Before Sinéad O’Connor was found dead in her London home Wednesday, she’d told her children what to do if she passed away suddenly.
“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,’” O’Connor told People magazine in a 2021 interview.
The “Heroine” educated her children on the importance of protecting her music and assets, their inheritance, so they could avoid being taken advantage of.
“When the artists are dead, they’re much more valuable than when they’re alive,” O’Connor said of musicians’ profitability.
“Tupac has released way more albums since he died than he ever did alive, so it’s kind of gross what record companies do.”
Although the Dublin musician said she “came away not liking [Prince] very much” after recording his song “Nothing Compares 2 U,” she still felt sympathetic to how the music industry treated his records when he died 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.”
O’Connor meant the figurative lockbox that musicians put songs into that they are “embarrassed” by or do not intend to release. However, some record companies disobey that request and distribute the records for monetary gain.
“[Prince] 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.”
She also didn’t think Prince would be a fan of his hit “Let’s Go Crazy” ending up in a credit card commercial.
“That’s a song about appreciation, friendship and love and not the material things in life. It’s a song about, ‘Look, we could die anytime now. Let’s love each other and appreciate,’” she said.
“I think he will be turning in his grave over it being used to sell a credit card.”
O’Connor died at 56 years old, 18 months after her 17-year-old son, Shane, committed suicide.
The Dublin native was found unresponsive and pronounced dead at the scene, but the cause of death has not been disclosed.
She is survived by three children: her son Jake, 36; daughter Roisin, 27; and son Yeshua, 16.