Tearing up that photo cost her a career, but the Catholic Church eventually proved her right about everything.
At a glance
- Known for
- Nothing Compares 2 U, tearing up the Pope's photo on SNL in 1992
- Before fame
- Got her first guitar from a nun at a reform school with Magdalene Laundry origins
- Off-screen
- Converted to Islam in 2018, changed her legal name twice
Rise to Fame
A nun at a reform school with Magdalene Laundry origins handed her a guitar. Within five years she had a record deal. She recorded The Lion and the Cobra while heavily pregnant after refusing her label's demand that she get an abortion, and shaved her head at 20 because music executives wanted to sell her on sexuality. She chose to look like nobody's product.
"Nothing Compares 2 U" made her a global star almost by accident. Prince wrote it for a side project years earlier. She recorded the vocals in a single take, and the video stripped everything away: just her face against black, two real tears rolling down because she was thinking about her mother. First woman to win MTV's Video of the Year, more than seven million copies sold on the album. She refused her Grammy.
In the Spotlight
On 3 October 1992, she tore up her mother's photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live while singing Bob Marley's "War" rewritten about child abuse. NBC banned her for life. Joe Pesci threatened her on air the following week, a bulldozer crushed her records in Times Square, and a Madison Square Garden crowd booed her into singing "War" a cappella two weeks later. Kris Kristofferson found her backstage: "Don't let the bastards get you down."
The Catholic Church didn't begin acknowledging widespread child abuse for another nine years. Time named her the most influential woman of 1992, but waited until 2020 to say so. She'd been living in a $70-per-night New Jersey motel, having lost most of her fortune. The vindication was thorough. So was the damage.
Side Notes
Ordained a priest in 1999 by a dissident Catholic bishop after donating $200,000 to the operation, she walked away with accusations she'd purchased the title. She grew up in a household so abusive that a reform school was the improvement. Converted to Islam in 2018, calling it "the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian's journey." Kept performing as Sinead O'Connor because the name outlasted every reinvention.
Prince, who wrote the song that defined her, reportedly chastised her for swearing in interviews and, according to her memoir Rememberings, challenged her to a pillow fight with something hard hidden inside before she fled. His estate later refused to let the Nothing Compares documentary use the song. His half-sister said she "didn't feel she deserved" it.
Final Chapter
Her 17-year-old son Shane was found dead in January 2022 after going missing from a Dublin hospital where Covid restrictions prevented the supervised care he was supposed to receive. Thousands lined Strand Road in Bray for her funeral on 8 August 2023. The cortege paused outside her former home while mourners threw flowers and sang "Nothing Compares 2 U." President Higgins, Bono, and Bob Geldof attended. Annie Lennox performed the song at the 66th Grammy Awards with a painted tear on her cheek.