Sinéad O’Connor Has Passed

Nothing compares…

ne of Ireland’s most distinctive voices of the last three decades, Sinéad O’Connor has passed.

Pic: Lindsey Best for the Washington Post

Found unresponsive at her London flat this morning at 11.18am, the singer was just 56.

More motivated by politics than by pop, O’Connor cut a controversial figure over the years, but such hits as Mandinka and Nothing Compares To U made her a global star.

Happy to use her fame for change, O’Connor was outspoken on many issues, speaking up for women’s rights and against the long legacy of abuse left by the Catholic Church. When she began her debut performance on America’s long-running Saturday Night Live back in October 1992 by tearing up a photograph of the Pope, it was a gesture that perfectly summed up the woman’s FU attitude. And the decades ahead.

Sinéad was a voice in the darkness, shouting against that darkness, but it was always there.

With Ronnie & co JAN08

Over the last 22 years, O’Connor released 10 studio albums, an RTÉ Choice Music Award for Classic Irish Album for her 1990 debut, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, earlier this year saw the singer face a standing ovation with a dedication “to each member of Ireland’s refuge community”.

With Shane 2019

A long-time resident of Bray, the artist formerly known as Magda Davitt (2017-2018, after breaking “free of the patriarchal slave names”) – and more recently, after a conversion to Islam, as Shuhada Sadaqat – sold her Strand Road home, Montebello, in 2021 for just over €1m.

O’Connor lost her son, Shane, in January last year, and is survived by her three other children.

You can sign the Wicklow County Council Book Of Condolence here, and attend her funeral cortege through Bray on August 8th here.