Special thanks to ThisDayinMusic.com.
The music business is a funny thing. It’s where a prolific and talented singer-songwriter like Sinead O’Connor can have her biggest hit – by far – with a song written by someone else. It’s where a legendary pop music hit-maker like Prince can have his greatest success as a songwriter with a recording sung by another artist. That’s exactly what happened to Prince and Sinead when “Nothing Compares 2 U” began a four-week run at the top of the Billboard charts on this day in 1990.
Prince had written the ballad back at the height of his fame in the early ’80s. With too many songs and not enough albums to put them on, the multi-talented writer/performer had taken to doling out material to his associated acts, signed to his label, Paisley Park. One such act was called The Family, which had come out of the demise of The Time. Prince helped create the new band by putting together two members from the Time, Susannah Melvoin (twin sister of Revolution guitarist Wendy Melvoin), Eric Leeds and frontman St. Paul (Paul Peterson).
Prince wrote all of the songs, save for one penned by Revolution drummer Bobby Z., for The Family’s debut album, which he treated like his own releases – meaning that he played every instrument and sung on the recordings himself. He did this in late 1984, then overdubbed Peterson and Melvoin’s vocals and added flute and saxophone by Leeds.
Yet, to make The Family appear more like a real, recording outfit, Prince gave his songwriting credits to members of the band. But he must have had a special feeling about the sixth track on the album, an R&B ballad titled “Nothing Compares 2 U.” When The Family’s self-titled record was released in August of ’85, it was the only song credited to Prince.
The album didn’t fare well and the band broke up soon after, with many members joining Prince’s Revolution backing band. The Family’s lone album was mostly forgotten, and wasn’t even re-released on CD (like Prince’s older albums) toward the end of the decade. While the record faded into obscurity, one of its songs came roaring back after a few years.
Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor began her career in the mid-’80s, and garnered critical and college radio success with her 1987 album, The Lion and the Cobra, and the single “Mandinka.” While putting together her follow-up album in Dublin, O’Connor’s manager, Fachtna O’Kelly, suggested she should cover Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” on the record, which would be titled I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got and released in March 1990.
Sinead leant the ballad a softness and vulnerability that was instantly arresting. It’s no wonder that the track was issued as the album’s lead single and released to radio weeks before the album came out. By late April, it was topping the singles charts, not only in Ireland, but also in the U.K., Australia, Germany and the U.S., where it remained at the #1 spot for four weeks. The single’s success also propelled I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got to the top album spot, and the release eventually went double-platinum in the U.K. and U.S.
Although the song was a blockbuster hit, it was the video for “Nothing Compares 2 U” that truly made Sinead O’Connor an international sensation. Directed by John Maybury, the clip mostly centers on O’Connor’s face as she sings the song before a black background. The key moment of course, is when the singer tears up toward the ballad’s end in a moment of honest emotion. O’Connor later said she started crying because of the lyric “All the flowers that you planted, Mama/ in the backyard / all died when you went away,” due to a difficult relationship with her mother. She told Rolling Stone, “I didn’t intend for that moment to happen, but when it did, I thought, ‘I should let this happen.’”
Because of the emotion she showed , as well as her unique look (a short-cropped, boy-ish hairstyle), O’Connor and the video became instant pop icons. The video was in rapid rotation on MTV and even took home Best Video honors at the 1990 Video Music Awards (the first video by a female artist to do so).
“Nothing Compares 2 U” became such a big hit for Sinead O’Connor that, soon after its chart run, Prince started playing his own version in concert . He even included a live duet with Rosie Gaines on his 1993 best-of compilation, The Hits. To this day, it remains Prince’s top-charting single – tied with 1984’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” which also spent a month at #1.
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