The director of a new documentary about Sinéad O'Connor has said she is very disappointed that the estate of Prince refused her clearance to include O’Connor’s iconic cover of his song, Nothing Compares 2 U in the film.
Belfast director Kathryn Ferguson’s Nothing Compares charts O’Connor’s rise to fame and the backlash she endured in the early nineties after she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on live TV in the US and refused to allow the American National Anthem to be played at the start of one of her gigs.
The filmmaker had planned to make John Maybury’s acclaimed video for the singer’s 1990 version of Nothing Compares 2 U a key part of her documentary but was refused permission by the late Prince’s estate.
In an interview with Billboard magazine, Prince’s half-sister and co-heir, Sharon Nelson, said the estate refused the request because "I didn’t feel she deserved to use the song."
"Nothing compares to Prince’s live version with Rosie Gaines that is featured on the Hits 1 album and we are re-releasing that album on vinyl on November 4th," she added.
"I didn’t feel [Sinéad] deserved to use the song my brother wrote in her documentary so we declined. His version is the best."
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment, Ferguson said, "We found out late in the day that we were denied the licence to the song. We don’t have a very clear answer why and it’s their prerogative to do what they want with it.
"But it was obviously very disappointing and not something that we anticipated but I suppose that it did do was create a fantastic creative challenge because you can bet your boots we were going to use the video!"
She added, "We had been granted the rushes for it and we really wanted to use this iconic video and also that section of the film is very biographical where Sinéad is discussing her sadness over the passing of her mother.
"So, we really had to work together to try and keep the narrative we had in place intact and so many people who have seen the film have said they can actually hear the song just by looking at the video.
"It is what it is, and we did our best to get through it!"
As well as extensive use of archive footage of O’Connor in her pre-fame days, Nothing Compares includes a new interview with the singer in which she is brutally honest about her troubled upbringing in Dublin and how she feels about the events of 1992 thirty years later.
Nothing Compares is in cinemas on 7 October
