Over the years, Sinéad O’Connor has hinted at a violent confrontation with Prince after she scored a massive hit with a cover of his song, “Nothing Compares 2 U”. With a new memoir titled Rememberings on the way, the Irish singer is ready to dish out the terrifying details, some of which were teased in a new interview with The New York Times.
According to the Times, O’Connor said Prince “terrorized” her after summoning her to his Hollywood mansion. When she got there, Prince “chastised her for swearing in interviews, harangued his butler to serve her soup though she repeatedly refused it, and sweetly suggested a pillow fight only to thump her with something hard he’d slipped into his pillowcase.”
When she snuck out on foot in the middle of the night, “he stalked her with his car, leapt out and chased her around the highway.” In the interview, O’Connor added, “You’ve got to be crazy to be a musician, but there’s a difference between being crazy and being a violent abuser of women.”
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This account lines up with a story O’Connor told The London Mirror in 2007. “He invited me to his house in Los Angeles and started to give out to me for swearing in interviews,” she said at the time. “When I told him to go [bleep] himself he got very upset and became quite threatening, physically. I ended up having to escape.”
When the interviewer commented on Prince’s dimutive build, O’Connor replied, “He can pack a punch. A few blows were exchanged. All I could do was spit. I spat on him quite a bit.”
O’Connor also spoke about the alleged dust-up in a 2014 interview with a Norweigian radio station and yet again during a 2019 appearance on Good Morning Britain. Having died of an accidental overdose more than four years ago, Prince obviously isn’t able to tell his side of the story, but O’Connor clearly doesn’t have any found memories of him.
Read the full New York Times interview here. Rememberings is currently available for pre-order ahead of its June 1st release.
