Shuhada’ Sadaqat (8 December 1966 – c. 26 July 2023), known professionally as Sinéad O’Connor,  was an Irish singer, songwriter and political activist. Her debut studio album, The Lion and the Cobra, was released in 1987 and charted internationally. Her second studio album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990), was her biggest success, selling more than seven million copies worldwide. Its lead single, “Nothing Compares 2 U“, was named the number-one world single in 1990 by the Billboard Music Awards.

O’Connor released ten studio albums. Am I Not Your Girl? (1992) and Universal Mother (1994) were certified gold in the UK, Faith and Courage (2000) was certified gold in Australia,  and Throw Down Your Arms (2005) went gold in Ireland. Her work included songs for films, collaborations with many other artists, and appearances at charity fundraising concerts. Her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, was a bestseller.

In 1999, O’Connor was ordained as a priest by the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, an Independent Catholic sect that is not recognised by the Roman Catholic Church.  She consistently spoke out on issues related to child abuse (including during a 1992 Saturday Night Live performance), human rights, racism, organised religion, and women’s rights. Throughout her music career, she spoke about her spiritual journey, activism, socio-political views, as well as her trauma and mental health struggles. In 2017, O’Connor changed her name to Magda Davitt. After converting to Islam in 2018, she changed it to Shuhada’ Sadaqat,  but continued to record and perform under her birth name.

Early life

O’Connor was born Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor  on 8 December 1966 in the Cascia House Nursing Home at 13 Pembroke Road, Dublin  She was named Sinéad after Sinéad de Valera, the mother of the doctor presiding over the delivery, Éamon de Valera, Jnr., and Bernadette in honour of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. She was the third of five children; her siblings are novelist Joseph, Éimear, John, and Eoin.

Her parents were John Oliver “Seán” O’Connor, a structural engineer later turned barrister and chairperson of the Divorce Action Group, and Johanna Marie O’Grady (1939–1985), who married in the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Drimnagh, Dublin, in 1960. She attended Dominican College Sion Hill school in Blackrock, County Dublin.

In 1979, at age 13, O’Connor left her mother and went to live with her father, who had recently returned after marrying a woman named Viola Margaret Suiter (née Cook) in Alexandria, Virginia, United States, in 1976. At the age of 15, her self-confessed ‘charitable’ acts of shoplifting, as well as of truancy, led to her being placed for 18 months in a Magdalene asylum called the Grianán Training Centre, in Drumcondra, run by the Order of Our Lady of Charity. In some ways, she thrived there (especially in the development of her writing and music), but she also chafed under the imposed conformity, despite being granted freedoms not allotted to the other girls, such as attending an outside school and being able to listen to music, write songs, etc. For punishment, O’Connor described how “if you were bad, they sent you upstairs to sleep in the old folks’ home. You’re in there in the pitch black, you can smell the shit and the puke and everything, and these old women are moaning in their sleep […] I have never—and probably will never—experience such panic and terror and agony over anything.”She later attended the Quaker Newtown School, Waterford for 5th and 6th year as a boarder but did not sit the Leaving Certificate in 1985.

On 10 February 1985, when O’Connor was 18, her mother Marie died in a car accident, aged 45, after losing control of her car on an icy road in Ballybrack and crashing into a bus.

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”. Sinéad 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.”

Musical career

1980s

One of the volunteers at the Grianán centre was the sister of Paul Byrne, drummer for the band In Tua Nua, who heard O’Connor singing “Evergreen” by Barbra Streisand. She recorded a song with them called “Take My Hand” but they felt that at 15, she was too young to join the band. Through an ad she placed in Hot Press in mid-1984, she met Colm Farrelly. Together they recruited a few other members and formed a band called Ton Ton Macoute. The band moved to Waterford briefly while O’Connor attended Newtown School, but she soon dropped out of school and followed them to Dublin, where their performances received positive reviews. Their sound was inspired by Farrelly’s interest in world music, though most observers thought O’Connor’s singing and stage presence were the band’s strongest features.

