Singer Hozier said Sinead O’Connor helped to pave the way for him and others with her “moral clarity”.
The Take Me To Church hitmaker, 33, said the late singer’s strength of getting to the truth helped other artists but also came at a big cost to her. Hozier, who dedicated his recent show in Belfast to Sinead, said: “I only met Sinead once or twice, once here in RTE doing Imelda May’s show.
“It’s always too late that you recognise and realise, you just take for granted the roads that you are walking on. I feel so rewarded in this life for being the artist that I am and getting to tell the truth as I see it in my own sort of truth telling and I have been very well rewarded.
“I feel Sinead her searing clarity of her moral vision, her truth-telling cost her a lot at times.” The singer, real name Andrew Byrne, told RTE Radio One’s Brendan O’Connor Show: “I recognise so much that the roads that I’m walking on, and in particular with a song like Take Me To Church, they are roads that Sinead paved and in some respects... at a big cost.
Read more: New theme for Outlander was Sinead O'Connor's last recorded song
“I think it just happens that artists are generally quite sensitive people and with that can come a sense of empathy. There are plenty of artists who couldn’t give a fiddler’s and there are plenty of people who enter into the business because it’s a business.
“It’s a job that draws a lot who are quite sensitive and draw on their own experience and the human experience of other people and can be quite empathetic and are very sensitive to the suffering of others.
“I think Sinead was somebody who fit that and was deeply sensitive and had a very, very brilliant mind.”
Thousands of people lined the streets of in Bray, Co Wicklow, on Tuesday to pay their respects to the artist who lived there for 15 years.
Sinead was found dead by Met Police officers at her apartment in London on July 26, at the age of 56.
Sinead is survived by her three children — Jake, Roisin and Yeshua. Shane (17) took his own life in January 2022.
![Hozier performs on stage in London, England](https://i2-prod.dublinlive.ie/incoming/article27511224.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_GettyImages-1561708288.jpg)
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