Estate of late rock star Prince bans Sinead O’Connor’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ song from critically acclaimed documentary

THE estate of late rock star Prince has banned Sinead O’Connor’s  best known tune from a critically-acclaimed documentary about her, the Irish Sun can reveal.

New film Nothing Compares by director Kathryn Ferguson is winning rave reviews at the Sundance Festival.

It recounts Sinead’s traumatic upbringing, her overnight success and her battle to tell the truth about clerical abuse which saw her tear up a picture of the Pope on late night American TV —  which nearly destroyed her career.

But the documentary has been marred after filmmakers were banned from using the song Nothing Compares 2 U, after which the film was named,  by the Prince estate.

US magazine Variety, reviewing Nothing Compares over the weekend, told readers: “The Prince estate did not allow the song to be used in Nothing Compares, so aside from a few suggestive chords we have to imagine it.”

SINEAD'S ESCAPE

Sinead, whose son Shane died earlier this month,  had recounted in her memoir last year, Rememberings, how Prince had summoned her to his macabre Hollywood mansion, chastised her for swearing in interviews, and harangued his butler to serve her soup, even though Sinead had repeatedly refused it.

Sinead claimed she escaped on foot in the middle of the night, but Prince stalked her with his car, then leaped out and chased her around the highway. 

Sinead said: “He has this pillow he was trying to hit me with and I was spitting across the car at him.  Then I went and rang someone’s doorbell, which is something my dad told me to do if I ever got into a situation.”

But  Sinead later seemed to have made peace with the superstar, as she dedicated her performance to him when she performed it on The Late Late Show after his death from an apparent opiate overdose.

She said: “I cried my eyes out for days when Prince died because of the loneliness of his death . . . I would have liked to have held Prince at his death. 

"The manner of his death, all alone, made me cry and that’s what  made me dedicate the song to him.”

“We were two big egos so on a personal level we didn’t get on. I was aware Prince did some dark drugs so that didn’t surprise me but I was surprised he died alone.”

POPE PHOTO PRIDE

Nothing Compares, which was completed before the tragic death of  Shane, 17, also sees Sinead speaking about tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1982. 

Sinead said that shE has “absolutely no regrets” about her controversial SNL  performance and even says it’s the “proudest” thing she’s ever done as an artist.

• NOTHING Compares is due in Irish cinemas later this year.