Sinéad O’Connor, who died Wednesday at age 56, lived in Atlanta part time in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
She owned a four bedroom home on Northside Drive for four years.
According to a story in the Atlanta Business Chronicle in 2003, the iconoclastic Irish singer donated the proceeds of the sale of her home to Ireland’s Aljeff Treatment Centre in Limerick for alcohol and drug abuse treatment and suicide prevention.
Atlanta attorney Mary Balent Long helped coordinate and structure a charitable gift valued at about $600,000 on O’Connor’s behalf after the singer sold her Atlanta home in July 2003 for $654,000 at 4901 Northside Drive. O’Connor purchased the home for $825,000 in 1999.
“She wanted an Atlanta presence for a few years or so, and then her life switched out of Atlanta and she didn’t have a use for [the house] and wanted to do some good,” Long told the Business Chronicle in 2003. At the time, Long handled trusts and estates at Kilpatrick Stockton LLP, which also had done some work in the intellectual property area for O’Connor.
According to the Irish Examiner in 2005, Aljeff operations director, Danny Desmond said the monies were placed in a charitable foundation for them to access. “Sinéad’s generous donation has been crucial in allowing us developing our services over the past 18 months, taking on full time counselling staff to provide a greater service to the increasing number of people with addiction who are coming to Aljeff,” he said.
Over the decades, O’Connor performed several times in Atlanta. Her last concert was scheduled for March of 2020 at City Winery in Atlanta but it was postponed due to the pandemic and never rescheduled.
O’Connor was friendly with Georgia acts like R.E.M., India.Arie and the Indigo Girls. All of them honored her on social media the day her death was announced.
Michael Stipe of R.E.M. posted a photo of him with her and the caption, “There are no words.”
The Indigo Girls posted a tribute on their Instagram page as well, noting how they were on the same lineup during the 1998 Lilith Fair tour.
“Sinéad was pure of heart, a pioneer of spirit,” the Instagram note said, “and someone who challenged all of us to think about ours and others’ humanity. We will never forget her band’s legendary and transformative shows at Lilith Fair. We ended up sharing music with many of them and to this day count her and her band as the catalyst that shook us to our core, stretched our boundaries, and eventually became a musical compass for us.”
Amy Ray, in a separate note, said, “Stay golden, Sinéad, you are with the angels now.”
Emily Saliers added: “It’s hard to believe you are gone, and those you leave behind here are grieving. I pray you have found your peace. You were always a beautiful soul ― fierce, honest, loving, and incredibly gifted.”
R&B singer India.Arie posted several quotes attributed to Sinéad O’Connor on an Instagram story, along with a photo of the singer smiling and a dove emoji.
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