Just days before she unexpectedly passed away at the age of 56, singer Sinéad O’Connor posted a heartbreaking farewell social media update.

The renowned Irish musician passed away only a year after the passing of her son Shane, then 17 years old. The singer shared a photo of her late son along with the words, “Been living as undead night creature since. He was the love of my life, the lamp of my soul.”

Her last Instagram post was a black-and-white picture of herself smiling. The post’s caption read: “Love the life you have and be grateful for what you are.”

Her last post was from 2016. She was not very frequent on Instagram and her bio stated, “So yes I’m am finally on Instagram but I don’t really know how to use it, so can all you fans come and teach me?”

With the release of her debut album The Lion and the Cobra in the late 1980s, Sinéad shot to popularity. In 1990, she broke through on a global scale with her rendition of “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Prince.

When she was sent to a Magdalene Asylum for 18 months in 1979 owing to issues with stealing and truancy, she developed an interest in music. She began to hone her literary and musical talents, and after being “discovered” by the band’s drummer, she went on to contribute to the creation of Take My Hand, a song by the well-known Irish band Tua Nua.

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She moved to London and was signed to Ensign records in 1985 while still performing with the band Tonne Tonne Macoute. When she was 20 years old, she recorded her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra.

She received a Grammy nomination for the album, which was praised as “a sensation” and went on to become a gold record. She had established her own distinctive sense of style by the time her second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, was released, including her famous shaved head.

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She began to grow it back as a protest against gender stereotypes, but she shaved it off once more after being compared to singer Enya. Shane, Sinead’s son who passed away 18 months prior, consumed her final months of life.

At the time, O’Connor wrote a eulogy for him and stated that he had “decided to end his earthly struggle and is now with God.” In her native Ireland, her rendition of the smash song “Nothing Compares 2 U” rose to the eighth-most popular single of the 1990s, propelling her to superstardom.

She was voted Artist of the Year by Rolling Stone magazine in 1991, and she won the 1991 Grammy for Best Alternative Music Performance. Despite boycotting the awards ceremony, she also received other honours that year.

After the release of her double album She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty in 2003, she made the announcement that she was leaving the music industry. A Reggae CD she released in 2005, inspired by her stay in Jamaica the year before, marked her quick comeback to the music scene after a brief period of retirement.

She revealed that she had tried suicide on her 33rd birthday in 1999 and had received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder four years earlier when she appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007. She later claimed that the lack of hormone replacement therapy after a hysterectomy was to blame for her mental health and claimed that she was not, in fact, bipolar in 2014.