Sinéad O'Connor
Shuhada' Sadaqat was an Irish singer-songwriter, record producer and activist. During her musical career, which encompassed several hit records and artist collaborations, O'Connor drew attention to issues such as child abuse, human rights, racism, and women's rights. She was also known for her outspoken public image, openly discussing her spiritual journey, activism, socio-political viewpoints, and struggles with mental health.
O'Connor's debut studio album, The Lion and the Cobra, was released in 1987 and achieved international chart success. Her 1990 album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, was her biggest commercial success, selling over seven million copies worldwide. Its lead single, "Nothing Compares 2 U", became her signature song and was named the top world single of the year at the Billboard Music Awards. During a Saturday Night Live performance in 1992, nearly a decade before the world became fully aware of the widespread sexual abuse of children over many years in the Catholic Church, O'Connor tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II to protest against the abuse, sparking controversy.
O'Connor's next albums Am I Not Your Girl? and Universal Mother were both certified gold in the UK, while Faith and Courage was certified gold in Australia and Throw Down Your Arms was certified gold in Ireland. Having converted to Islam in 2018, she adopted the name Shuhada' Sadaqat while continuing to perform and record under her birth name. Her memoir, Rememberings, was released in 2021 and became a bestseller. In 2024, O'Connor was posthumously nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Early life and education
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor was born on 8 December 1966 at the Cascia House Nursing Home on Baggot Street in Dublin. She was named Sinéad after Sinéad de Valera, the mother of the doctor who presided over her delivery, Éamon de Valera, Jnr., and Bernadette in honour of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. She was the third of five children; an older brother is the novelist Joseph O'Connor. Her parents were John Oliver "Seán" O'Connor, a structural engineer who later became a barrister and chairperson of the Divorce Action Group, and Johanna Marie O'Grady, who married in 1960 at the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Drimnagh, Dublin. She attended Dominican College Sion Hill school in Blackrock, Dublin.In her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, O'Connor wrote that she was regularly beaten by her mother, who also taught her to steal from the collection plate at Mass and from charity tins. In 1979, at age 13, O'Connor went to live with her father, who had recently returned to Ireland after marrying Viola Margaret Suiter in Alexandria, Virginia, United States, in 1976.
At the age of 15, following her acts of shoplifting and truancy, O'Connor was placed for 18 months in the Grianán Training Centre in Drumcondra, which was run by the Order of Our Lady of Charity. She thrived in certain aspects, particularly in the development of her writing and music, but she chafed under the imposed conformity of the asylum, despite being given freedoms not granted to the other girls, such as attending an outside school and being allowed 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 Maryfield College in Drumcondra, and Newtown School in Waterford for fifth and sixth year as a boarder, but did not sit the Leaving Certificate in 1985.
On 10 February 1985, when O'Connor was 18, her mother 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 in which she 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 child 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". That month, Sinéad said: "Our family is very messed up. We can't communicate with each other. We are all in agony. I for one am in agony."
Music career
1980s: Beginnings and ''The Lion and the Cobra''
One of the volunteers at the Grianán centre was the sister of Paul Byrne, the 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, 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 with 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 the U2 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".
O'Connor's first album, The Lion and the Cobra, was "a sensation" when it was released in 1987 on Chrysalis Records. 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. The Lion and the Cobra was the first of a series of albums that she co-produced. The single "Mandinka" was a college radio hit in the United States, and "I Want Your " received both college and urban play in a remixed form that featured rapper MC Lyte. 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.
In her first US network television appearance, O'Connor sang "Mandinka" on Late Night with David Letterman in 1988. She was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, and performed "Mandinka" at the 31st Annual Grammy Awards. She painted the logo of the hip hop group Public Enemy on her head to protest the first-ever Best Rap Performance award being conferred off-screen.
In 1989, O'Connor provided guest vocals on The The's album Mind Bomb, on 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: ''I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got'' and ''Saturday Night Live'' protest
O'Connor's second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, was released in 1990. It 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, Andy Rourke and John Reynolds, her first husband. 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.
O'Connor withdrew from a scheduled appearance on the American programme Saturday Night Live when she learnt that it was to be hosted by Andrew Dice Clay, who she said was disrespectful to women. 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 said she would not perform if the United States national anthem was played before one of her concerts, saying she felt the American music industry was racist. She was attacked as ungrateful and anti-American, and drew criticism from celebrities including the singer Frank Sinatra, who threatened to "kick her in the ass". When people steamrolled her albums outside the offices of her record company in New York City, O'Connor attended in a wig and sunglasses and gave a television interview pretending to be from Saratoga.
O'Connor was nominated for four awards at the 33rd Annual Grammy Awards and won for Best Alternative Music Performance. She refused to attend the ceremony or accept her award, and wrote an open letter to the Recording Academy criticising the industry for promoting materialistic values over artistic merit. At the Brit Awards 1991, she won the Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist, but did not attend the ceremony. She accepted 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 the lessons were the only therapy she was receiving, describing Merriman as "the most amazing teacher in the universe". In 1992, O'Connor contributed vocals on the songs "Come Talk to Me and "Blood of Eden" from the album Us by Peter Gabriel.
On 3 October 1992, O'Connor appeared on the American television programme Saturday Night Live and staged a protest against the Roman Catholic Church. After performing an a cappella rendition of Bob Marley's 1976 song "War" with new lyrics related to child abuse, she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II taken from her mother's bedroom wall eight years earlier, said "fight the real enemy", and threw the pieces to the floor. A month later, O'Connor said she felt the Catholic Church bore some responsibility for the physical, sexual and emotional abuse she had suffered as a child. In describing her actions, she said the church had destroyed "entire races of people", and that Catholic priests had been abusing children for years. Her protest took place nine years before John Paul II publicly acknowledged child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
The protest triggered hundreds of complaints from viewers. It attracted criticism from institutions including the Anti-Defamation League and the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, and celebrities including Catholic Mezzogiorno Italian Americans Joe Pesci, Frank Sinatra and Madonna, who mocked the performance on SNL later that season. Two weeks after her SNL appearance, O'Connor was booed at the 30th-anniversary tribute concert for Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in New York City before Kris Kristofferson came on stage, put his arm around her and offered words of encouragement. In her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, O'Connor wrote that she did not regret the protest and that it was more important for her to be a protest singer than a successful pop star. Time later named O'Connor the most influential woman of 1992 for her protest.
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 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 January 1995, O'Connor appeared on the British late-night television programme After Dark on an episode titled "Ireland: Sex & Celibacy, Church & State". She linked abuse in families to the Catholic 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."
In 1996, O'Connor provided guest vocals on Broken China, a solo album by Richard Wright of Pink Floyd. She made her final feature film appearance in Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy in 1997, playing the Virgin Mary. Also in 1997, she performed in the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Oslo, Norway, singing "This is a Rebel Song" and "He Moved Through the Fair". In 1998, she worked again with the Red Hot Organization to co-produce and perform on Red Hot + Rhapsody.