Sinéad O’Connor dies at the age of 56 - 18 months after son's tragic death

"Sinéad O’Connor has died, it's been reported.
According the Irish Times, the iconic Nothing Compares 2 U singer has passed away at the age of 56.
The Irish singer is survived by three children. Her son Shane passed away last year at the age of 17.

In her final social media post, Sinead tweeted a picture of her late son and wrote: "Been living as undead night creature since. He was the love of my life, the lamp of my soul."

Born Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor in Dublin on 8 December 1966, O’Connor rose to fame in the late 1980s with her debut album The Lion and the Cobra, and achieved worldwide success in 1990 with a new arrangement of Prince's song "Nothing Compares 2 U".

After her parents divorced when she was eight, O’Connor claimed she was physically abused - detailed in her song "Fire on Babylon" - and she has consistently advocated on behalf of abused children.

Her interest in music began in 1979, when at the age of 15 her shoplifting and truancy issues led to her being placed in a Magdalene Asylum, for 18 months. It was here she started to develop her writing and music and was subsequently “discovered” by the drummer of popular Irish band Tua Nua, where she went on to co-write their song Take My Hand.

In 1985 while performing in a band called Ton Ton Macoute she left and moved to London where she was signed to Ensign records.

At the age of 20, while recording her first album, The Lion and the Cobra, she became pregnant by her session drummer John Reynolds.They had a son, Jake, and married in 1987.

Her first album was hailed "a sensation", reaching gold record status and earning O’Connor a Grammy nomination. Upon the release of her second album – 1990's I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got – she had formed the identity with which we’ve come to associate her - in particular, her trademark shaved head.

As we now know, her retirement was short lived and she returned to the industry, albeit going in a different direction with her sound - releasing a Reggae album in 2005, after she spent time in Jamaica in 2004.

Her mental health issues began to come to light when, in 2007, she disclosed on The Oprah Winfrey Show, that she’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder four years earlier, and had attempted suicide on her 33rd birthday in 1999. Then, in 2012 O'Connor announced on her website that she was "very unwell" having suffered a breakdown towards the end of 2011. However in 2014, she said she was not in fact bipolar and would later blame her mental state on the lack of hormone-replacement therapy following a hysterectomy.

Aside from her music, O’Connor used her voice to raise awareness for charities, issues and causes throughout her career. however, the singer was at the centre of many controversies during her long career. Most notably, in 1992, she used a performance on Saturday Night Live to protest child abuse, ripping a picture of Pope John Paul II while singing the word “evil”."

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/breaking-music-legend-sinad-oconnor-30560484

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Fire on Babylon.
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