Sinead OConnors Life in Pictures The New York Times

Table Of Content

• Sinéad O'Connor's Estate Says She Would Be 'Disgusted' By Trump Using Her Song
• Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s teenage daughters stun in rare red carpet appearance
• Sinéad O'Connor Explains Why She Shaved Her Head: 'It Was Dangerous To Be A Female' (VIDEO)
• Sinéad O’Connor was found unresponsive in London flat, say police
• The story behind Sinéad O’Connor’s shaved head: ‘It said, ‘Don’t f—k with me”
• ‘She found peace here’: local people tell of Sinéad O’Connor’s last years in Ireland

No one in the barber’s shop could understand her accent, so McNeil interpreted as she settled into, he writes, a child’s seat on the barber chair. The next day, O’Connor traipsed down to the barber’s shop, where a young Greek barber shed a single horrified tear as he took the buzzer to her scalp. His weeping, she reminded The Washington Post in an interview promoting Rememberings, was reminiscent of the single tear she herself shed in the “Nothing Compares 2 U” music video. It was also a symbol with the power to exacerbate whatever you already thought about her—that she was a defiant warrior; a freak; an insecure woman; an angst-ridden teen; a little girl who needed saving. It nearly became synecdoche for all that she was, until she climbed onstage and reminded you that, no, she was not just her shaved head.

Sinéad O'Connor's Estate Says She Would Be 'Disgusted' By Trump Using Her Song

With her extreme look and controversial politics, O'Connor landed her first record contract when she was just 17. It was a time, she remembers, that was especially difficult for women in the music industry. By the late 90s, she was more frequently in the news for personal reasons, such as her ordination as a priest called Mother Bernadette Mary by a breakaway Catholic sect in 1999, and the announcement that she was a lesbian, which she soon rescinded. In 2003 she was told she had bipolar disorder, but the diagnosis was later changed to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s teenage daughters stun in rare red carpet appearance

O’Connor shared the heartbreaking story of why she first shaved her head while chatting to Dr. Phil in 2017. The Nothing Compares 2 U songstress, who passed away this week at the age of 56, was celebrated for her signature androgynous look and kept with the iconic style throughout her career. She kept no-to-short hair all her life, never growing the buzzcut longer than a pixie cut. And while the look suited her down to the ground, the reason behind it is heartbreaking. As recently as 2021, O’Connor was still shaving her own head “about every 10 days,” as she told the New York Times that year, despite often wearing a hijab following her 2018 conversion to Islam.

The Shaved Head's Power from Florence Pugh to Sinead O'Connor - The Kit

The Shaved Head's Power from Florence Pugh to Sinead O'Connor.

Posted: Wed, 26 Jul 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Sinéad O'Connor Explains Why She Shaved Her Head: 'It Was Dangerous To Be A Female' (VIDEO)

With her short hair and wide eyes, the Irish singer Sinead O’Connor, who has died at the age of 56, cast a powerful silhouette onstage during her music career. The height of her power came in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including a divisive 1992 appearance on “Saturday Night Live” in which she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II to protest sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. She signed to Ensign Records in 1985 and released her first album, The Lion and the Cobra, two years later. The album cover alone – a shaved-bald O’Connor grimacing, fists raised – was markedly different from the female songwriter norm, and the stark, abrasive music experimented in a way that aligned her with Kate Bush and Björk. Five months before its release, she gave birth to her first child, Jake, whose father was John Reynolds, the drummer on the album. When Irish singer/songwriter Sinéad O'Connor burst onto the music scene in the late '80s, the industry hadn't heard or seen anyone like her.

Sinéad O’Connor was found unresponsive in London flat, say police

The album was scrapped altogether after her 17-year-old son Shane, from a relationship with the musician Donal Lunny, took his own life in 2022. Outraged by Catholic church corruption, she campaigned for the arrest of paedophile church officials, while also using the platform of her fame to denounce sexism in the music business and an array of other issues. During a 1992 appearance on the US variety show Saturday Night Live, she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II, inciting a storm of condemnation from America’s large Catholic population. At a Bob Dylan tribute gig in New York soon after, she was booed throughout her performance – even the endorsement of the songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who told her, “Don’t let the bastards get you down,” failed to silence the hecklers. A passionate and highly engaged musician, she was one of her generation’s significant talents. Her bel canto-trained style and wide-ranging musical curiosity were her main assets, and she employed both prodigiously, switching from pop to Irish folk to jazz to reggae on the other nine albums she released.

According to legend, the perpetual five o’clock shadow that studded Sinéad O’Connor’s skull for most of her life started out as a defiant fuck-you to the music industry—and, in particular, the record executives who wanted her to “tart” herself up a tad. "I didn’t want to be raped or molested, I did not want to dress like a girl, I did not want to be pretty. Other girls beat you up if you were pretty too." Despite her incredible voice and musical success, O’Connor’s bold look caused tension between herself and record executives in the run-up to the launch of her first album in 1987, The Lion and the Cobra.

Commercially, it was the apex of a career that tormented rather than fulfilled her. The internationally renowned Irish musician - best known for the song 'Nothing Compares 2 U' - first shaved her head at the age of 20 ahead of the release of her first album. O’Connor’s second husband was a journalist, Nick Sommerlad, and the third the musician Steve Cooney. She is survived by her son Jake, a daughter, Róisín, from a relationship with the journalist John Waters, a son, Yeshua, from a relationship with Frank Bonadio, and a grandchild. In 2007, she told The Guardian that she didn’t “feel like me” unless she had her head shaved.

"I didn't want to be sold on that. If I was going to be successful, I wanted it to be because I was a good musician." In a sit-down interview with Dr Phil in 2017, the Nothing Compares 2 U hitmaker opened up about how her signature look came about. She initially chopped all her hair off in her youth in solidarity with her sister. So instead of going along with the label, which wanted to market her as a “generic female,” O’Connor headed straight to a barber and shaved off what was left of her locks. From Britney Spears to Natalie Portman to Jada Pinkett Smith, a great many celebrities have made headlines by shaving off their hair — but Sinéad O’Connor’s symbolic buzzcut might be the most famous of them all. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data.

Sinéad O’Connor’s shaved head became an iconic part of her image over the years. Waters, whose father is Irish journalist John Waters, lives in Dublin and works as a pastry chef. A New York concert honoring the late Sinéad O’Connor featured a rousing rendition of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” performed by her daughter, Roisin Waters. Others were so surprised to see O’Connor without her usual cropped hair that they confused her with fellow Irish singer Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries fame, who died in 2018.

O’Connor favoured short hair throughout her life, either the buzzcut or a very short pixie style, such as the one seen in 1994 track Famine. She also revealed she suffered from PTSD because of the abuse she received as a child. O'Connor had spoken publicly about her mental health struggles over the years and admitted she battled thoughts of suicide and had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It comes 18 months after the mother-of-four's son Shane, 17, took his life in January 2022 after escaping hospital while on suicide watch.

The late Irish artist’s baldness was inextricably linked to her identity, and she wielded it throughout her life as a weapon, a shield, and a means of amplifying her music. But O'Connor's hair also became more than just a symbol of defiance against the sexualisation of women in the industry, it eventually became a part of her. However, it wasn't just her mother, the abuse and assault she experienced which led to O'Connor deciding to shave her hair off. In an interview with TV psychologist Dr Phil, O'Connor revealed the reasons behind the look.