveyed their sorrow and request for solitude at this tremendously trying time in a letter to the Irish television network RTE.
The singer is still alive and has three children left: Jake, Brigidine, and Yeshua. The cause of Sinead’s passing is unknown at this time.
Following the publication of her debut album The Lion and the Cobra and its main hit Mandinka, the singer gained enormous popularity both domestically and abroad. Additional songs were released, including her best-known and spooky copy of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which hit at the top of the worldwide singles chart in the 1990s.
On her critically praised album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, which came in at number 457 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, “Nothing” was the most popular track. Sinead pulled off an incredible upset when the somber “Nothing” video, which was shot outside of Paris at the Palace of Versailles and featured Sinead in a stunning, sobbing closeup, defeated Madonna’s “Vogue” to win the top Video of the Year title at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards.
In addition to her ten studio albums and one extended play, Sinead had also begun work on her eleventh album, No Veteran Dies Alone, at the time of her death.
The singer was able to gain media attention for causes other than singing because of her outspokenness on important social concerns.
She made a statement that went viral when she claimed she wouldn’t do live shows if the US national anthem was performed first. Despite receiving four nominations, she eventually canceled her appearance at a Grammy Awards ceremony.
She also had a well-known appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1992, during which she famously tore up a photograph of the then-Pope John Paul II in protest against child sex abuse in the Catholic Church.
The singer defended her behavior in her memoir Rememberings from 2021 by stating: “Everyone wants a pop star, see? The producers were not aware that she was preparing the trick at the time. I sing, though, in defiance. I just needed to let off some steam. I had no desire for stardom.”
Sinead was well known for shaving her entire head, which she claimed she did as a kind of protest against society’s expectations of what women should look like. After giving it some serious thinking, she responded, “I don’t feel like me unless I get my hair shaved.” At first, she refused. So I’ll still shave even when I’m old and gray.
The singer underwent a spiritual metamorphosis after becoming a priest in the 1990s, in spite of the Church’s position at the time, which said that women’s ordinations were illegitimate.
Sinead was a Christian for a while before converting to Islam in 2018 despite having asked multiple popes for excommunication from the Church. She adopted Shuhada’ Sadaqat as her new name and started donning a headscarf.
The singer dealt with mental health problems for a significant portion of her life. On The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a diagnosis that had previously been disputed by a number of medical professionals. She acknowledged on Facebook in 2017 that she had been considering suicide ever since she was likely to lose custody of Shane, the child she had with musician Donal Lunny.
After Shane died in 2022, she also published a number of posts, which caused her to need to be hospitalized. In order to help eliminate some of the stigmas associated with mental health, Sinead, who relentlessly pushed the boundaries of mental illness, made an appearance on Dr. Phil in 2017.
