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Sinead O'Connor, the Irish music legend best known for her cover version of Nothing Compares 2 U, passed away on July 26, 2023, at the age of 56. Her death was announced by her family exclusively to BBC News. In celebration of her legacy, and to commemorate the song's 30-year anniversary, the meaning and origins of the same are explored here.
Sinead O'Connor's 1992 rendition of the song is undoubtedly the most acclaimed and famous version of it. However, the original song was written by singer-songwriter Prince in honor of his housekeeper Sandy Scipioni. The housekeeper left the Prince household when he was just a child to tend to her father after had a heart attack.
Susan Rogers spoke to BBC in an exclusive interview and said that Sandy made sure that Prince had his favorite beverage, Five Alive, and that the house was clean. Rogers added that Sandy also ensured that the piano had fresh flowers on it along with making sure that all the socks and underwear were washed.
Rogers continued:
"She had been gone and Prince's mood was getting darker and darker. He would just ask, 'When is Sandy coming back?' That might have been the inspiration for the song."
Nothing Compares 2 U: Sinead O'Connor and her mother
In an interview with the BBC in 2016, Sinead O'Connor revealed that the song was a reminder of her mother who had passed away in a car accident in 1985. Sinead said that it was always the same thing which always worked as she thought of her mother noting that this was why she had a tear in the video.
"My mother died when I was 17 and it wasn't long after that that I was making the video, "I think I'm probably similar to millions of people who loved the song, and we're all people who associated the song with a loss of some kind'," the singer said.
The loss of a mother was not the only theme that can be related to Sinead O'Connor's rendition of the song. The singer had a traumatic childhood as her parents had separated when she was 9. According to Sinead's memoir, Rememberings, her mother was abusive towards her. As per the memoir, the singer would be subject to regular beatings with carpet-sweeper poles, and dehumanizing language was used quite commonly.
The song can also be interpreted as a song of lost innocence and forgiveness. The haunting lyricism that she brought to the song, along with a video that was deliberately and refreshingly au contraire to the usual MTV fair, brought a depth that the original song did not have.
Sinead O'Connor turned a fairly standard song of loss into an unabashed and heart-breaking song of loss and the sorrow of everyday imperfect relationships. Her rendition shows that these relationships are part and parcel of the human condition and yet unbearable at times.
The song propelled the singer's second studio album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, released on March 20, 1990, into her most successful album. The album peaked as a chart-topper on several major album charts and was a multiple platinum-selling album in several countries as well.
