London Police Say Sinead O’Connor’s Death ‘Not Being Treated As Suspicious’
As the outpouring of tributes and grief continued in the wake of Sinead O’Connor‘s death on Wednesday (July 26) at age 56, London’s Metropolitan Police released some information about the circumstances surrounding the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer’s passing.
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According to a statement from the London Metropolitan Police — which did not refer to O’Connor by name, as is official policy, but which was confirmed by British press reports to be in reference to the singer — O’Connor was found unresponsive at her South London home on Wednesday morning and pronounced dead at the scene. The Police noted that the deceased’s next of kin had been notified of her death and that it is not being treated as suspicious; a coroner’s inquest is to follow.
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“Police were called at 11.18 a.m. on Wednesday 26 July to reports of an unresponsive woman at a residential address in the SE24 area,” read the statement. “Officers attended. A 56-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene.” A cause of death has not yet been disclosed and a representative for the singer had not provided any additional details at press time.
On July 11, in her last public statement on Facebook, O’Connor informed fans that she had recently moved back to London after 23 years and was “very happy to be home,” adding that she was finishing an album slated for release next year and plotting a world tour, including stops in the U.S., Europe, New Zealand and Australia. At press time no additional information was available on the album.
O’Connor’s management confirmed the album and tour news in a post on Thursday, adding that they were also “considering opportunities in relation to a movie of her book (the 2021 memoir Rememberings] … wonderful plans were afoot at this time.”
Additionally, People reported that in a July 17 message from her now-deleted Twitter (né “X”) account O’Connor mourned the 2022 death of her late son Shane, 17, who went missing in January of that year; O’Connor revealed several days later that Shane had died by suicide. “Been living as undead night creature since,” O’Connor reportedly wrote in the tweet. “He was the love of my life, the lamp of my soul. We were one soul in two halves. He was the only person who ever loved me unconditionally. I am lost in the bardo without him.”
Just hours after the devastating news broke, P!nk paid tribute to O’Connor during the first U.S. date of her Summer Carnival tour in Cincinnati on Wednesday night when she invited opener Brandi Carlile out for a poignant, emotional duet on “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a cover of the Prince-penned song that became O’Connor’s signature hit.
Prefacing the performance, P!nk said the 1990 track that reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was accompanied by an iconic video — featuring a sustained, emotionally wrenching close-up in which the singer memorably sheds tears near the end — was her musical north star as a teenager.
“When I was a little girl, my mom grew up in Atlantic City and I used to go down to the Ocean City Boardwalk with my ten dollars and I would make a demo tape… I would make a little cassette tape and imagine it was my demo for the record company,” P!nk told the crowd at the sold-out baseball stadium.
“And it would always be either ‘Greatest Love of All’ by Whitney Houston or ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ by Sinead O’Connor. She then invited Carlile out and the two women, who have both memorably covered the song in the past, brought a hush over the massive crowd with their loving, impassioned performance.
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