Singer Sinead O’Connor was found unconscious at her London home yesterday morning and was pronounced dead at the scene, reports RTE.
In a statement from British police, they said the 56-year-old’s next of kin had been notified and her death was not being treated as suspicious.
The Metropolitan Police said officers were called shortly before noon yesterday to reports of an unresponsive woman at a residential address in the south-east of the city.
As no medical cause of death was given, London’s Inner South Coroner’s Court ordered an autopsy.
“The results of this may not available for several weeks. The decision whether an inquest will be needed will be decided when these results are known and submissions have been heard from the family,” it said in a statement, reports RTE.
Sinead O’Connor released her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, at just 21 years old, and began a music career spanning decades and genres, gaining fans around the world.
Born Sinead Mary Bernadette O’Connor in Glengarry, County Dublin in December 1966, the singer had a difficult childhood.
One of five children, O’Connor spoke of being physically abused by her mother, who died in a car accident in 1985.
At the age of 15, she was placed in an institution for shoplifting and truancy.
But it was there that her musical talent was discovered.
After moving to London in 1987, she released her first album, which launched her international career.
She recorded it while pregnant with her first child and produced it herself.
It was critically acclaimed and has been included on many lists of the best albums of the 1980s.
Paying tribute, singer Mary Black said: “Every word she sang in any song you felt she meant it from the bottom of her heart, and she had that sort of brilliant raw talent that came out no matter what song she sang,” reports RTE.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio, she said: “She was fragile and fearful but fearless as well, in that when she felt something was wrong or when she felt she needed to speak she would speak and that was an unusual trait in a woman, particularly going back 10, 15, 20 years when she was starting out. So, you know, it was something that other women began to admire and say ‘My God, how strong is she? You know maybe we can be more like that’,” reports RTE.
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