O'Connor's recording of "Nothing Compares 2 U" was one of the biggest hits of the early 1990s. Her death was announced by her family. The cause and date of her death were not made public. The statement said: "It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time."
Alternative radio in the late 1980s rang with the voices of female singers who defied commercial expectations of what women should look like and how they should sound. But even in a crowd that included Tracy Chapman, Laurie Anderson and the Indigo Girls, O'Connor stood out.
The cover to her first album, released in 1987, was so striking — not just because of her beautiful face. It was her head, bald as an eaglet, and her wrists locked defensively across her heart. The album's title, The Lion and the Cobra, refers to a verse from Psalm 91 about believers, and the power and resilience of their faith. And throughout her early life, Sinéad O'Connor was resilient.
"I grew up in a severely abusive situation, my mother being the perpetrator," O'Connor told NPR in 2014. "So much of child abuse is about being voiceless, and it's a wonderfully healing thing to just make sounds."
O'Connor started making sounds in a home for juvenile delinquents, after a childhood spent getting booted out of Catholic schools and busted, repeatedly, for shoplifting. But a nun gave her a guitar and she began to sing, on the streets of Dublin and then with a popular Irish band called In Tua Nua.