THE BRAVERY & HEARTBREAK OF SINEAD O'CONNOR

A RELUCTANT SUPERSTAR WITH A DEFIANT FAITH IN HER OWN CONVICTIONS, THE IRISH PERFORMER SANG WITH AN ACHING PURITY EVEN AS HER LIFE AND CAREER WERE WAYLAID BY EMOTIONAL CATASTROPHES

- JEFF NELSON

"I had a house in L.A. during the glory days," Sinéad O'Connor told People in 2021, long after those decades had passed and she was living in Knockananna, a village in her Irish homeland. "There was a big window; you I could see the whole city. It kept reminding me of the story: The devil takes Jesus to the top of the mountain and says, 'You can have all this if you fall down and worship me."" She didn't keep that house for long. After her career-canceling decision to tear up a photo of Pope John Paul II during a 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live, O'Connor donated the place to the Red Cross and left America.

The singer-songwriter-who was 56 when she was found dead of still-undetermined causes in her London apartment on July 26-always stuck to her convictions. "Artists are supposed to act as an emergency fire service when it comes to spiritual conflict," she told the Los Angeles Times in 2012. But over the years she endured crippling mental illness and the shattering loss of her son Shane, who died by suicide at 17 in 2022. (Divorced four times, she's survived by three children: Jake Reynolds, 36, Roisin Waters, 27, and Yeshua Bonadio, 16.)