In the mid-80ies the artist at that moment known as Prince had a very productive phase where he wrote a song just about every other day. Not all of them really fit him though, and so when he wrote “Nothing Compares To You” in just about an hour, he was more than happy to give it away to his side-project The Family. While it’s not public knowledge who the song is about, speculation goes that he wrote the song for his housekeeper, who had been making sure he felt right at home, providing for all his needs, but who abruptly left to be with her family after her father had died. In order to get strong feelings across, singer Paul Peterson kept thinking about a girl named Julie who broke his heart in High School. The song ended up being a filler on their first and only album with little success, but Peterson ended up marrying Julie so there’s always that.
Five years later the manager of Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor suggested to her to do a recording of the song, and when he brought the finished tape to the co-director of their label Chris Hill the latter was moved to tears. When he called O’Connor and told her about it, she asked, “Was it that bad?”.
The singer never got quite used to the fame the song brought her, and ended up being in many a controversy over the years (most famously ripping apart a picture of the pope while singing Bob Marley’s “War” on Saturday Night Live to criticize the covering-up of sexual child abuse by the catholic church, which shockingly somehow to this day for many religious people appears to be worse than the actual abuse), and repeatedly released strong statements only to backtrack on them soon after. It suited her fine, as she never considered herself to be a pop star: “I’m just a troubled soul who needs to scream into mikes now and then.”
Despite having lots of material shot in Paris, the video ended up being mostly close-ups which came as a surprise to many viewers who did not know the singer had shaved her head. The tears are real.