Sinead O’Connor opened up about her complicated relationship with her mother in what is reportedly her last public address for the 2019 documentary Nothing Compares. The iconic Irish singer, who died at the age of 56 on Jul. 26, 2023, claimed mom Marie O’Connor was a “violent woman” who forced her to live outside in a garden during her childhood. Two days after Sinead’s tragic passing, the Nothing Compares director, Kathryn Ferguson, told DailyMail that Sinead spoke freely during production and “didn’t attempt any sort of editorial control.”
“The three-hour interview, in which she talked, uninterrupted, for 97 minutes, is the backbone to our film and lets her tell her story,’ Ferguson explained. “It was good timing: the world was on fire with women speaking out against the patriarchy and it was the time of Me Too as well, so there was all this noise and activism.”
“She had called out such things – such as the way the church had been responsible for so many women’s mental illness in Ireland, including her mother’s – quite a time earlier,” Ferguson continued. “So it seemed appropriate to hear her voice again and she obviously felt the same way.”
The documentary, named after Sinead’s biggest hit, 1990’s “Nothing Compares 2U,” was an unflinching look at the singer’s homelife. “My mother was a beast,” she said in the film. “I was able to soothe her with my voice. I was able to use my voice to make the devil sleep.”
Born to Marie and John O’Connor in 1966, Sinead was the third child among five siblings. Her parents divorced when she was eight years old, and she spent the following five years living with her mother.
“My mother was a very violent woman, not a healthy woman at all: She was physically, verbally, psychologically, spiritually and emotionally abusive,” Sinead claimed in the film. “One of the very traumatic things that happened to me when I was growing up was that my mother had me living in the garden, when I was eight and a half, 24-7, for a week or two.”
“I’m out in the garden in the dark – I still hate dusk to this day – and I’ll be looking up at the only window on the side of the house where she’d have a light on and I’d be screaming, begging her to let me in, and she wouldn’t, the light would go off, and the house would go dark,” she added.
Sinead would move in with her father at the age of 13 after he won custody. At 15, she found her love of singing, per the movie, and by 18, she moved to London and joined a band. “Why I like performing and singing loud is because I am quietly spoken and quite withdrawn, so it’s a relief to climb on the stage and scream,” she said in the movie.
Tragically, when O’Connor was just 18, her mother died in a car accident in February 1985. The incident occurred when Marie lost control of her car on an icy road and collided with a bus.
At the time of Sinead’s passing, her remaining family members released a statement announcing the somber news. “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,” they wrote, per The Irish Times.
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