Irish music star Sinéad O’Connor was known for not only her hits but a number of controversies throughout her short life.
Arguably the biggest scandal came in 1992 while O’Connor was on tour in America, where she drew the wrath of the Catholic church and millions of its followers.
To the horror of everyone watching, O’Connor held up a photo of Pope John Paul II to the camera and tore it in half.
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O’Connor has died aged 56 from undisclosed causes. She is best known for her cover of Prince‘s Nothing Compares 2 U, which she released in 1990. The song went to number one around the world.
But the musician was also in the headlines for her rebellious ways, even calling herself “a protest singer”.
She was born in Dublin and spent part of her childhood in care, where she suffered abuse – which she said contributed to her lifelong passion for activism.
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The most notorious moment in her career came in 1992, soon after the release of I’m Not Your Girl.
The incident lead to many former fans destroying copies of her records, while broadcaster NBC received more than 4000 complaints.
O’Connor had been invited to perform on the popular Saturday Night Live, where she sang an acapella performance of Bob Marley’s War.
During the performance, O’Connor substituted some of the words so it became a protest against child sexual abuse in the Catholic church.
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Moments after the song came to an end, she looked at the camera and said “fight the real enemy”.
O’Connor’s protest saw her banned for life by NBC while demonstrations against her broke out across the US and other parts of the world.
At a tribute concert to Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden, weeks after the SNL incident, O’Connor was booed so much she couldn’t perform.
She later returned to live in Dublin.
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But the singer refused to back down, even many years later.
In 2014, she called the protest her “proudest night ever”.
And in 2021, in an interview with the New York Times, she said: “I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant”.
At the time, O’Connor said she wanted to “be a voice in the wilderness” after already speaking at length about suffering abuse at home and while at the Catholic reform school.
It turned out that the photo she tore up had belonged to her mother, who had died in a car crash in 1985.
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The pope photo was not the only controversy for O’Connor in the US.
While in New Jersey, she refused to perform at a concert venue unless it dropped its normal practice of playing the US national anthem before she went on.
The venue reluctantly agreed but it led to a boycott of her songs by a number of US radio stations.
Her fourth album, Universal Mother, released in 1994, failed to reach the success of her previous work and would be her last studio album for six years.
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