25 January 1990
You know in the video for ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ where Sinéad O’Connor is walking in a park? That’s the Parc de Saint-Cloud on the edge of Paris; for most of my eight years in Paris I lived near there. It has two front fields right on the bank of the Seine that are used for the annual Rock En Seine music festival, where in 2009 Oasis split up backstage just minutes before they were due to appear. Not a great spot for running: most of the roads through it don’t have footpaths or even margins, so you have to constantly look out for traffic.
I fully appreciate that this isn’t the bit in the video for ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ I should be noticing. It’s just that ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ has always left me cold. Obviously, Sinéad gives a committed and distinctive performance, and the Prince-ly source material is fairly sound too. But did this smart, lonely song and this raw, responsive performance really need to be smothered with maudlin, dreary synths and strings? That’s AOR-level of cliched ’emotional’ signifier: no wonder the power ballad demographic pricked up their ears at this and put it to number one across the Earth.
The rock swagger of ‘Mandinka’ and ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ is closer to my taste, but that’s not to say I always need Sinéad to be Angry Sinéad. I just would have preferred if ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ was something more than Angry ‘What’s Another Year’.
