Sinead O’Connor’s Unreleased Track ‘The Magdalene Song’ Premieres in BBC Series

Sinéad O’Connor died unexpectedly on July 26 at age 56, but two months later, there’s a new song for fans to enjoy. The previously unreleased track titled “The Magdalene Song” made its debut in the BBC’s mystery drama series The Woman in the Wall during its finale on Monday (Sept. 25).

The six-part series follows Lorna Brady (Ruth Wilson), who wakes up one morning to find a woman’s corpse in her house and doubts her actions due to a history of sleepwalking that once landed her in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries (institutions for “fallen women”).

David Holmes, the show’s composer, who has also produced for the “Nothing Compares 2 U” singer in recent years (including on her 11th studio album), confirmed that she gave her permission for the track to be used in The Woman in the Wall before her death.

“The first half of the track is completely heartbreaking, and the second half is pure defiance,” he said in a Sunday (Sept. 24) interview with The Guardian prior to the finale airing on BBC.

“I stripped the song away to just Sinéad’s voice and then let the full power come in for the second half,” Holmes added. “It’s incredible how the meaning of the song came together with this story. It was just meant to be. There’s a certain magic when you bring music to an emotive story.”

The series has personal ties to the late singer. Though Holmes said O’Connor did not detail the meaning of the song to Holmes, she previously shared her own experiences as a teenager within the Magdalene laundries in a 2010 essay for The Washington Post.

“When I was a young girl, my mother — an abusive, less-than-perfect parent — encouraged me to shoplift,” the singer wrote. “After being caught once too often, I spent 18 months in An Grianán Training Centre, an institution in Dublin for girls with behavioural problems, at the recommendation of a social worker.”

She continued, “An Grianán was one of the now-infamous church-sponsored ‘Magdalene laundries,’ which housed pregnant teenagers and uncooperative young women. We worked in the basement, washing priests’ clothes in sinks with cold water and bars of soap. We studied math and typing. We had limited contact with our families. We earned no wages. One of the nuns, at least, was kind to me and gave me my first guitar.”

The Woman in the Wall is slated to premiere soon on Paramount+ with Showtime.