Childhood
She was born as Sinead Marie Bernadette O’Connor in Glenageary, County Dublin, in December 1966, and had a difficult childhood, placed as a teenager in Dublin’s An Grianan Training Centre, formerly one of the notorious Magdalene laundries set up to incarcerate young girls deemed to be promiscuous.
She found some independence through her music career which lead to the release of her first album The Lion And The Cobra in 1987. A follow-up, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, included the Prince song Nothing Compares 2 U, and this single reached number one around the world, including in the US and the UK. The accompanying video of the singer looking straight to camera and crying is regarded as one of the most memorable of the ’80s.
She went on to release 10 studio albums between 1987 and 2014, when her last studio album, I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss, was released. She experimented with various musical styles including traditional Irish foolk and reggae, and collaborated with a wide range of other musicians. In 1991 she was named artist of the year by Rolling Stone magazine, and won a Brit Award for international female solo artist.
The following year, one of the most notable events of her career took place when she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on US TV show Saturday Night Live, where she was the invited performer.
In 1992, following an acapella performance of Bob Marley’s War, on Saturday Night Live, she looked at the camera saying “Fight the real enemy”, a protest against child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. The result was a lifetime ban from broadcaster NBC and protests against her in America which saw copies of her records destroyed in New York’s Times Square. “I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” she said in an interview with the New York Times in 2021.
In 2018 she adopted Islam and changed her name to Shuhada’ Sadaqat, but continued to perform under her birth name. She released a memoir, Rememberings, in 2021.
