Sinead O’Connor has claimed that she faced a violent confrontation with Prince after securing her biggest hit with a cover of his song ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’.
In a new interview with The New York Times, the Irish singer said the incident occurred when Prince invited her to his Hollywood mansion after the 1991 cover became a huge hit.
According to O’Connor, 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.”
After allegedly escaping the house on foot in the middle of the night, Prince is said to have “stalked her with his car, leapt out and chased her around the highway”.
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.”
Her latest account of meeting Prince lines up with a similar account she gave The Mirror in 2007.
“He invited me to his house in Los Angeles and started to give out to me for swearing in interviews,” O’Connor said at the time.
“When I told him to go fuck himself he got very upset and became quite threatening, physically. I ended up having to escape.”
She later added: “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 was speaking ahead of the release of new memoir ‘Rememberings’.
Last December, O’Connor also confirmed that 2021 will see her releasing her first album in seven years.