📍Glenageary, Co. Dublin, Ireland
1966 – 1981“I was born in Glenageary, in south County Dublin, in 1966, the third of five children. My childhood was difficult, and I wrote about it honestly in my memoir Rememberings: home was not always a safe place, and my parents' marriage broke apart when I was young. What saved me, again and again, was singing. I sang to myself in my room, in the garden and on the seafront nearby, and I learned early that a song could hold feelings I could not say out loud. As a teenager I struggled at school and got into trouble, and I was sent for a time to An Grianán, a training centre run by nuns in Dublin, attached to one of the Magdalene laundries. It was a hard, frightening place, and I never forgot the women I saw there. But one of the nuns, Sister Margaret, was kind to me in a way that changed my life. She bought me my first guitar and a book of Bob Dylan chords, and found me a guitar teacher. Through that teacher's family I met the band In Tua Nua, and at fourteen I co-wrote their first single. I went on to a boarding school in Waterford and then to Dublin's music scene, and by 1987 I had released my first album. Nothing Compares 2 U made me famous all over the world, but I always sang for the girl in Glenageary and the women in that laundry. My later protest, my faith and my fierce honesty about injustice all came from those years. When my family said goodbye in 2023, thousands of people lined the seafront in Bray, singing my songs, and the girl who once sang alone by the Dublin coast is remembered there with great love.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today