Sinead O’Connor, the trailblazing Irish artist and “Nothing Compares 2 U” hitmaker, has died, according to a family statement obtained by the BBC. She was 56.
The vocalist’s cause of death has not yet been revealed. USA TODAY has reached out to O’Connor’s representatives for comment.
The news comes more than a year after O’Connor’s 17-year-old son, Shane, died by suicide in January 2022. The singer posted a series of troubling messages to her Twitter account in the weeks following his death, writing, “I’ve decided to follow my son. There’s no point living without him.” Shane was one of O’Connor’s four children.
O’Connor released her debut album, “The Lion and the Cobra” in 1987, and three years later, shot to worldwide fame with her sophomore effort “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got.” The album was bolstered by lead single “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a cover of Prince’s 1985 song.
Her version of the ballad spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, and was nominated for two Grammy Awards including record of the year and best female pop vocal performance. It was accompanied by a now-iconic music video of O’Connor in tight closeup singing directly into the camera.
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The singer endured enormous fallout from her 1992 “Saturday Night Live” appearance, in which she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II while singing Bob Marley’s “War,” in protest of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church. Religious groups burned her albums, radio stations pulled her songs, and she was loudly booed during a performance at Madison Square Garden weeks later.
But O’Connor expressed no regrets about controversial “SNL” moment, later calling it the “proudest” moment of her career.
“They all thought I should be made a mockery of for throwing my career down the drain,” O’Connor said in “Nothing Compares,” a documentary about her life released last year. “I didn’t say I wanted to be a pop star. It didn’t suit me to be a pop star. So I didn’t throw away any career that I wanted. It didn’t change my attitude.”
This story is developing.
Contributing: Melissa Ruggieri, USA TODAY
