Sinead O’Connor, the outspoken Irish singer-songwriter identified for her highly effective, evocative voice, as showcased on her largest hit, a wide ranging rendition of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and for her political provocations onstage and off, has died. She was 56.

Her longtime good friend Bob Geldof, the Irish musician and activist, confirmed her loss of life, as did her household in an announcement, in line with the BBC and the Irish public broadcaster RTE.

“It’s with nice unhappiness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinead,” the assertion stated. “Her household and associates are devastated and have requested privateness at this very tough time.” No different particulars had been supplied.

Recognizable by her shaved head and by broad eyes that would seem pained or stuffed with rage, Ms. O’Connor launched 10 studio albums, starting with the choice hit “The Lion and the Cobra” in 1987. She went on to promote thousands and thousands of albums worldwide, breaking out with “I Do Not Need What I Haven’t Obtained” in 1990.

That album, that includes “Nothing Compares 2 U,” a No. 1 hit all over the world and an MTV staple, gained a Grammy Award in 1991 for greatest various music efficiency — though Ms. O’Connor boycotted the ceremony over what she referred to as the present’s extreme commercialism.

Ms. O’Connor hardly ever shrank from controversy, although it usually got here with penalties for her profession.

In 1990, she threatened to cancel a efficiency in New Jersey if “The Star-Spangled Banner” was performed on the live performance corridor forward of her look, drawing the ire of a minimum of Frank Sinatra. That very same yr, she backed out of an look on “Saturday Evening Reside” in protest of the misogyny she perceived within the comedy of Andrew Cube Clay, who was scheduled to host.

However all of that paled compared to the uproar precipitated when Ms. O’Connor, showing on “S.N.L.” in 1992 — shortly after the discharge of her third album, “Am I Not Your Lady?” — ended an a cappella efficiency of Bob Marley’s “Conflict” by ripping a photograph of Pope John Paul II into items as a stance in opposition to sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church. “Combat the true enemy,” she stated.

That incident instantly made her a goal of criticism and scorn, from social conservatives and past. Two weeks after her “S.N.L.” look, she was loudly booed at a Bob Dylan tribute live performance at Madison Sq. Backyard. (She had deliberate to carry out Mr. Dylan’s “I Imagine in You,” however she sang “Conflict” once more, speeding off the stage earlier than she had completed.)

For a time, the vitriol directed at Ms. O’Connor was so pervasive that it turned a form of popular culture meme in itself. On “S.N.L.” in early 1993, Madonna mocked the controversy by tearing up an image of Joey Buttafuoco, the Lengthy Island auto mechanic who was a tabloid fixture on the time due to his affair with a 17-year-old lady.

As soon as a rising star, Ms. O’Connor then stumbled. “Am I Not Your Lady?,” an album of jazz and pop requirements like “Why Don’t You Do Proper?” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” was stalled on the charts at No. 27. Her subsequent album, “Common Mom” (1994), went no larger than No. 36.

The British musician Tim Burgess, of the band Charlatans (identified in america because the Charlatans UK), wrote on Twitter on Wednesday: “Sinead was the true embodiment of a punk spirit. She didn’t compromise and that made her life extra of a wrestle.”

Ms. O’Connor by no means had one other main hit in america after “The Emperor’s New Garments,” from “I Do Not Need What I Haven’t Obtained,” though for a time she remained a staple on the British charts.

However in her 2021 memoir, “Rememberings,” Ms. O’Connor portrayed ripping up the picture of the pope as a righteous act of protest — and subsequently a hit.

“I really feel that having a No. 1 file derailed my profession,” she wrote, “and my tearing the picture put me again heading in the right direction.”

She elaborated in an interview with The New York Occasions that very same yr, calling the incident an act of defiance in opposition to the constraints of pop stardom.

“I’m not sorry I did it. It was sensible,” Ms. O’Connor stated. “Nevertheless it was very traumatizing,” she added. “It was open season on treating me like a loopy bitch.”

Sinead Marie Bernadette O’Connor was born in Glenageary, a suburb of Dublin, on Dec. 8, 1966. Her father, John, was an engineer, and her mom, Johanna, was a dressmaker.

In interviews, and in her memoir, Ms. O’Connor spoke brazenly of getting a traumatic childhood. She stated that her mom bodily abused her and that she had been deeply affected by her mother and father’ separation, which occurred when she was 8. In her teenagers, she was arrested for shoplifting and despatched to reform faculties.

