Sinéad O’Connor’s special connection to Outlander that saw her record raw theme song while ‘struggling with son’s death’-Tori Brazier-Entertainment – Metro

Sinéad O’Connor provided a powerful vocal performance for Outlander’s theme song in the show’s current seventh season (Picture: Getty/Rex)

Outlander executive producer Maril Davis has revealed that the show was ‘so honoured’ to have Sinéad O’Connor sing the main title song for its current seventh season in one of her final recordings, despite the difficulties she was experiencing in her personal life.

The late Irish singer, also known as Shuhada Sadaqat, died in July 2023 at the age of 56, leading to an outpouring of love from fans across the world.

The family of the star, who was laid to rest in a private Islamic funeral on Tuesday, is still waiting for the results of an autopsy to determine O’Connor’s cause of death after she was found unresponsive at her home in London.

Hundreds of emotional fans also lined the streets of Bray, County Wicklow, to say their own goodbyes to the musician and activist.

Discussing how O’Connor came to be involved with creating her own take on traditional Scottish tune The Skye Boat Song, which has been updated with a new version for each season of Outlander, Davis expressed her initial surprise that the Nothing Compares 2 U chart-topper agreed to the gig.

Each previous recording has featured vocals from singer Raya Yarbrough, but the new timeline of season seven saw the production team interested in taking things in a different direction.

The late Irish singer died in July aged 56 (Picture: Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage)

‘We kind of try to do something new and Raya has such a beautiful voice and set the bar very high for that. But every year, we try to do a twist – we’ve done a choir, and we’ve [included] a male voice. Every year we’re like, “Okay, what are we going to do this year?”’

‘We knew the ‘80s were coming, we knew Roger and Brianna’s storyline was going there, and we wanted to do some sort of nod to that,’ she explained to Metro.co.uk.

‘We always have a conversation – Matt [B. Roberts], our showrunner; myself; Elicia [Bessette], our post-producer; and Bear [McCreary], who’s our composer – we kind of get on the phone each season and talk about ideas. And Matt had talked about, “How do we infuse the ‘80s? And it’d be cool if we had someone like Annie Lennox doing [it]”, you always throw out something crazy!’

Davis continued: ‘Bear was then like, “Well actually, I know someone who knows Sinéad O’Connor,” and we were like, “Whoa, stop the presses! That would be crazy,” because she’s such an iconic singer, and certainly representative of that period of time.’

Outlander executive producer Maril Davis was surprised that O’Connor agreed to the collaboration, but ‘so honoured’ (Picture: Getty)

However, that doesn’t mean the Outlander team was expecting activist and musician O’Connor to agree to their offer – but it turns out the late Grammy winner had her own special connection to the show.

‘Bear asked, and she was very excited to do it – shockingly, to us. I’d heard that she really resonated with Claire’s story. Obviously, we knew she was struggling with the death of her son, and certainly wasn’t prepared necessarily to come out and do a lot of press. But we were so excited, and we just went down that road.’

O’Connor’s teenage son Shane, who she shared with Irish musician Donal Lunny, died by suicide in January 2022 aged just 17.

In June of last year, O’Connor cancelled all of her upcoming live performances for 2022 for the sake of ‘her own health and wellbeing’ due to her continuing grief, according to her management.

At the time of her death, however, she was just one song from completing an unreleased new album called No Veteran Dies Alone, which had initially been shelved in the wake of her son’s death.

O’Connor had been ‘struggling’ according to Davis, in the wake of her son Shane’s death at 17 (Picture: Facebook)

Davis described O’Connor’s raw and powerful take on The Skye Boat Song as ‘haunting’, especially ‘knowing that maybe she resonated with Claire’, who is the show’s time-travelling central character.

A World War Two nurse initially displaced in eighteenth-century Scotland where she meets highlander Jamie Fraser, Claire then travels back to the twentieth century to become a qualified doctor before returning to the past for further adventures in France, the Caribbean and America during the Revolutionary War.

As well as experiencing the tough realities of those unstable periods in history, Claire (played by Irish actress Caitríona Balfe) also experiences more than her fair share of heartache.

‘I feel like her story is very similar Claire’s, they’ve been kind of at the forefront of things, maybe they have not been always embraced by [sic] everything they’ve done, and people have kind of pushed back and their ideas have maybe been ‘crazy’ and received a lot of backlash,’ shared Davis.

The Nothing Compares 2 U star is thought to have ‘resonated’ with main character Claire and her story, played by Caitríona Balfe (Picture: James Minchin/Starz)

Outlander season seven deals with the turmoil of the American Revolutionary War for husband and wife Jamie (Sam Heughan) and Claire (Picture: Starz)

‘In that way, I think Claire and Sinéad share a lot of similarities, so I thought it was really amazing and cool that she wanted to sing our main title, and I felt so honoured. Listen, going into the seventh season [and] to have someone like that singing your main title? It’s hard to say no.’

Recalling the first time she heard O’Connor’s version of the song, Davis admitted she was ‘a little emotional because I grew up listening to Sinéad’.

‘She has that kind of very haunting voice anyway, and that main title song is very haunting. I got goosebumps when I first heard it, so I was really, really excited – and that was a secret we had to hold on to for a while and it was a very exciting day when we finally got to announce it.’

Outlander season seven is about to come to its mid-season finale, with the second batch of eight episodes not due to premiere until 2024, triggering another ‘Droughtlander’, as fans have affectionately come to call the periods between seasons.

Teasing what fans can expect from episode eight, Turning Points, Davis said it all hinged on Jamie and his long-lost son William (Charles Vandervaart) – who is yet to discover the identity of his real father – and their dual perspectives.

The upcoming mid-season finale episode pits Jamie against his secret son William, portrayed by Charles Vandervaart (pictured) (Picture: Robert Wilson/Starz)

 ‘Josh Agnew, who directed episodes seven and eight, when we were doing prep with him, we were talking about tone and the Battles of Saratoga and how we would pull that off.

‘We talked a lot about episode seven being through William’s point of view, and then episode eight being through Jamie’s point of view. And that’s kind of what fans can expect, that we’re going to see almost a flipside – not literally – but everything Jamie’s been worried about going into this season.

‘He doesn’t want to face his son across the battlefield. And he’s torn between two lovers almost – he’s got two kids. He’s fighting for Brianna’s eventual homeland, but his son is fighting for the other side, and being torn between those two. He will potentially face his worst fear in this upcoming episode.’

Outlander season 7’s mid-season finale streams on Lionsgate Plus on Friday, August 11.

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