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Sinéad O’Connor (GMA YouTube screenshot) and Donald Trump (Fox News, YouTube screenshot)
The estate of singer Sinéad O’Connor is demanding — in no uncertain terms — that the presidential campaign of Donald Trump cease playing her music at his rallies and events. Her estate released a joint statement with her record label, Chrysalis Records, stating that the late singer-songwriter would have been “disgusted” to know that her work was being used by the former president, whom she had previously referred to as a “biblical devil.”
The candid statement comes on the heels of the Trump campaign playing the biggest hit of O’Connor’s career — the Prince-penned ballad “Nothing Compares 2 U,” from her second studio album — at number of events in his campaign to win the Republican nomination for president.
“Throughout her life, it is well known that Sinéad O’Connor lived by a fierce moral code defined by honesty, kindness, fairness, and decency towards her fellow human beings,” the joint statement read. “It was with outrage therefore that we learned that Donald Trump has been using her iconic performance of Nothing Compares 2 U at his political rallies.”
O’Connor, who died last year of natural causes at the age of 56, had been an outspoken critic of Trump following his 2016 election.
“Nobody should think he’s doing this just so he can get elected,” she said in an interview with Hot Press during the final year of Trump’s first term in office. “He is devilish enough that he believes in this stuff. They should have dragged him out of the White House at the point he separated the first child from their parents at the Mexican border.”
Her estate echoed that sentiment with similarly frank words.
“It is no exaggeration to say that Sinéad would have been disgusted, hurt and insulted to have her work misrepresented in this way by someone who she herself referred to as a ‘biblical devil,’” the statement continued. “As the guardians of her legacy, we demand that Donald Trump and his associates desist from using her music immediately.”
This is far from the first time that the Trump campaign has used an artist’s work without permission.
As Law&Crime previously reported, other performers who have sent his campaign cease and desist demands for playing songs without permission include Aerosmith, Pharrell Williams, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and the British singer Edmond “Eddy” Grant who sang the 1983 hit “Electric Avenue.”
Similar to O’Connor, Petty’s family released a statement in 2020 lambasting the Trump Campaign for repeatedly playing his song “I Won’t Back Down” at his rallies.
“Both the late Tom Petty and his family firmly stand against racism and discrimination of any kind,” the family wrote. “Tom Petty would never want a song of his used for a campaign of hate. He liked to bring people together.”
