Irish pop star Sinead O’Connor was once allegedly “chastised” by Prince for her swearing and thumped during a pillow fight after she was invited to his Hollywood home.
The singer, aka Shuhada’ Sadaqat, claims she was summoned to Prince’s “macabre Hollywood mansion” back in 1991, a year after scoring the biggest hit of her career with a cover of the Purple Rain icon’s song, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” but the meeting was memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Sinead details the encounter in her upcoming memoir, Rememberings, and according to an excerpt obtained by The New York Times, she alleges 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.”
She was so shocked by the way she was reportedly being treated, Sinead “escaped on foot in the middle of the night” only for Prince to stalk her with his car, ultimately leaping out of the vehicle and chasing her down the highway.
Recalling the purported experience with Prince, who died in 2016, Sinead told the newspaper: “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.”
Although the two didn’t get along, Sinead is proud of her version of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” and takes full ownership of the track’s success, stating, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s my song.”
However, she believes the single’s huge popularity actually harmed her music career, because it turned her into a pop star when she considered herself to be a punk protest singer.
The musician, who famously tore up a photo of Pope John Paul II when she appeared as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live in 1992, writes in her book: “I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.”
Explaining how she felt after topping the charts, she told the Times: “The media was making me out to be crazy because I wasn’t acting like a pop star was supposed to act.
“It seems to me that being a pop star is almost like being in a type of prison. You have to be a good girl.”