When she was 15, Ms. O’Connor sang “Evergreen” — the love theme from “A Star Is Born,” made well-known by Barbra Streisand — at a marriage, and was found by Paul Byrne, a drummer who had an affiliation with the Irish band U2. She left boarding faculty at 16 and commenced her profession, supporting herself by waitressing and performing “kiss-o-grams” in a kinky French maid costume.

“The Lion and the Cobra” — the title is an allusion to Psalm 91 — marked her as a rising expertise with a non secular coronary heart, an ear for offbeat melody and a fierce and combative model. Her music drew from Eighties-vintage various rock, hip-hop and flashes of Celtic folks that got here by means of when her voice raised to excessive registers.

She drew headlines for defending the Irish Republican Military and publicly jeered U2 — whose members had supported her — as “bombastic.” She additionally stated she had rejected makes an attempt by her file firm, Ensign, to undertake a extra standard picture.

The leaders of the label “needed me to put on high-heel boots and tight denims and develop my hair,” Ms. O’Connor advised Rolling Stone in 1991. “And I made a decision that they had been so pathetic that I shaved my head so there couldn’t be any additional dialogue.”

“Nothing Compares 2 U” — initially launched by the Household, a Prince facet mission, in 1985 — turned a phenomenon when Ms. O’Connor launched it 5 years later. The video for the track, educated carefully on her emotive face, was hypnotic, and Ms. O’Connor’s voice, because it raised from delicate, breathy notes to highly effective cries, stopped listeners of their tracks. Singers like Alanis Morissette cited Ms. O’Connor’s work from this era as a key affect.

Not lengthy after “Nothing Compares” turned successful, Ms. O’Connor accused Prince of bodily threatening her. She elaborated on the story in her memoir, saying that Prince, at his Hollywood mansion, chastised her for swearing in interviews and advised a pillow battle, solely to hit her with one thing onerous that was in his pillowcase. She escaped on foot in the midst of the night time, she stated, however Prince chased her across the freeway.

The results of childhood trauma, and discovering methods to battle and heal, turned a central a part of her work and her private philosophy. “The reason for all of the world’s issues, so far as I’m involved, is little one abuse,” Ms. O’Connor advised Spin journal in 1991.

Her mom, whom Ms. O’Connor described as an alcoholic, died when she was 18. In her memoir, Ms. O’Connor stated that on the day her mom died she took an image of the pope from her mom’s wall; it was that picture that she destroyed on tv.

On later albums, she made warmly expansive pop-rock (“Religion and Braveness,” 2000), performed conventional Irish songs (“Sean-Nós Nua,” 2002) and revisited traditional reggae songs (“Throw Down Your Arms,” 2005). Her final album was “I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss,” launched in 2014.

As her music profession slowed, Ms. O’Connor, who had been open prior to now about her psychological well being struggles, turned an more and more erratic public determine, usually sharing unfiltered opinions and private particulars on social media.

In 2007, she revealed on Oprah Winfrey’s tv present that she had been recognized with bipolar dysfunction and that she had tried to kill herself on her thirty third birthday. Her son Shane died by suicide in 2022, at 17.

Ms. O’Connor stated in 2012 that she had been misdiagnosed and that she was affected by post-traumatic stress dysfunction stemming from a historical past of kid abuse. “Restoration from little one abuse is a life’s work,” she advised Folks journal.

A number of years in the past she transformed to Islam and began utilizing the identify Shuhada Sadaqat, although she continued to reply to O’Connor as effectively.

Full info on survivors was not instantly out there. Ms. O’Connor had two brothers, Joe and John, and one sister, Eimear, in addition to three stepsisters and a stepbrother. She wrote in her memoir that she was married 4 occasions and that she had 4 youngsters: three sons, Jake, Shane and Yeshua, and a daughter, Roisin.

In discussing her memoir with The Occasions in 2021, Ms. O’Connor targeted on her determination to tear up the picture of John Paul II as a sign second in a lifetime of protest and defiance.

“The media was making me out to be loopy as a result of I wasn’t appearing like a pop star was purported to act,” she stated. “It appears to me that being a pop star is nearly like being in a sort of jail. You need to be a great lady.”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.