(Credits: Far Out / MUBI)
Fri 3 April 2026 19:45, UK
At the age of 19, Sinéad O’Connor, later known as Shuhada’ Sadaqat, was heard for the first time on a proper professional recording when she appeared on the soundtrack to a little-seen 1986 film called Captive, loosely inspired by the Patty Hearst saga of the ‘70s.
The movie was scored by U2 guitarist The Edge, who was only 25 himself at the time, and O’Connor’s contribution was the song ‘Heroine’, co-written and performed with The Edge, along with U2’s Larry Mullen on drums.
By the time O’Connor’s stunning debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, was released a year later, her early connections to Ireland’s biggest band sometimes got her labelled as a “U2 protégé”, something that might have ruffled her feathers more than a tad. Out in the real world, O’Connor had been on very good terms with The Edge and Bono, both of whom were supportive and encouraging of her work, and even known to drop by her house with their partners, helping her prepare for the birth of her first child toward the end of 1987.
All remained fine and dandy between the similarly politically-minded Dubliners until 1988, when the artists’ mutual manager, Fachtna O’Ceallaigh, became the focal point of a brewing feud that led to some brutal shit-talking between the parties involved.
O’Ceallaigh, who was also in charge of U2’s personal indie upstart label Mother Records, had become the biggest champion of O’Connor’s budding career and was also, apparently, romantically involved with her. This made things instantly dicey when O’Ceallaigh decided to spout off to a music tabloid about how much he actually hated U2’s music. The guys in U2, pretty understandably, decided to put Mother Records under new management and gave O’Ceallaigh the boot in short order. Why would any band, after all, want their music or business in the hands of a man who claims to despise everything they stand for?
(Credits: Far Out / Island Records)
Unfortunately, when O’Connor caught wind of the situation, as communicated to her by O’Ceallaigh, it didn’t sound like above-board business practices to her, and, as would become a sometimes noble and sometimes notorious part of her lifetime of interactions with the press, she couldn’t help but express her truest feelings on the matter when a tape recorder was placed in front of her by a reporter.
“I can’t stand U2,” she told the NME in 1988, noting that she got along fine with the members of the band, but that, as a musical entity, “I feel they are waffle and bullshit”. She further decried U2’s dominance over the local music scene, saying the band “fucking rules Dublin. There’s not a band in Dublin who could get anywhere if they weren’t in some way associated with U2”.
Bono and The Edge, again somewhat forgivably, felt betrayed by the public takedown, and when O’Connor showed up at a U2 show at Wembley Stadium a few months later, she was actively shunned by the group and its management backstage.
“I went to talk to somebody [backstage],” O’Connor later claimed to the Independent, “and U2’s accountant, Ossie Kilkenny, who was in a group of people, shouted at me that I had no right to be there, considering the things I had said, because I had said ‘abusive things’ about people who helped me. Presumably, they meant they had helped me by fucking honouring me with having done the song ‘Heronine’.”
O’Connor said that Bono gave her the cold shoulder, as well, but she elbowed her way through the crowd to give him a piece of her mind. “Listen, I don’t have to like your music and all that stuff,” she said, “The reason I said that [stuff] is because I’m pissed off with the way you treated Fachtna and all those people associated with Mother Records… [U2] have this big thing about helping people, when in fact all they do is hinder bands.”
(Credits: Far Out / Chrysalis Records)
It’s worth repeating the fact that U2 had just played a gig at Wembley Stadium. Fresh off the gigantic success of The Joshua Tree album, the band had a viable claim to the title not just of the biggest band in Ireland (that was locked up a long while earlier), but of the biggest band in the world. Sinéad O’Connor, by comparison, was a 20-year-old newcomer with one record to her credit and almost nothing to be gained by going to war with her former friends and countrymen. This was two years before ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ made her a household name, so getting into an ugly tabloid feud with the arena rock choir boys could easily mean total career implosion.
There was at least a small chance that the whole thing could have blown over, but inevitably, the members of U2 found themselves with tape recorders in their own faces, and they didn’t see much reason to use kid gloves when punching back at their supposed protégé.
“I wouldn’t believe anything that Sinéad says, to be honest,” Larry Mullen told the NME quite matter-of-factly, adding that Fachtna O’Ceallaigh had “definitely sacked himself” by slagging off the band he was supposed to be working for. The Edge chimed in with quite a nasty assessment, saying that “Sinéad is not in the business of communicating facts. She’s in the business of creating news for herself. That’s the bottom line. I get on OK with Sinéad, and I just have to laugh when I read these things.”
Naturally, the music press lapped up the feud, generally waving the flag for the good-natured U2 boys up against the young, crazy bald woman. It was one of Sinéad O’Connor’s first of many, many frustrating battles with the media, particularly in the UK and Ireland, where her outspokenness was repeatedly used against her, de-contextualised and poured like petrol over the nearest open flame.
O’Connor and U2 remained on less than good terms for several years, including the time of her emergence from cult stardom to worldwide superstardom in 1990. Fortunately, however, the story had a happier ending than most rock ‘n’ roll falling-outs.
(Credits: Far Out / MUBI)
At the time of O’Connor’s greatest need, following the almost unprecedented blowback to her infamous tearing up of a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live in 1992, Bono and company were among the artists who rallied to her support, setting aside the comparatively minor beefs of the past.
Putting himself out there at no small risk to his own career, Bono defended O’Connor in several interviews after the incident. “Maybe you have to be Irish to understand her bitterness,” he said, “You could argue that the Pope is sincere, but to deny people contraception at this moment in time is a very irresponsible act. In fact, it’s more than an irresponsible act. You can’t buy condoms in this country, not easily, and so when Sinéad talks about him being the enemy, I imagine that’s what she’s talking about.”
From that point forward, the mutual respect and friendship that had been there at the very beginning of O’Connor’s relationship with U2 gradually pieced itself back together. In 1993, Bono wrote a song specifically for Sinéad called ‘You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart’, which she performed for the soundtrack to the Daniel Day-Lewis film In the Name of the Father. Several years after that, she collaborated with the whole band for the first time on a trip-hoppy track called ‘I’m Not Your Baby’, released on the soundtrack to the Wim Wenders film The End of Violence.
Naturally, she never lost her edge when it came to expressing her mixed feelings about U2 as a band, or about Bono’s place in Irish culture. In 2018, she tweeted that one of the thoughts that helped push away her suicidal feelings was “the idea Bono might speak at my funeral. He’d shite on, is the thing: ‘But oh, didn’t we love her, national treasure’—bleh. Best reason for living: must stay alive longer than Bono”.
As it turned out, of course, Bono, The Edge, and Adam Clayton did end up attending the funeral of Sinéad O’Connor, by then Shuhada’ Sadaqat, in 2023. He didn’t give a eulogy, which Sinéad would have been glad to know, but he did share his thoughts about her with the Irish Times: “I first heard Sinéad sing ‘Take My Hand’ when she was aged 15. The U2ers are heartbroken for Sinéad, for her family. She loved God by so many names. After some name-calling and a few people being thrown out of The Kingdom, she will now reach what has so conspicuously eluded her…the peace that passes all understanding.”
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