Sinead O’Connor says Prince once violently attacked and stalked her

A shot of Sinead O'Connor on stage in 2020

(Image credit: Andrew Chin/Getty Images)

Sinead O'Connor has revealed that late singer Prince once attacked her during a meeting at his Hollywood home.

In a new interview with the New York Times, O'Connor details that Prince "summoned" her to his Hollywood mansion after her 1991 track Nothing Compares 2 U – which Prince wrote – became a hit. When she arrived, Prince "chastised" her for swearing too much in interviews and tried to force his butler to serve her soup, which she "repeatedly refused".

Prince then reportedly suggested a pillow fight, but had slipped something hard into his own pillowcase to strike O'Connor with. O'Connor says she "escaped on foot in the middle of the night", after which Prince "stalked her with his car, leapt out and chased her around the highway".

“You’ve got to be crazy to be a musician,” says O'Connor. “But there’s a difference between being crazy and being a violent abuser of women.”

O'Connor has spoken about her altercation with Prince more than once in the past. She gave an interview to The Mirror in 2007, where she said "[Prince] invited me to his house in Los Angeles and started to give out to me for swearing in interviews. When I told him to go fuck himself he got very upset and became quite threatening, physically. I ended up having to escape.” She also went on UK TV show Good Morning Britain in 2019 and claimed Prince tried to "beat her up". She told the show's hosts: "We meet on the highway in Malibu at five in the morning – I’m spitting at him, he’s trying to punch me. I had to go ring someone’s doorbell, which my father always told me to do if I was in a situation like that”.

O’Connor was speaking to New York Times ahead of the release of her memoir Rememberings, which is due out in June.

Briony is the Editor in Chief of Louder and is in charge of sorting out who and what you see covered on the site. She started working with Metal Hammer, Classic Rock and Prog magazines back in 2015 and has been writing about music and entertainment in many guises since 2009. Her favourite-ever interviewee is either Billy Corgan or Kim Deal. She is a big fan of cats, Husker Du and pizza.