Biography:

Shuhada’ Sadaqat^[6][a] (previously Magda Davitt; born Sinéad^[b] Marie Bernadette O’Connor, 8 December 1966 – July 2023)^[1][8] was an Irish singer and musician. Her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, was released in 1987 and charted internationally. Her second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, received glowing reviews upon release and became her biggest success, selling over seven million copies worldwide.^[9] Its lead single, “Nothing Compares 2 U” (written by Prince), was named the number one world single in 1990 by the Billboard Music Awards.^[10]

She released ten studio albums: 1992’s Am I Not Your Girl? and 1994’s Universal Mother both went gold in the UK,^[11] 2000’s Faith and Courage received gold status in Australia,^[12] and 2005’s Throw Down Your Arms went gold in Ireland.^[13] Her work also includes songs for films, collaborations with many other artists, and appearances at charity fundraising concerts. Her 2021 memoir Rememberings was a best seller.^[14]

Throughout her music career she had been unabashedly honest about her spiritual journey, activism, socio-political views, as well as her trauma and mental health struggles.

In 1999, she was ordained as a priest by the Latin Tridentine Church, a sect that is not recognized by the mainstream Catholic Church.^[15] She consistently spoke out on issues related to child abuse, human rights, anti-racism, organised religion, and women’s rights. In 2017, O’Connor changed her name to Magda Davitt. After converting to Islam in 2018, she changed it to Shuhada’ Sadaqat.^[1][6][16] However prior to her death she continued to record and perform under her birth name.^[8]

Early life

O’Connor was born in the Cascia House Nursing Home at 13 Pembroke Road, Dublin, on 8 December 1966. She was named Sinéad after Sinéad de Valera, the mother of the doctor presiding over the delivery, Eamonn de Valera, and Bernadette in honour of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes.^[17][18] She is the third of five children; her siblings are novelist Joseph, Eimear, John, and Eoin.

Her parents are John Oliver “Seán” O’Connor, a structural engineer later turned barrister and chairperson of the Divorce Action Group, and Johanna Marie O’Grady (1939-1985) who married in the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Drimnagh, Dublin in 1960. In 1979, O’Connor left her mother and went to live with her father, who had married Viola Margaret Suiter (née Cook) in Alexandria, Virginia, United States three years prior in 1976.^[19] At the age of 15, her shoplifting and truancy led to her being placed for eighteen months in a Magdalene asylum called the Grianán Training Centre run by the Order of Our Lady of Charity.^[20] In some ways, she thrived there, especially in the development of her writing and music, but she also chafed under the imposed conformity. Unruly students there were sometimes sent to sleep in the adjoining nursing home, an experience of which she later commented, “I have never—and probably will never—experience such panic and terror and agony over anything.”^[21]

O’Connor’s mother Marie died in a car accident on 10 February 1985 aged 45 as she lost control of her car on an icy road and crashed into a bus, when O’Connor was eighteen.^[22][23]

In June 1993, O’Connor wrote a public letter in The Irish Times which asked people to “stop hurting” her: “If only I can fight off the voices of my parents / and gather a sense of self-esteem / Then I’ll be able to REALLY sing …” The letter repeated accusations of abuse by her parents as a child which O’Connor had made in interviews. Her brother Joseph defended their father to the newspaper but agreed regarding their mother’s “extreme and violent abuse, both emotional and physical”. O’Connor said that month, “Our family is very messed up. We can’t communicate with each other. We are all in agony. I for one am in agony.”^[24]

Musical career

1980s

One of the volunteers at Grianán was the sister of Paul Byrne, drummer for the band In Tua Nua, who heard O’Connor singing “Evergreen” by Barbra Streisand. She recorded a song with them called “Take My Hand” but they felt that at 15, she was too young to join the band.^[25] Through an ad she placed in Hot Press in mid-1984, she met Colm Farrelly. Together they recruited a few other members and formed a band called Ton Ton Macoute.^[18] The band moved to Waterford briefly while O’Connor attended Newtown School, but she soon dropped out of school and followed them to Dublin, where their performances received positive reviews. Their sound was inspired by Farrelly’s interest in world music, though most observers thought O’Connor’s singing and stage presence were the band’s strongest features.^[18][26]

O’Connor’s time as singer for Ton Ton Macoute brought her to the attention of the music industry, and she was eventually signed by Ensign Records. She also acquired an experienced manager, Fachtna O’Ceallaigh, former head of U2‘s Mother Records. Soon after she was signed, she embarked on her first major assignment, providing the vocals for the song “Heroine”, which she co-wrote with U2’s guitarist the Edge for the soundtrack to the film Captive. O’Ceallaigh, who had been fired by U2 for complaining about them in an interview, was outspoken with his views on music and politics, and O’Connor adopted the same habits; she defended the actions of the Provisional IRA and said U2’s music was “bombastic”.^[1] She later retracted her IRA comments saying they were based on nonsense, and that she was “too young to understand the tense situation in Northern Ireland properly”.^[27]

Her first album The Lion and the Cobra was “a sensation” when it was released in 1987 on Chrysalis Records,^[28] and it reached gold record status, earning a Best Female Rock Vocal Performance Grammy nomination. The single “Mandinka” was a big college radio hit in the United States, and “I Want Your (Hands on Me)” received both college and urban play in a remixed form that featured rapper MC Lyte. In her first US network television appearance, O’Connor sang “Mandinka” on Late Night with David Letterman in 1988.^[29] The single “Troy” was also released as a single in the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands, where it reached number 5 on the Dutch Top 40 chart.^[30]

O’Connor named Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Bob Marley, Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Pretenders as the artists who influenced her on her debut album.^[31] In 1989 O’Connor joined The The frontman Matt Johnson as a guest vocalist on the band’s album Mind Bomb, which spawned the duet “Kingdom of Rain”. That same year, she made her first foray into cinema, starring in and writing the music for the Northern Irish film Hush-a-Bye-Baby.

Credits:

Wikipedia