O’Connor’s time as singer for Ton Ton Macoute brought her to the attention of the music industry, and she was eventually signed by Ensign Records. She also acquired an experienced manager, Fachtna Ó Ceallaigh, former head of U2‘s Mother Records. Soon after she was signed, she embarked on her first major assignment, providing the vocals for the song “Heroine”, which she co-wrote with U2’s guitarist the Edge for the soundtrack to the film Captive. Ó Ceallaigh, who had been fired by U2 for complaining about them in an interview, was outspoken with his views on music and politics, and O’Connor adopted the same habits; she defended the actions of the Provisional IRA and said U2’s music was “bombastic”.She later retracted her IRA comments saying they were based on nonsense, and that she was “too young to understand the tense situation in Northern Ireland properly”.

Her first album The Lion and the Cobra was “a sensation” when it was released in 1987 on Chrysalis Records,and it reached gold record status, earning a Best Female Rock Vocal Performance Grammy nomination. The single “Mandinka” was a big college radio hit in the United States, and “I Want Your (Hands on Me)” received both college and urban play in a remixed form that featured rapper MC Lyte. In her first U.S. network television appearance, O’Connor sang “Mandinka” on Late Night with David Letterman in 1988.The song “Troy” was also released as a single in the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands, where it reached number 5 on the Dutch Top 40 chart.

O’Connor named Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Bob Marley, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Pretenders as the artists who influenced her on her debut album. In 1989 O’Connor joined The The frontman Matt Johnson as a guest vocalist on the band’s album Mind Bomb, which spawned the duet “Kingdom of Rain”. That same year, she made another foray into cinema, starring in and writing the music for the Northern Irish film Hush-a-Bye-Baby.

1990s

O’Connor’s second album – 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got – gained considerable attention and mostly positive reviews.NME named it the year’s second-best album. She was praised for her voice and original songs, while being noted for her appearance: trademark shaved head, often angry expression, and sometimes shapeless or unusual clothing. Her shaved head has been seen as a statement against traditional views of femininity.

The album featured Marco Pirroni (of Adam and the Ants fame), Andy Rourke (from the Smiths) and John Reynolds, her first husband;  most notably, it contained her international breakthrough hit “Nothing Compares 2 U“, a song written by Prince  and originally recorded and released by a side project of his, the Family. Hank Shocklee, producer for Public Enemy, remixed the album’s next single, “The Emperor’s New Clothes“, for a 12-inch that was coupled with another song from the LP, “I Am Stretched on Your Grave”. Pre-dating but included on I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, was “Jump in the River”, which originally appeared on the Married to the Mob soundtrack; the 12-inch version of the single had included a remix featuring performance artist Karen Finley.

In July 1990, O’Connor joined other guests for the former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters‘ performance of The Wall in Berlin. She contributed a cover of “You Do Something to Me” to the Cole Porter tribute/AIDS fundraising album Red Hot + Blue produced by the Red Hot Organization. Red Hot + Blue was followed by the release of Am I Not Your Girl?, an album made of covers of jazz standards and torch songs she had listened to while growing up; the album received mixed-to-poor reviews, and was a commercial disappointment in light of the success of her previous work. Her take on Elton John‘s “Sacrifice” was acclaimed as one of the best efforts on the tribute album Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin.

Also in 1990, O’Connor was criticised after she stated that she would not perform if the United States national anthem was played before one of her concerts; Frank Sinatra threatened to “kick her in the ass”  After receiving four Grammy Award nominations, she withdrew her name from consideration. Although nominated for the Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist, which she won, she did not attend the awards ceremony, but did accept the Irish IRMA in February 1991.

O’Connor spent the following months studying bel canto singing with teacher Frank Merriman at the Parnell School of Music. In an interview with The Guardian, published in May 1993, she reported that singing lessons with Merriman were the only therapy she was receiving, describing Merriman as “the most amazing teacher in the universe.”

In 1992, O’Connor contributed backing vocals on the track “Come Talk To Me”, and shared vocals on the single “Blood of Eden” from the studio album Us by Peter Gabriel. Gabriel invited her to join his ongoing Secret World Tour in May 1993, to sing these songs and more in an elaborate stage setting. O’Connor travelled and performed as a guest artist. She was seen at Gabriel’s side at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards in September. While in Los Angeles, she took too many sleeping pills, inciting media conjecture about a suicide attempt. She said she “was in a bad way emotionally at the time, but it wasn’t a suicide attempt.” She left the tour suddenly, causing Gabriel to scramble for a replacement singer. Decades later, she wrote in her memoir Rememberings that she left Gabriel because he treated her casually, and would not make a commitment.

