THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

54-Sinead O’Connor-Nothing Compares 2 U.

1990-Number 1 single.

Best Bit-At 0.10. In the original version by Prince he sings,’It’s been 7 hours and 13 days,’ in Sinead’s version she has suffered two days longer.

Sinead O’Connor has said,’I did meet him (Prince) a couple of times. We didn’t get on at all, in fact we had a punch up. He summoned me to his house, and it’s foolish to do this to an Irish woman. He said he didn’t like me saying bad words in interviews, so I told him to f..k off. He got violent. I had to escape out of his house, he packed a bigger punch than me.’

Sinead Marie Bernadette O’Connor was born on December 8th, 1966, in Glenageary, County Dublin, Ireland. In 1999 she was ordained as a priest by the ‘Latin Tridentine Church’, a sect that is not recognised by the mainstream Catholic Church, and then in 2017, she changed her name to Magda Davitt. In 2018 she converted to Islam, and she then changed to the Arabic name Shuhada’ Sadaqat.

Sinead O’Connor has led a very troubled life, having suffered with mental health issues since her childhood, and all through her adult life she has caused controversy. One of her most famous stunts was on October 3rd, 1992, when she was performing on the American ‘Saturday Night Live’ television programme. She presented a photo of Pope John Paul II to the camera while singing the word ‘evil’, after which she tore the photo into pieces and said, ‘Fight the real enemy’, and then threw the pieces towards the camera. This was in protest to the rumoured sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church, and occurred nine years before John Paul II finally acknowledged the sexual abuse within the Church in 2001.

The discography of Sinead O’Connor includes 10 studio Albums that have been released between 1987-2014, and 54 singles that have been issued between 1987-2020. In the UK, five of her singles have reached the top 40, with this song making Number 1, she has also appeared on five other top 40 hits as a featured artist. In America on the Billboard Hot 100 top 40, this song remains her only chart hit when reaching Number 1, which makes her a ‘one hit wonder’ in that country.

‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ was written by Prince, (1958-2016) (see also best songs 884-487-269 and 85) in 1984, and the song remained relatively obscure until recommended to Sinead O’Connor by her then manager Fachtna O’Kelly as a possible track for her to record for her second studio Album ‘I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,’ in 1990. By the mid 1980’s Prince had become a prolific songwriter and was wanting to release much more music than his record label would let him do, so in order to get around this he decided to create a new band which he called ‘The Family,’ and with musicians that he had hand picked he recorded an Album also called ‘The Family,’ on where ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ first appeared in 1985. Until the song became a hit for Sinead O’Connor, Prince never played it live, and his original studio version was not posthumously released until 2018. A live version of the song performed with one of his backing singers Rosie Gaines appeared on Prince’s 1993 compilation Album ‘The Hits/The B-Sides.’

The Sinead O’Connor recording of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ was produced by Nellee Hooper, who was born Paul Andrew Hooper on March 15th, 1963, in Bristol, England, his other significant productions include work with ‘Soul 11 Soul,’ (‘Back to Life’) and ‘U2.’ (‘How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb.’) The songs video which was directed by John Maybury is one of the most memorable in Pop music history. Towards the end of the song tears run down O’Connor’s face. She has said that the tears were real, she did not intend to cry but then thought,’I should let this happen.’ She explained that the tears were triggered by thoughts of her mother who had died in a car accident in 1985.

‘I went to the doctor and guess what he told me? Guess what he told me? He said, “Girl you better try to have fun no matter what you do, but he’s a fool,” ’cause nothing compares, nothing compares to you.’