Sinead O’Connor, the outspoken Irish singer-songwriter recognized for her highly effective, evocative voice, as showcased on her greatest 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 buddy 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 is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinead,” the assertion mentioned. “Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.” No different particulars had been offered.

Recognizable by her shaved head and by vast 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 Want What I Haven’t Got” in 1990.

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

Ms. O’Connor not often shrank from controversy, although it typically 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 similar 12 months, she backed out of an look on “Saturday Night Live” in protest of the misogyny she perceived within the comedy of Andrew Dice Clay, who was scheduled to host.

But 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 Girl?” — ended an a cappella efficiency of Bob Marley’s “War” by ripping a photograph of Pope John Paul II into items as a stance in opposition to sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church. “Fight the real enemy,” she mentioned.

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 Square Garden. (She had deliberate to carry out Mr. Dylan’s “I Believe in You,” however she sang “War” 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 Long Island auto mechanic who was a tabloid fixture on the time due to his affair with a 17-year-old woman.

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

The British musician Tim Burgess, of the band Charlatans (recognized within the United States because the Charlatans UK), wrote on Twitter on Wednesday: “Sinead was the true embodiment of a punk spirit. She did not compromise and that made her life more of a struggle.”

Ms. O’Connor by no means had one other main hit within the United States after “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” from “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” though for a time she remained a staple on the British charts.

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

“I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career,” she wrote, “and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.”

She elaborated in an interview with The New York Times that very same 12 months, calling the incident an act of defiance in opposition to the constraints of pop stardom.

“I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant,” Ms. O’Connor mentioned. “But it was very traumatizing,” she added. “It was open season on treating me like a crazy 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 overtly of getting a traumatic childhood. She mentioned that her mom bodily abused her and that she had been deeply affected by her dad and mom’ 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 college 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 Nineteen Eighties-vintage various rock, hip-hop and flashes of Celtic folks that got here by when her voice raised to excessive registers.

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

The leaders of the label “wanted me to wear high-heel boots and tight jeans and grow my hair,” Ms. O’Connor told Rolling Stone in 1991. “And I decided that they were so pathetic that I shaved my head so there couldn’t be any further discussion.”

“Nothing Compares 2 U” — initially launched by the Family, a Prince aspect undertaking, in 1985 — turned a phenomenon when Ms. O’Connor launched it 5 years later. The video for the track, skilled intently 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 prompt a pillow combat, solely to hit her with one thing arduous that was in his pillowcase. She escaped on foot in the course of the night time, she mentioned, however Prince chased her across the freeway.

The results of childhood trauma, and discovering methods to combat and heal, turned a central a part of her work and her private philosophy. “The cause of all the world’s problems, as far as I’m concerned, is child abuse,” Ms. O’Connor informed 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 mentioned that on the day her mom died she took an image of the pope from her mom’s wall; it was that photograph that she destroyed on tv.

On later albums, she made warmly expansive pop-rock (“Faith and Courage,” 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 up to now about her psychological well being struggles, turned an more and more erratic public determine, typically sharing unfiltered opinions and private particulars on social media.

In 2007, she revealed on Oprah Winfrey’s tv present that she had been identified 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 mentioned 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. “Recovery from child abuse is a life’s work,” she informed People journal.

Several years in the past she converted to Islam and began utilizing the title Shuhada Sadaqat, although she continued to reply to O’Connor as properly.

Complete 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 Times in 2021, Ms. O’Connor centered on her resolution to tear up the photograph of John Paul II as a sign second in a lifetime of protest and defiance.

“The media was making me out to be crazy because I wasn’t acting like a pop star was supposed to act,” she mentioned. “It seems to me that being a pop star is almost like being in a type of prison. You have to be a good girl.”

Alex Traub contributed reporting.