Who recorded it first
Nothing Compares 2 U
Not a Sinéad O’Connor original — a 1985 album cut by The Family
It is one of the great cover-eclipses in pop: almost everyone takes ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ for a Sinéad O’Connor original, but her 1990 version is a cover. The song was written by Prince and first recorded by his Paisley Park side project The Family in 1985 — a track on their only album that was never released as a single. O’Connor picked it up five years later and took it to No. 1 worldwide.
The record
Who recorded it first
How we traced it
The song was written by Prince and first recorded by The Family, one of the first acts on his Paisley Park label, for their self-titled 1985 album — the one song on it he kept under his own name rather than crediting to the band Wikipedia ↗.
The Family’s version was never released as a single and ‘received little recognition’; the band dissolved after one album. That left the composition all but unheard until Sinéad O’Connor recorded it.
O’Connor’s 1990 cover, produced with Nellee Hooper, reached No. 1 in both the UK and the US and was named the world’s top single of the year — so definitive that the 1985 original dropped out of public memory almost entirely. Prince did not release his own version until later: a 1993 live duet, and his original 1984 demo, unheard until 2018 the song history ↗.
Wikipedia — the full song historyKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
The attribution problem
This is the cleanest kind of music misattribution: nothing about Sinéad O’Connor’s record is wrong or fake. The only error is believing she originated it — a 1990 cover mistaken for the source.
‘It’s a Sinéad O’Connor song’
O’Connor’s 1990 version is a cover. The song was recorded five years earlier, in 1985, by The Family the history ↗.
The Family, 1985
Released as an album track and never as a single, it made little impact — which is exactly why the cover could eclipse it so completely. There was no famous original standing in the way.
Prince
Prince wrote the song; he is neither the singer who made it a hit nor a member of the band who first recorded it. Authorship and performance are different things, and here they belong to different people.
Written by Prince, first recorded by The Family in 1985, and made famous — but not originated — by Sinéad O’Connor in 1990 the record ↗.
Context
Why the cover ate the original
A cover eclipses its original most completely when the original never had its moment. The Family’s ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ was a buried album track that vanished when the band dissolved; there was no hit record occupying the public’s memory of the song, so when Sinéad O’Connor’s version arrived it simply became the version, with nothing to displace.
The extra twist here is the writer. Prince, one of the most famous musicians alive, wrote it and gave it away — then held his own recordings back for decades. So the song’s three creators arrived in reverse order of fame: the buried original first, the global hit second, and the author’s own version last of all.
The three creators, in order
- Prince writes the song and demos it, 1984.
- The Family record it, 1985; released as an album track, no single, no chart.
- The band dissolves; the song goes all but unheard.
- Sinéad O’Connor covers it, January 1990 → UK & US No. 1, world’s top single of the year.
- Prince releases his own versions later: a 1993 live duet, and his 1984 demo, unheard until 2018.
The song’s three creators arrived in reverse order of fame — the buried original first, the global hit second, the author last.