Sinead O’Connor told kids what to do if she suddenly died: ‘Call my accountant’

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Sinead O’Connor gave her children very specific instructions on what to do if she were to die unexpectedly.

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“See, when the artists are dead, they’re much more valuable than when they’re alive. Tupac (Shakur) has released way more albums since he died than he ever did alive, so it’s kind of gross what record companies do,” O’Connor told PEOPLE in 2021.

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“That’s why I’ve always instructed my children since they were very small, ‘If your mother drops dead tomorrow, before you called 911, call my accountant and make sure the record companies don’t start releasing my records and not telling you where the money is.’”

The subject came up as she reflected on how unreleased music from Prince — who wrote O’Connor’s 1990 breakout hit Nothing Compares 2 U — was posthumously released after his death in 2016.

“One of the things that’s a great bugbear with me, I get very angry when I think of it, is the fact that they’re raping his vault,” she told the outlet.

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“All musicians, we have songs that we really are embarrassed about that are crap. We don’t want anyone hearing them. Now this is a man who released every song he ever recorded, so if he went to the trouble of building a vault, which is a pretty strong thing to do, that means he really did not want these songs released. And I can’t stand that people are, as I put it, raping the vault.”

O’Connor died Wednesday at age 56.

The Grammy winner’s cause of death has not yet been revealed, but police said that it was not being treated as suspicious.

The singer’s family confirmed her death in a brief statement. “It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinead,” they wrote. “Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”

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In the days before her death, the mother-of-four warned fans in a series of tweets that she was being tormented by a “violent” stalker and a man was “claiming to be my boyfriend.”

“Sinead felt very uncomfortable. She had started a new life in ­London but this person was making her feel on edge,” a source told the U.K. Sun. “Sinead confided in people and said she’d had gifts she believed to be from this person. It was upsetting.”

“There is one stalker. Female. Violent: again, NEVER engage with anyone claiming they know me without asking my management” O’Connor tweeted on July 15.

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“Also a warning, previously an extremely disturbed male sexual predator pretended to be me on Twitter,” she wrote, adding in a follow-up message that the creep, “groomed vulnerable female fans on my Twitter page by claiming to be my boyfriend.”

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After her son Shane committed suicide last year, O’Connor was hard a work on her 11th studio album.

“It’s up there with her best work – it’s very, very special.” producer David Holmes told The Guardian about the upcoming release. “She’s got one of the purest voices we will ever hear in our lifetime.”

Although she was hailed by fellow musicians following the news of her death, Morrissey slammed the tributes to O’Connor saying she became a victim in the “cruel playpen of fame” after “she refused to be labelled.”

“There is a certain music industry hatred for singers who don’t ‘fit in’ (this I know only too well), and they are never praised until death – when, finally, they can’t answer back […] You praise her now ONLY because it is too late. You hadn’t the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you,” he wrote on his website.

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“She was a challenge, and she couldn’t be boxed-up, and she had the courage to speak when everyone else stayed safely silent. She was harassed simply for being herself. Her eyes finally closed in search of a soul she could call her own.”

O’Connor broke out in North America following the release of 1987’s The Lion and the Cobra and 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. But after she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II on a 1992 episode of Saturday Night Live, her career took a hit and she never regained the massive fame she achieved following those first two releases.

In the years to come, O’Connor was open with her mental health struggles, revealing that she was bipolar. “It’s like being a bucket with holes in it. Just leaking tears from every pore,” she told Oprah Winfrey in 2007.

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In 2015, Connor posted a troubling note on Facebook, telling fans, “I have taken an overdose.”

Several years later, she said her family had abandoned her. “Why are we alone?” she asked, as she revealed she was living in a motel. “People who suffer from mental illness are the most vulnerable people on Earth. You’ve got to take care of us. We’re not like everybody.”

A follow-up post on her social media pages said the singer was safe and not suicidal.

“She is surrounded by love and receiving the best of care,” the message read.

After her son’s suicide in January 2022, O’Connor was again admitted to hospital.

“I am with cops now on way to hospital. I’m sorry I upset everyone. I am lost without my kid and I hate myself. Hospital will help a while,” she wrote.

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But the Irish singer had seemingly rekindled her love of music again telling fans about her plans to tour next year in a Facebook post this month.

“Hi All, recently moved back to London after 23 years absence,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “Very happy to be home : ) Soon finishing my album. Release early next year : )” she wrote on July 11. “Hopefully Touring Australia and New Zealand toward end 2024. Europe, USA and other territories beginning early 2025 : ) #TheBitchIsBack”

Music, O’Connor had said, was always a safe haven for her.

“I suppose I’ve got to say that music saved me,” she said in an interview with the Independent in 2013. “I didn’t have any other abilities, and there was no learning support for girls like me, not in Ireland at that time. It was either jail or music. I got lucky.”

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Twitter: @markhdaniell

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