The 1993 soundtrack to the film In the Name of the Father featured O’Connor’s “You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart“. Her more conventional Universal Mother album (1994) spawned two music videos for the first and second singles, “Fire on Babylon” and “Famine”, that were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video. She toured with Lollapalooza in 1995, but dropped out when she became pregnant with her second child. In 1997, she released the Gospel Oak EP.

In 1994, she appeared in A Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who, also known as Daltrey Sings Townshend. This was a two-night concert at Carnegie Hall produced by Roger Daltrey of the Who in celebration of his 50th birthday.^] A CD and a VHS video of the concert were issued in 1994, followed by a DVD in 1998.

In 1996, O’Connor guested on Broken China, a solo album by Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright.

O’Connor made her final feature film appearance in Neil Jordan‘s The Butcher Boy in 1997, playing the Virgin Mary.

In 1998, she worked again with the Red Hot Organization to co-produce and perform on Red Hot + Rhapsody.

2000s

Faith and Courage was released in 2000, including the single “No Man’s Woman”, and featured contributions from Wyclef Jean of the Fugees and Dave Stewart of Eurythmics.

Her 2002 album, Sean-Nós Nua, marked a departure in that O’Connor interpreted or, in her own words, “sexed up” traditional Irish folk songs, including several in the Irish language. In Sean-Nós Nua, she covered a well-known Canadian folk song, “Peggy Gordon“.

In 2003, she contributed a track to the Dolly Parton tribute album Just Because I’m a Woman, a cover of Parton’s “Dagger Through the Heart”. That same year, she also featured on three songs of Massive Attack‘s album 100th Window before releasing her double album, She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty. This compilation contained one disc of demos and previously unreleased tracks and one disc of a live concert recording. Directly after the album’s release, O’Connor announced that she was retiring from music. Collaborations, a compilation album of guest appearances, was released in 2005—featuring tracks recorded with Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, Jah Wobble, Terry Hall, Moby, Bomb the Bass, the Edge, U2, and The The.

Ultimately, after a brief period of inactivity and a bout with fibromyalgia, her retirement proved to be short-lived. O’Connor stated in an interview with Harp magazine that she had only intended to retire from making mainstream pop/rock music, and after dealing with her fibromyalgia she chose to move into other musical styles.The reggae album Throw Down Your Arms appeared in late 2005.

On 8 November 2006, O’Connor performed seven songs from her upcoming album Theology at The Sugar Club in Dublin. Thirty fans were given the opportunity to win pairs of tickets to attend along with music industry critics. The performance was released in 2008 as Live at the Sugar Club deluxe CD/DVD package sold exclusively on her website.

O’Connor released two songs from her album Theology to download for free from her official website: “If You Had a Vineyard” and “Jeremiah (Something Beautiful)”. The album, a collection of covered and original Rastafari spiritual songs, was released in June 2007. The first single from the album, the Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber classic “I Don’t Know How to Love Him“, was released on 30 April 2007.^[88] To promote the album, O’Connor toured extensively in Europe and North America. She also appeared on two tracks of the new Ian Brown album The World Is Yours, including the anti-war single “Illegal Attacks“.

2010s

In January 2010, O’Connor performed a duet with R&B singer Mary J. Blige produced by former A Tribe Called Quest member Ali Shaheed Muhammad of O’Connor’s song “This Is To Mother You” (first recorded by O’Connor on her 1997 Gospel Oak EP). The proceeds of the song’s sales were donated to the organisation GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services). In 2012 the song “Lay Your Head Down”, written by Brian Byrne and Glenn Close for the soundtrack of the film Albert Nobbs and performed by O’Connor, was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.

In 2011, O’Connor worked on recording a new album, titled Home, to be released in the beginning of 2012, titled How About I Be Me (and You Be You)?, with the first single being “The Wolf is Getting Married”. She planned an extensive tour in support of the album but suffered a serious breakdown between December 2011 and March 2012, resulting in the tour and all her other musical activities for the rest of 2012 being cancelled. O’Connor resumed touring in 2013 with The Crazy Baldhead Tour. The second single “4th and Vine” was released on 18 February 2013.

In February 2014, it was revealed that O’Connor had been recording a new album of original material, titled The Vishnu Room, consisting of romantic love songs. In early June 2014, the new album was retitled I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, with an 11 August release date. The title derives from the Ban Bossy campaign that took place earlier the same year. The album’s first single is entitled “Take Me to Church”.

