Sinéad O’Connor’s Producer Shares Details of Her ‘Emotional and Really Personal’ Final Album

Irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor died earlier this week, but she still has some music to share with the world.

David Holmes, an Irish DJ who has worked with the "Nothing Compares 2 U" singer since 2017, shared that he spoke with O'Connor about the album in mid-July, just days before she died.

"I always felt that Sinéad hadn't even scratched the surface of what was possible with her voice," he said in a new interview with Rolling Stone.

Homes shared that it was eight tracks, "emotional and really personal," and that the duo was just one track away from completing the record. With the news of her death, Holmes is not sure if it will ever be released. "This is up to her family and estate, and I will gladly do as I’m told," he said.

O'Connor passed away at her home in London. She was 56 years old.

The album had cover art and even a title, No Veteran Dies Alone. Holmes and O'Connor had been working on it since 2020.

"It was very much an album she made when she was ready," said Holmes. "She said, 'It takes me a while to write a song, but when it’s finished, it’ll be worth it.' I made a decision that I was never going to push her. It was all done on her terms."

Jacob Stack, a young Irish artist, also says he worked on the album cover after the musician reached out to him out of the blue. He saw O’Connor sing “Nothing Compares 2 U” on an Irish late-night talk show and shared an illustration of her on social media. He was shocked when O’Connor asked if she could use the drawing for her Twitter profile.

Later in 2021, she asked Stack to work on the cover art for the album. O'Connor instructed him to create a forest scene featuring "greens, nice and dark, and there was to be a girl, a winter-green coat, a bobble hat, and a torch that she would be shining into the forest. It was a very vivid, clear, and realized description." O'Connor then asked him to "strut your funky stuff" in the drawing.

Stack sent it in and O'Connor said it was "f---ing gorgeous," then she announced Stack as the cover artist on social media. "But you can’t see it until release in late 2021," she wrote.

The album's release was delayed after her 17-year-old son, Shane, died by suicide just a few months later.

O’Connor announced that she'd "soon be finishing my album" on July 11th, just two weeks before she died.