Sinead O’Connor Says Prince Tried to Beat Her Up, Left a Female Band Member with Broken Ribs

The singer also claims he was "into some pretty dark drugs at the time"

Sinéad O'Connor (Michel Linssen/Redferns)
Sinéad O'Connor (Michel Linssen/Redferns)

In a new interview with Good Morning Britain, Sinead O’Connor claims that Prince once “tried to beat [her] up” and left a female band member with broken ribs.

“Prince tried to beat me up,” she said. “It was a very frightening experience. He summoned me to his house one night and I foolishly went alone. He was uncomfortable with the fact I wasn’t a protege of his and that I’d just recorded the song.” O’Connor famously covered Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” in 1990.

“He was wanting me to be a protege of his and ordered that I don’t swear in my interviews,” she added. “I told him where he could go and he went for me. He went upstairs and got a pillow and he had something hard in the pillow. I ran out of his house, hiding behind a tree. 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 added that she wasn’t the only one Prince got violent with and that he was “into some pretty dark drugs at the time.” “I’m not the only one he went at,” she said. “One of the girls in his band was in the hospital with broken ribs at the time.”

You can watch the full interview in the clip below.

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