In November 2014, O’Connor’s management was taken over by Simon Napier-Bell and Björn de Water. On 15 November, O’Connor joined the charity supergroup Band Aid 30 along with other British and Irish pop acts, recording a new version of the track “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” at Sarm West Studios in Notting Hill, London, to raise money for the West African Ebola virus epidemic.

In September 2019, O’Connor performed live for the first time in five years, singing “Nothing Compares 2 U” with the Irish Chamber Orchestra on RTÉ‘s The Late Late Show.

2020s

In October 2020, O’Connor released a cover of Mahalia Jackson‘s “Trouble of the World”, with proceeds from the single to benefit Black Lives Matter charities.

On 1 June 2021, O’Connor’s memoir Rememberings was released to positive critical reception. It was listed among the best books of the year on BBC Culture.

On 4 June 2021, O’Connor announced her immediate retirement from the music industry. While her final studio album, No Veteran Dies Alone, was due to be released in 2022, O’Connor stated that she would not be touring or promoting it. Announcing the news on Twitter, she said “This is to announce my retirement from touring and from working in the record business. I’ve gotten older and I’m tired. So it’s time for me to hang up my nipple tassels, having truly given my all. NVDA in 2022 will be my last release. And there’ll be no more touring or promo.” On 7 June she retracted her previous statement, describing the original announcement as “a knee-jerk reaction” to an insensitive interview, and announcing that she would go ahead with her already scheduled 2022 tour.

The Irish postal service, An Post, released a postage stamp on 15 July 2021 bearing an image of O’Connor singing.

On 7 January 2022, O’Connor’s son, Shane, died by suicide at the age of 17. She subsequently decided to cancel her 2022 tour and her album No Veteran Dies Alone was postponed indefinitely.

In February 2023, she shared a new version of “The Skye Boat Song“, a 19th century Scottish adaptation of a 1782 Gaelic song, which is also the theme for the fantasy drama series Outlander. The following month, she was awarded the inaugural Choice Music Prize Classic Irish Album by Irish broadcaster RTÉ for her 1990 album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.

Saturday Night Live performance

O’Connor turned an appearance on the U.S. late-night television program Saturday Night Live on 3 October 1992, into a protest against child abuse. As a musical guest O’Connor was originally scheduled to sing “Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home” and “Scarlet Ribbons“, two of the songs from the album she was promoting at the time, Am I Not Your Girl?. However, the day before her live appearance, she was authorized to replace the latter performance with an a cappella rendition of Bob Marley‘s 1976 song “War“ with revised lyrics protesting child abuse. At the end of the performance she unexpectedly tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II, which she later said she had taken down from her mother’s bedroom wall eight years earlier.

At the time, she did not mention the Roman Catholic Church as a culprit nor distinguished between forms of abuse but in January 1995, in an appearance on the British late-night television programme After Dark during an episode titled “Ireland: Sex & Celibacy, Church & State”, she linked abuse in families to the Church. The discussion included a Dominican friar and another representative of the Roman Catholic Church, along with former taoiseach Garret FitzGerald. Host Helena Kennedy described the event: “Sinéad came on and argued that abuse in families was coded in by the church because it refused to accept the accounts of women and children.”

Personal life

Name

In 2017, O’Connor changed her legal name to Magda Davitt, saying in an interview that she wished to be “free of the patriarchal slave names. Free of the parental curses.” On her conversion to Islam in October 2018, she adopted the name ‘Shuhada’, and some time later also changed her surname from Davitt to Sadaqat.

Marriages and children

O’Connor was married and divorced four times. She had four children.

She had her first son, Jake, in 1987 with her first husband, music producer John Reynolds, who co-produced several of her albums, including Universal Mother. Reynolds and O’Connor later married in Westminster register office in March 1989. The same year, O’Connor had an abortion after things did not work out with the father. She later wrote the song “My Special Child” about the experience. O’Connor and Reynolds announced their plan to divorce in November 1991 after being separated for some time.

In September 1995, O’Connor announced that she was pregnant with the child of her friend, Irish columnist John Waters. Soon after the birth of her daughter on 10 March 1996, O’Connor and the girl’s father began a long custody battle that ended with O’Connor agreeing to let the child live in Dublin with Waters.

In August 2001, O’Connor married British journalist Nick Sommerlad in Wales; in July 2002 the marriage ended after 11 months when they both parted ways. By February 2003, their marriage was reported to have completely finished with Sommerlad moving back home to the United Kingdom.

