Sinéad O' CONNOR

The world fell silent upon the death of Sinéad O'Connor. Here, Cameron Adams remembers the Irish vocalist who was fearless both off and on stage

- Cameron Adams

Brave and fearless have become generic terms for today’s musicians, to market them as authentic. But Sinéad O’Connor was so unflinchingly brave and brutally honest – sharing her raw emotions, childhood traumas and mental illness with the world in an era before social media and before people knew how to process them – she almost sabotaged what was to become one of the most fascinating careers of modern times.

Later in life, O’Connor did embrace social media, documenting an emotional decline that led to her tragic death, aged 56, on July 26. Her passing came 18 months after her 17-year-old son Shane died by suicide. In her final social media post in the days before she died, O’Connor told the world she was living as “an undead night creature” since Shane’s death, saying he was the “love of her life” and “the only person who ever loved me unconditionally”.

O’Connor’s fearlessness first reared its head when she was 14, shoplifting and skipping school in south Dublin, Ireland. She was caught stealing shoes from a friend and then money from her parents, which led to a stint in a residential training centre run by nuns for girls with behavioural problems. Upstairs was a room for the dying, where young girls were sent to sleep as punishment. “I will never experience such panic and terror and agony over anything like I did at that place,” O’Connor told music magazine Spin in 1990. “It wasn’t a governmentrun institution, it was a Catholic one, which is worse, believe me.”