I wasn’t surprised to learn Sinead O’Connor had died. Her son killed himself last year and she said at the time, she had little to live for.

O’Connor was born in Dublin 1966 and was sent to a reform school for girls but left in her mid-teens to focus on a music career.

She moved to London in 1985 and produced The Lion and the Cobra, which would go on to earn her a Grammy Award nomination.

It was track six on the follow-up album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, that catapulted O’Connor to fame. Nothing Compares 2 U was written by Prince made O’Connor an uneasy star.

The record earned her four more Grammy nominations won for the best alternative music performance. She shunned the ceremony in protest at the “false and destructive materialistic values” of the music industry. She also said, “alternative to what?”

She campaigned hard against the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and the sexual abuse of those in its care.

O’Connor converted to Islam in 2018 and changed her name to Shuhada Sadaqat, though continued to perform under the name Sinéad O’Connor.

I admired O’Connor because she stood fast to her ideals. When the going got tough, there was Sinead. She was a protest singer who exposed hypocrisy and told the truth. Who wouldn’t like that as their epitaph?