It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Sinéad O’Connor at the age of 56.
Sinéad O’Connor saw herself as a protest-singing punk. Sinéad O’Connor saw herself as a protest-singing punk. When she ascended to the top of the pop charts, she was trapped. “The media was making me out to be crazy because I wasn’t acting like a pop star was supposed
to act,” she said.
“It seems to me that being a pop star is almost like being in a type of prison. You have to be a good girl.” And that’s just not Sinead O’Connor.
Known as much for her outspoken views on religion, sex, feminism and war as for her music, she will be remembered in some quarters for ripping up a photo of Pope John Paul II during a 1992 television appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” declaring: “Fight the real enemy”.
Her criticisms of Catholicism were especially controversial in parts of Ireland but also a brave representation of a shift that was taking shape in society away from the Church, whose deep influence began to collapse later that decade over a string of clerical child sex abuse scandals.
