Tributes have poured in for Sinead O'Connor after she died on Wednesday aged just 56. The Irish singer passed away a year after her son, Shane, was found dead in Ireland in January 2022. "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," her family said in a statement to Irish news network RTE.
The iconic singer is survived by her three remaining children, Jake, Brigidine and Yeshua. No announcement has been made about Sinead's cause of death.
The singer shot to fame in 1987 with the release of her first album, The Lion and the Cobra, and its lead single Mandinka, which made her incredibly popular across the pond in the United States. More hits followed including her most famous single, her haunting cover of Prince's "Nothing Compares 2 U, "which was named as the number one world single back in 1990. "Nothing" was the highest charting song from her acclaimed album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, which was ranked number 457 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. At that year's MTV Video Music Awards, Sinead pulled off an incredible upset when the stark video for "Nothing" — shot at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris and featuring Sinead in stunning, tearful closeup — beat no less than Madonna's "Vogue" to win the top Video of the Year trophy.
During her life, Sinead released 10 albums and one extended play (EP) and had been working on an 11th album, No Veteran Dies Alone at the time of her death.
It wasn't just her music career that saw the star making the headlines, as her outspokenness on issues close to her heart also courted media attention. She famously said she would not play concerts if the United States national anthem was played ahead of them and withdrew from a Grammy Award ceremony, despite recieving four nominations.
She also famously appeared on Saturday Night Live back in 1992 where she tore up a photo of then Pope John Paul II, in protest against sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church. Producers at the time had no idea that she was planning the stunt, but the singer stood by her actions, reflecting in her 2021 memoir Rememberings: "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."
Sinead had an iconic image, with the singer sporting an entirely shaved head, something she said was a protest at the traditional views of what a woman should look like. Despite the action initially being a protest, her look became close to her heart, and she revealed: "I don't feel like me unless I have my hair shaved. So even when I'm an old lady, I'm going to shave it."
The singer went on a journey when it came to her religion, having been ordained as a priest during the 1990s, despite the Church's view at the time that ordinations of women were seen as invalid. Sinead was a Christian for many years, although asked successive Popes to excommunicate her from the Church, before she converted to Islam in 2018. She summarily changed her name to Shuhada' Sadaqat and began wearing a hijab.
For much of her life, the singer battled mental health issues, and in 2007 admitted on the Oprah Winfrey Show that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, something that was dismissed by other doctors on second opinions. In 2017, she took to Facebook where she admitted that she was thinking about suicide due to losing custody of her son with musician Donal Lunny, Shane.
She also shared a series of posts following Shane's death in 2022 that led to her being hospitalised. However, Sinead always made sure to break the boundaries of mental illness, appearing on Dr. Phil in 2017 so that she could clear up some of the stigmas surrounding mental health.