She had her third child, son Shane, in 2004 with musician Donal Lunny. In 2006, she had her fourth child whose father is Frank Bonadio.

O’Connor was married a third time on 22 July 2010, to longtime friend and collaborator Steve Cooney, and in late March 2011, the couple made the decision to separate. Her fourth marriage was to Irish therapist Barry Herridge. They wed on 9 December 2011, in Las Vegas, but their marriage ended after having “lived together for 7 days only”. The following week, on 3 January 2012, O’Connor issued a further string of internet comments to the effect that the couple had re-united. In February 2014, O’Connor stated that she and Herridge did not divorce and were planning to renew their wedding vows. Two weeks later, they decided to not renew their vows.

On 18 July 2015, her first grandson was born to her son Jake and his girlfriend.

On 7 January 2022, two days after her 17-year-old son Shane was reported missing from Newbridge, County Kildare, he was found dead by suicide. His body was found by Gardaí in the Bray/Shankill part of Dublin. O’Connor stated that her son, custody of whom she lost in 2013, had been on “suicide watch” at Tallaght Hospital, and had “ended his earthly struggle”. O’Connor criticised the Health Service Executive (HSE) with regard to their handling of her son’s case. She initially criticised Ireland’s family services agency, Tusla, but retracted this a few days later. In January 2022, a week after her son’s suicide, she was hospitalised on her own volition following a series of tweets in which she indicated she was going to take her own life.

Other relationships

According to some reports, O’Connor had a relationship with the Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis in 1990. She denied this, saying they had met but fell out after he suggested they become a couple. Kiedis wrote a song about the experience, “I Could Have Lied”, released on the 1991 Red Hot Chili Peppers album Blood Sugar Sex Magik. O’Connor was dismissive of the song.

Speaking about her relationship with Prince in an interview with Norwegian station NRK in November 2014, O’Connor said, “I did meet him a couple of times. We didn’t get on at all. In fact we had a punch-up.” She continued: “He summoned me to his house after ‘Nothing Compares’. I made it without him. I’d never met him. He summoned me to his house – and it’s foolish to do this to an Irish woman – he said he didn’t like me saying bad words in interviews. So I told him to f*** off […] He got quite violent. I had to escape out of his house at 5 in the morning. He packed a bigger punch than mine.” In her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, O’Connor described her meeting with Prince in detail, which ranged from having his butler serve soup repeatedly despite no desire for soup, to hitting her with a hard object placed in a pillowcase after wanting a pillow fight, and stalking her with his car after she left the mansion.

Homes

In 2007, O’Connor bought a large Victorian seafront house in Bray, County Wicklow, near Dublin. She sold it in 2021, having moved to her holiday home. She later lived at a house in the Kilglass / Scramogue area, between Strokestown and Roosky, County Roscommon, and on the main street of Knockananna, County Wicklow, which she sold in 2022. She later also had a home in Dalkey south of Dublin.She moved to a flat in London in spring 2023, saying that she was feeling less lonely and would soon finish her new album.

Health

In the early 2000s, O’Connor revealed that she suffered from fibromyalgia. The pain and fatigue she experienced caused her to take a break from music from 2003 to 2005.

On an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show broadcast on 4 October 2007, O’Connor disclosed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years earlier, and had attempted suicide on her 33rd birthday, 8 December 1999.Then, on Oprah: Where Are They Now? of 9 February 2014, O’Connor said that she had received three “second opinions” and was told by all three that she was not bipolar.

O’Connor was also diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder.

In August 2015, she announced that she was to undergo a hysterectomy after suffering gynaecological problems for over three years. O’Connor later blamed the hospital’s refusal to administer hormonal replacement therapy after the operation as the main reason for her mental health issues in the subsequent years, stating “I was flung into surgical menopause. Hormones were everywhere. I became very suicidal. I was a basket case.”

Having smoked cannabis for 30 years, O’Connor went to a rehabilitation centre in 2016, to end her addiction. O’Connor was agoraphobic.

In August 2017, O’Connor posted a 12-minute video on her Facebook page in which she stated that she had felt alone since losing custody of her 13-year-old son, Shane, and that for the prior two years she had wanted to kill herself, with only her doctor and psychiatrist “keeping her alive”.The month after her Facebook post, O’Connor appeared on the American television talk show Dr. Phil on the show’s 16th season debut episode. According to Dr. Phil, O’Connor wanted to do the interview because she wanted to “destigmatise mental illness”, noting the prevalence of mental health problems among musicians.

