Age, Biography, and Wiki
Sinéad O'Connor was born on December 8, 1966, in Glenageary, County Dublin, Ireland. She rose to fame in the early 1990s and became known for her striking appearance, including her shaved head, and her outspoken views on politics and social issues. Her music career spanned multiple genres, including alternative rock and folk. O'Connor passed away on July 26, 2023, at the age of 56.
| Occupation | Rock Singer |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 8 December 1966 |
| Age | 58 Years |
| Birth Place | Dublin, Ireland |
| Horoscope | Sagittarius |
| Country | Ireland |
| Date of death | 26 July, 2023 |
| Died Place | London, England |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited detailed information available about Sinéad O'Connor's physical measurements. However, she was known for her distinctive appearance, which included her shaved head during her early career.
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.
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 Roman 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.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Sinéad O'Connor was married four times and had four children. Her relationships were often publicized, reflecting her openness about her personal life.
O'Connor achieved chart success with Am I Not Your Girl? (1992) and Universal Mother (1994), both certified gold in the UK, as well as Faith and Courage (2000), certified gold in Australia. Throw Down Your Arms (2005) achieved gold status in Ireland. Her career encompassed songs for films, collaborations with numerous artists, and appearances at charity fundraising concerts. O'Connor's memoir, Rememberings, was released in 2021 and became a bestseller.
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 later became a barrister and chairperson of the Divorce Action Group, and Johanna Marie O'Grady (1939–1985), who married in 1960 at the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Drimnagh, Dublin. She attended Dominican College Sion Hill school in Blackrock, County 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.
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."
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".
The album featured Marco Pirroni (of Adam and the Ants fame), Andy Rourke (from the Smiths) 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.
On 3 October 1992, O'Connor appeared on the American television programme Saturday Night Live (SNL) 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 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 January 2010, O'Connor performed a duet with the 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.
His father was the music producer John Reynolds, who co-produced several of O'Connor's albums, including Universal Mother. O'Connor married Reynolds at Westminster Register Office in March 1989. She had an abortion the same year, and later wrote the song "My Special Child" about the experience. The couple announced their plan to divorce in November 1991 after having been separated for some time.
In August 2001, O'Connor married the British journalist Nick Sommerlad in Wales. Their marriage ended after 11 months, in July 2002, when they mutually agreed to part. By February 2003, the marriage was reportedly over and Sommerlad had moved back home to the United Kingdom. O'Connor gave birth to her third child, son Shane, on 10 March 2004; his father was the Irish musician Dónal Lunny. The pair remained on good terms after separating in early 2007.
O'Connor stated that she had a relationship with her manager Fachtna Ó Ceallaigh immediately after her marriage to John Reynolds and during the tour of The Lion and the Cobra. The extra-conjugal relationship ended in 1989 when O'Connor discovered that Ceallaigh was secretly having an affair with another woman. This experience is reflected in O'Connor's song "The Last Day of Our Acquaintance".
Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers claimed he had a relationship with O'Connor in 1990 and wrote the song "I Could Have Lied" about the experience. O'Connor denied this, saying "I never had a relationship with him, ever. I hung out with him a few times and the row we had was because he suggested we might become involved. I don't give a shit about the song he wrote."
Between 1992 and 1993, O'Connor had an affair with British singer Peter Gabriel, whom she accompanied on his Secret World Tour in May 1993 and at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards in September. In October 1993, Sinéad O'Connor, at the age of 27, said she had attempted suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills as a reaction to Peter Gabriel's refusal to make their relationship permanent. This experience inspired her to write "Thank You for Hearing Me".
In contradiction with Catholic Church doctrine on the ordination of women, O'Connor was ordained in 1999 by Michael Cox, bishop of an Independent Catholic church. The bishop offered her ordination following her appearance on RTÉ's The Late Late Show, during which she told presenter Gay Byrne that had she not been a singer she would have wished to have been a Catholic priest. O'Connor adopted the religious name Mother Bernadette Mary.
