On April 21, 1990, Sinéad O’Connor’s cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Years later, Prince died at age 57 of an accidental fentanyl overdose on April 21, 2016. However coincidental these instances might be, the date has created yet another link in the chain of “Nothing Compares 2 U”.
Now, 10 years since Prince’s passing and 36 years since O’Connor’s US hit, this version of the song still endures. O’Connor’s rendition was pure, unfiltered emotion, from her vocals to the visuals. The dual tears she didn’t plan on, but embraced in the music video, cemented this song in pop culture history.
Sinéad O’Connor’s Prince Cover Didn’t Please Every Critic, But It Did More to Connect Listeners Emotionally
“Nothing Compares 2 U” originally appeared on Prince’s funk band’s only album, The Family, in 1985. It wasn’t released as a single and ultimately fell by the wayside. Prince’s first 1984 demo of the track was eventually released two years after his death.
When Sinéad O’Connor worked her magic on “Nothing Compares 2 U” for her second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, the song took on renewed life. O’Connor recorded her vocals in a single take, emphasizing a weary longing, a grief that grows exhausting over time. Her voice builds, soars, and breaks with varying momentum.
A 1990 review in Music Week called the lyrics “not one of Prince’s finest moments,” and O’Connor’s version “dirge-like.” But the Prince snub aside, it’s possible that those “dirge-like” elements are what made “Nothing Compares 2 U” so universally enduring.
True, not every critic was as impressed as the listening majority. A review in Melody Maker found it to be “a pointless and embarrassing over-sentimental paw.” Despite admitting that O’Connor’s voice is “brilliant,” this review felt the arrangement put the whole thing in reverse.
Perhaps if this cover had come out today, critics would be inclined to call it “performative” for its overabundant emotion. As it stood in 1990, however, Melody Maker specifically felt it was more “a waste of [O’Connor’s] talent.”
Sinéad O’Connor died of natural causes in her London flat on July 26, 2023
O’Connor stopped performing “Nothing Compares 2 U” around March 2015. She shared this news on Facebook, per a feature from The New Yorker. Specifically, she noted that the core of her singing style, bel canto, relies on emotional connections to what she’s performing.
“After twenty-five years of singing it, nine months or so ago, I finally ran out of anything I could use in order to bring some emotion to it,” she wrote. “If I were to sing it just to please people, I wouldn’t be doing my job right, because my job is to be emotionally available. I’d be lying. You’d be getting a lie. My job is to give you honesty. I’m trained in honesty. I can’t act. It just isn’t in my training.”
Sinéad O’Connor is most often remembered for “Nothing Compares 2 U”. Even though the Prince-penned lyrics didn’t convey her usual intensity or surprising humor, O’Connor’s raw, anguished interpretation of the love-pop ballad is what keeps it alive, even as both Prince and Sinéad O’Connor have since left this mortal coil.
The post On This Day in 1990, Sinéad O’Connor Hit No. 1 With a Prince Cover 26 Years to the Day Before His Death appeared first on VICE.