Sexuality

In a 2000 interview in Curve, O’Connor said that she was a lesbian. She later retracted the statement, and in 2005 told Entertainment Weekly “I’m three-quarters heterosexual, a quarter gay”.

In 2013, O’Connor published an open letter on her own website to American singer and actress Miley Cyrus in which she warned Cyrus of the treatment of women in the music industry and stated that sexuality is a factor in this, which was in response to Cyrus’s music video for her song “Wrecking Ball“. Cyrus responded by mocking O’Connor and alluding to her mental health problems.

Politics

O’Connor was a vocal supporter of a united Ireland, and called on the left-wing republican Sinn Féin party to be “braver”. O’Connor called for the “demolition” of the Republic of Ireland and its replacement with a new, united country. She also called for key Sinn Féin politicians like Gerry Adams to step down because “they remind people of violence”, referring to the Troubles.

In a 2015 interview with the BBC, O’Connor said she wished that Ireland had remained under British rule (which ended after the Irish War of Independence, except for Northern Ireland), saying “the church took over and it was disastrous”. Following the Brexit referendum in 2016, O’Connor wrote on Facebook “Ireland is officially no longer owned by Britain”.

Religion

In the late 1990s, Bishop Michael Cox of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church (an Independent Catholic group not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church) ordained O’Connor as a priest. The Catholic Church does not allow the ordination of women. The bishop had contacted her to offer ordination following her appearance on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show, during which she told the presenter, Gay Byrne, that had she not been a singer she would have wished to have been a Catholic priest. After her ordination, she indicated that she wished to be called Mother Bernadette Mary.

In a July 2007 interview with Christianity Today, O’Connor stated that she considered herself a Christian and that she believed in core Christian concepts about the Trinity and Jesus Christ. She said, “I think God saves everybody whether they want to be saved or not. So when we die, we’re all going home […] I don’t think God judges anybody. He loves everybody equally. In an October 2002 interview, she credited her Christian faith in giving her the strength to live through and overcome the effects of her childhood abuse.

On 26 March 2010, O’Connor appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° to speak out about the Catholic sexual abuse scandal in Ireland. On 28 March 2010, she had an opinion piece published in the Sunday edition of The Washington Post in which she wrote about the scandal and her time in a Magdalene laundry as a teenager. Writing for the Sunday Independent she labelled the Vatican as “a nest of devils” and called for the establishment of an “alternative church”, opining that “Christ is being murdered by liars” in the Vatican. Shortly after the election of Pope Francis, she said:

Well, you know, I guess I wish everyone the best, and I don’t know anything about the man, so I’m not going to rush to judge him on one thing or another, but I would say he has a scientifically impossible task, because all religions, but certainly the Catholic Church, is really a house built on sand, and it’s drowning in a sea of conditional love, and therefore it can’t survive, and actually the office of Pope itself is an anti-Christian office, the idea that Christ needs a representative is laughable and blasphemous at the same time, therefore it is a house built on sand, and we need to rescue God from religion, all religions, they’ve become a smokescreen that distracts people from the fact that there is a holy spirit, and when you study the Gospels you see the Christ character came to tell us that we only need to talk directly to God, we never needed Religion …

Asked whether from her point of view, it is therefore irrelevant who is elected to be pope, O’Connor replied:

Genuinely I don’t mean disrespect to Catholic people because I believe in Jesus Christ, I believe in the Holy Spirit, all of those, but I also believe in all of them, I don’t think it cares if you call it Fred or Daisy, you know? Religion is a smokescreen, it has everybody talking to the wall. There is a Holy Spirit who can’t intervene on our behalf unless we ask it. Religion has us talking to the wall. The Christ character tells us himself: you must only talk directly to the Father; you don’t need intermediaries. We all thought we did, and that’s ok, we’re not bad people, but let’s wake up […] God was there before religion; it’s there [today] despite religion; it’ll be there when religion is gone.

Tatiana Kavelka wrote about O’Connor’s later Christian work, describing it as “theologically charged yet unorthodox, oriented toward interfaith dialogue and those on the margins”

In August 2018, via an open letter, she asked Pope Francis to issue a certificate of excommunication her as she had also asked Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II.

