Sinead O’Connor has claimed that Prince once attempted to “beat her up” and left a female member of his backing band with broken ribs.

The singer, who has detailed her alleged conflict with Prince in the past, opened up on her experiences with the music icon – who penned her seminal hit ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’.

“Prince tried to beat me up,” she said on Good Morning Britain. “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.”


She added: “He was wanting me to be a protege of his and ordered that I don’t swear in my interviews. 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.”

She continued: “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 also claimed that the late singer was “into some pretty dark drugs at the time” and said, “I’m not the only one he went at. One of the girls in his band was in the hospital with broken ribs at the time.”

NME has contacted Prince’s estate for a response.

This comes after O’Connor last week apologised for saying she “never wants to spend time with white people again“. After making a triumphant comeback on Ireland’s The Late Late Show, she told Twitter followers her remarks were “not true at the time and are not true now”. The Irish singer said she was “angry and unwell” when she made the remarks on Twitter in October last year.