Sinéad O'Connor Gave Her Children Strict Instructions About What to Do If She Dropped 'Dead Tomorrow'

Sinéad O'Connor made it clear to her children that they must protect her art when she passed away.

In an unearthed interview from 2021, the late singer admitted she gave her kids four kids Jake Reynolds, 36, Roisin Waters, 27, Yeshua Bonadio, 16, and her late son Shane O'Connor a sequence of what to do to ensure the safety of her life's work if she ever "dropped dead."

"See, when the artists are dead, they're much more valuable than when they're alive," O'Connor revealed. "Tupac has released way more albums since he died than he ever did alive, so it's kind of gross what record companies do."

"That's why 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," she continued.

The Irish artist recalled what happened to Prince's music following his sudden death 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 explained.

"All musicians, we have songs that we really are embarrassed about that are crap. We don't want anyone hearing them. Now this 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 added.

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The "This Is the Day" musician mentioned that the use of the rocker's hit "Let's Go Crazy" in a credit card ad would not have sat well with him. "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.' I think he will be turning in his grave over it being used to sell a credit card," she said.

On Wednesday, July 26, the news broke that O'Connor had passed away at 56. "It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad," her representative confirmed in a statement.

Her cause of death has yet to be revealed.

People conducted the 2021 interview with O'Connor.