In October 2018, O’Connor converted to Islam, calling it “the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey”.The ceremony was conducted in Ireland by Sunni Islamic theologian Shaykh Umar Al-Qadri. She also changed her name to Shuhada’ Davitt. In a message on Twitter, she thanked fellow Muslims for their support and uploaded a video of herself reciting the adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. She also posted photos of herself wearing a hijab.

After her conversion to Islam, O’Connor called those who were not Muslims “disgusting” and criticised Christian and Jewish theologians on Twitter in November 2018. She wrote: “What I’m about to say is something so racist I never thought my soul could ever feel it. But truly I never wanna spend time with white people again (if that’s what non-muslims are called). Not for one moment, for any reason. They are disgusting.” Later that month, O’Connor stated that her remarks were made in an attempt to force Twitter to close down her account. In September 2019, she apologised for the remarks, saying “They were not true at the time and they are not true now. I was triggered as a result of Islamophobia dumped on me. I apologize for hurt caused. That was one of many crazy tweets lord knows.”

Death

On 26 July 2023, O’Connor was found unresponsive at her flat in Herne Hill, South London, and later confirmed dead at the age of 56. Her family issued a statement later the same day, without indicating the cause of her death. The following day, the Metropolitan Police reported that O’Connor’s death was not being treated as suspicious. On 28 July, the coroner in London said that the date of her death was still unknown.

Discography

• The Lion and the Cobra (1987)
• I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990)
• Am I Not Your Girl? (1992)
• Universal Mother (1994)
• Faith and Courage (2000)
• Sean-Nós Nua (2002)
• Throw Down Your Arms (2005)
• Theology (2007)
• How About I Be Me (and You Be You)? (2012)
• I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss (2014)

Source:

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1990	Hush-a-Bye Baby	Sinéad
1991	The Ghosts of Oxford Street	Ann of Oxford Street	TV movie
1992	Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights	Emily Brontë	uncredited
1997	The Butcher Boy	Virgin Mary
2007	100 Greatest Songs of the 90s	Herself	miniseries
2022	Nothing Compares	Herself (voice)	documentary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sin%C3%A9ad_O%27Connor

Sinead O’Connor: ‘I Love About My Mother That She’s Dead’

In an emotional interview, singer Sinead O’Connor opens up about her ambivalent relationship with her mother, who she claims abused her as a child.

 

 

Niets is te vergelijken met jou

Het is al zeven uur en vijftien dagen,
sinds jij je liefde wegnam.
Ik ga uit elke nacht en ik slaap elke dag,
sinds jij je liefde wegnam

Sinds je weg bent kan ik doen wat ik wil
Ik kan zien wie ik wil
Ik kan eten in een luxe restaurant
Maar niets
Ik zei niets
Kan dit gevoel wegnemen
Want niets is te vergelijken
Niets is te vergelijken met jou

Het is zo eenzaam zonder jou hier
Als een vogel zonder lied
Niets kan de vallende tranen stoppen
Zeg me schatje, waar ging ik mis?

Ik kan mijn armen om elke jongen slaan die ik zie
Maar ze herinneren me alleen maar aan jou
Ik ben naar de dokter geweest en raad eens wat hij zei?
Raad eens wat hij zei?
Hij zei: Meid, probeer wat plezier te hebben
Het maakt niet uit wat je doet, maar hij is een dwaas
Want niets is te vergelijken
Niets is te vergelijken met jou

Alle bloemen die je geplant hebt mama,
In de achtertuin
Zijn allemaal doodgedaan sinds je weg bent,
Ik weet dat leven met jou soms moeilijk was schatje,
Maar ik ben bereid om het nog een kans te geven,
Want niets is te vergelijken,
Niets is te vergelijken met jou.

 

Early Sinead O’Connor Interview

In 2022 Fox Archives worked with Archive Producer Jo Stones, contributing a clip from this rare Sinead O’Connor interview for use in director Kathryn Ferguson’s 2022 documentary Nothing Compares. Jo Stones was subsequently nominated for 2023 FOCAL film research award for her work on the project. Currently playing on SHOWTIME

 

The Heart-Wrenching Death Of Sinead O’Connor’s Son

Only about 18 months before her own tragic death, Sinead O’Connor’s son Shane passed away in truly heartbreaking circumstances. It clearly had a devastating effect on the singer that lasted for the rest of her life.