Released on 8 January 1990 as the second single from her breakthrough album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, Sinéad O’Connor’s cover of Prince’s Nothing Compares 2 U didn’t just reimagine the song—it inhabited it.
Originally written by Prince in 1984 for his side project The Family, the song was quietly tucked away on their debut album and never released as a single.
The track might have faded into obscurity if not for O’Connor’s haunting reinterpretation, which went on to top charts in over a dozen countries and become one of the most iconic singles of the 1990s.
Susan Rogers, Prince’s longtime engineer, recalled: “The song came out like a sneeze.”
She watched Prince disappear into a room with a notebook and return less than an hour later with the lyrics and melody nearly intact.
“It was exceptional, in his Top 10,” she later said, though Prince himself felt the track didn’t suit his image and passed it off.
One theory suggests it was inspired by his housekeeper Sandy Scipioni, who left suddenly after her father’s death—a void that triggered the emotions behind the song.
But O’Connor made it hers, and publicly, emotionally so. In her memoir Rememberings, she explained that while shooting the music video, she unexpectedly cried on camera: “I feel it’s the only time I get to spend with my mother and that I’m talking with her again. There’s a belief that she’s there, that she can hear me and I can connect to her.”
It’s been seven hours and fifteen days
The countdown opens not with metaphor, but with time—measured, obsessive, painfully exact. Her grief is clocked, not romanticised.
Since you took your love away
No one dies in this song. That’s what makes it crueler. This is loss that walks and talks elsewhere.
I go out every night and sleep all day
The structure of a life reversed. There’s a slow rot here. The mundanity of heartbreak gets coded into routine, not melodrama.
Since you’ve been gone I can do whatever I want / I can see whomever I choose
She states it like a win, then suffocates under its weight. The voice tightens, not in triumph, but in hollowness.
I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant / But nothing, I said nothing can take away these blues
The juxtaposition between indulgence and devastation is cutting. You can’t feast your way out of grief. The song knows that. Her delivery makes sure we know it too.
‘Cause nothing compares / Nothing compares to you
The line that made pop history. Its repetition is less chorus, more incantation. Like saying it enough times might make it real, or undo it.
It’s been so lonely without you here / Like a bird without a song
A common image, but she treats it like it’s new. There’s no flourish, no grand swell. Just a stark comparison made personal by the tremble in her voice.
I could put my arms around every boy I see / But they’d only remind me of you
A barbed kind of coping. She’s not mourning in isolation; she’s haunted even in distraction.
I went to the doctor and guess what he told me? / He said, “Girl, you better try to have fun, no matter what you do” / But he’s a fool
This line always stings. The delivery turns casual advice into an insult. It’s one of the rare moments she lets bitterness crack through the grief.
All the flowers that you planted, mama, in the backyard / All died when you went away
This line re-roots the loss. The song pivots from romantic grief to maternal devastation. O’Connor later admitted she thought of her late mother when singing it—and it shows.
I know that living with you baby was sometimes hard / But I’m willing to give it another try
Not blind idolisation. She’s admitting it wasn’t perfect. That’s what makes the longing sharper.
The infamous close-up video, directed by John Maybury, is burned into cultural memory for a reason. You don’t watch it; you witness it. Her face doesn’t perform grief. It becomes it.
The tear was unplanned. “I didn’t intend for that moment to happen,” she said. “But when it did, I thought, I should let this happen.”
Few covers have ever claimed full ownership of a song. Even fewer have done so while alienating the original songwriter.
Prince reportedly disliked her version, at least initially. But O’Connor wasn’t performing for approval.
She was speaking to her dead mother. And in doing so, she ended up speaking to millions.
Nothing Compares 2 U became the number one song of 1990 on several charts and earned three MTV Video Music Awards.
It remains the only song to simultaneously top the US Billboard Hot 100 and Alternative charts while maintaining such sparse production.
To call it a breakup song is too easy. This is mourning disguised as pop. It’s the kind of performance that doesn’t age, because loss doesn’t either.
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Sinéad O’Connor Nothing Compares 2 U Lyrics
Verse 1
It’s been seven hours and fifteen days
Since you took your love away
I go out every night and sleep all day
Since you took your love away
Since you’ve been gone I can do whatever I want
I can see whomever I choose
I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant
But nothing, I said, nothing can take away these blues
Chorus
‘Cause nothing compares
Nothing compares to you
Verse 2
It’s been so lonely without you here
Like a bird without a song
Nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling
Tell me, baby, where did I go wrong?
I could put my arms around every boy I see
But they’d only remind me of you
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
Chorus
‘Cause nothing compares
Nothing compares to you
Bridge
All the flowers that you planted, mama, in the backyard
All died when you went away
I know that living with you, baby, was sometimes hard
But I’m willing to give it another try
Outro
Nothing compares
Nothing compares to you
Nothing compares
Nothing compares to you
Nothing compares
Nothing compares to you