"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."
* "You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart", from the film In the Name of the Father (1993), was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 1994. This nomination is credited to songwriters Bono, Gavin Friday, and Maurice Seezer.
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| Husband | John Reynolds (m. 1989-1991) Nick Sommerlad (m. 2001-2003) Steve Cooney (m. 2010-2011) Barry Herridge (m. 2011) |
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Net Worth and Salary
At the time of her death, Sinéad O'Connor's net worth was estimated at approximately $1.5 million to $2.12 million, although it was reported to be around $1.75 million after debts and expenses. Her earnings came primarily from her successful music career, including sales of her albums and streaming revenue from platforms like YouTube and Spotify.
A private funeral was held on 8 August in Bray, County Wicklow. It was attended by the president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, and O'Connor's family invited the public to pay their respects at the seafront where the funeral cortège passed. Thousands attended bearing signs and tributes; her burial was held privately at Dean's Grange Cemetery.
Later Career
Throughout her career, O'Connor continued to release music and remained active in the industry, although her financial success varied over the years. Her music on platforms like YouTube and Spotify continued to generate significant revenue even after her passing.
O'Connor drew attention to issues such as child abuse, human rights, racism, and women's rights. During a Saturday Night Live performance in 1992, nearly a decade before the world became fully aware of the prolific sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church, she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II to protest against the abuse, sparking controversy by those who did not know or who were hiding the truth of the scandal. Throughout her musical career, she openly discussed her spiritual journey, activism, socio-political viewpoints, and her experiences with trauma and struggles with mental health. Having converted to Islam in 2018, she adopted the name Shuhada' Sadaqat while continuing to perform and record under her birth name. In 2024, O'Connor was posthumously nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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.
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.
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. After O'Connor's death, Cyrus publicly apologised for her behaviour.
Social Network
Sinéad O'Connor maintained a strong online presence, with her YouTube channel garnering over 680 million views, primarily from her iconic hit "Nothing Compares 2 U," which has been viewed over 437 million times.
O'Connor released a cover of Mahalia Jackson's "Trouble of the World" in October 2020, with proceeds from the single to benefit Black Lives Matter charities. O'Connor released the memoir Rememberings on 1 June 2021 to positive reviews, listed among the best books of the year on BBC Culture. The Irish postal service An Post released a postage stamp on 15 July 2021 bearing an image of O'Connor singing.
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".
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:
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. She later changed her surname from Davitt to Sadaqat.
After her conversion to Islam, Sadaqat 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." Two days later, she tweeted that anyone who is not Muslim is "mentally ill". Later that month, Sadaqat 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."
A cannabis smoker for 30 years, O'Connor went to a rehabilitation centre in 2016, to end her addiction. She stated in February 2020 that she was agoraphobic. She had also previously been diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and borderline personality disorder.
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 previous 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 16th-season debut episode of American television talk show Dr. Phil. According to the show's host, Phil McGraw, O'Connor wanted to do the interview because she wished to "destigmatise mental illness", noting the prevalence of mental health problems among musicians. In 2021, O'Connor commented that she had spent much of the last six years in St Patrick's University Hospital in Dublin, and that she was grateful to them for helping her stay alive.
Following O'Connor's death, celebrities including BP Fallon, Janelle Monáe, Patton Oswalt, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tori Amos, Bear McCreary, Massive Attack, Public Enemy, Amanda Palmer, and Toni Collette posted tributes on social media. English singer Morrissey wrote a tribute criticising the reaction from executives and celebrities, and wrote: "You praise her now only because it is too late. You hadn't the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you."
Education
There is limited information available about Sinéad O'Connor's formal education. However, she was known for her talent and dedication to her music career from an early age.
In summary, Sinéad O'Connor's legacy as a singer-songwriter continues to inspire and influence new generations. Her financial success, though variable, reflects her enduring impact on the music industry.
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.
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 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 serie of albums that she co-produced. The single "Mandinka" was a 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. 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 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".
"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 ..."
