Sinéad O’Connor’s official cause of death has been revealed.
The Southwark Coroners Court confirmed on Tuesday, January 9, that O’Connor died of natural causes, noting in a statement, “The coroner has therefore ceased their involvement in her death.”
The Irish Times confirmed that the singer died on July 26, 2023, at the age of 56.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad. Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time,” O’Connor’s family wrote in a statement to RTE at the time.
O’Connor was best known for her rendition of Prince’s hit song “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which earned her nominations for Record of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Grammy Award for Best Music Video, Short Form at the 1990 Grammys.
The musician experienced her fair share of ups and downs throughout her singing career. When she performed her now-famous rendition of Bob Marley’s “War” on Saturday Night Live in 1992 as an act of protest against the Catholic Church, she held up a picture of Pope John Paul II and tore the image to pieces, which led to a permanent ban from the show. Despite public criticism, O’Connor has since been praised by some for speaking out on important issues despite backlash.
Shortly before her death, O’Connor announced that she had moved back to London and was working on a new album that she planned to release in 2024.
Following her passing, many celebrities paid tribute to O’Connor in several different ways.
Pink and Brandi Carlile honored the late singer by performing “Nothing Compares 2 U” together during Pink’s concert in Ohio in July. “When I was a little girl … I used to go down to the Ocean City boardwalk with my 10 dollars and I would make a demo tape,” Pink told the audience at the time. “And it would always be either ‘Greatest Love of All’ by Whitney Houston or ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ by Sinéad O’Connor.”
Russell Crowe, for his part, recalled running into O’Connor while at a pub in Ireland.
“There under streetlights with mist on my breath, I met Sinéad. She looked in my eyes, and uttered with disarming softness,‘Oh, it’s you Russell.’ She came with us back to the table and sat in the cold and ordered a hot tea,” Crowe wrote in a lengthy Twitter thread one day after her death. “In a conversation without fences we roamed through the recent Dublin heatwave, local politics, American politics, the ongoing fight for indigenous recognition in many places, but particularly in Australia, her warm memory of New Zealand, faith, music, movies and her brother the writer. I had the opportunity to tell her she was a hero of mine.”
Singer and songwriter Bob Geldof later told fans that he had been in touch with O’Connor shortly before her death, sharing that she was experiencing a wide range of emotions in her final days.
“She was a very good friend of mine,” he told the audience at the Cavan Calling Festival in Cavan, Ireland, in July 2023. “Some of the texts [she sent] were laden with desperation and despair and sorrow and some were ecstatically happy. She was like that.”
Nearly a year prior to her passing, O’Connor lost her son, Shane, to suicide at the age of 17. “My beautiful son, Nevi’im Nesta Ali Shane O’Connor, the very light of my life, decided to end his earthly struggle today and is now with God,” she tweeted at the time. “May he rest in peace and may no one follow his example. My baby. I love you so much. Please be at peace.”
O’Connor was later briefly hospitalized after sharing a series of since-deleted tweets about taking her own life.
O’Connor is survived by her three children: Jake, Roisin and Yeshua.
