Sinéad O’Connor’s estate has demanded former President Donald Trump stop using her music at his campaign rallies.
The estate of the late singer-songwriter told Variety and BBC that it was “no exaggeration to say that Sinéad would have been disgusted, hurt, and insulted” by her music being used at Trump rallies. The Republican presidential candidate has played O’Connor’s biggest hit, her version of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” at rallies in Maryland and North Carolina.
The estate slammed the campaign for misrepresenting her work, as Trump is “someone who she herself referred to as a ‘biblical devil.’”
“As the guardians of her legacy, we demand that Donald Trump and his associates desist from using her music immediately,” the statement continued. “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.”
USA TODAY has reached out to O’Connor’s reps for comment from her estate.
In a 2020 interview with Hot Press, O’Connor said she did “believe Donald Trump is the biblical devil.”
“Nobody should think he’s doing this just so he can get elected,” she said while Trump was 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.”
O’Connor died in July of natural causes at age 56.
Her family shared a statement about her death at the time to BBC.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Sinéad,” O’Connor’s family said in the statement. “Her family and friends are devastated and have requested privacy at this very difficult time.”
The music icon is best known for her 1990 cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which catapulted her to short-lived stardom. Her stirring performance of the power ballad spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was nominated for three Grammy Awards. The song itself was accompanied by the legendary music video of O’Connor singing in a black turtleneck directly into the camera.
Controversy arrived for O’Connor in 1992 after the “Rememberings” author openly criticized Pope John Paul II during a “Saturday Night Live” appearance while singing Bob Marley’s “War,” in protest of child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.
The number of songs Trump can use at his rallies is steadily decreasing. O’Connor’s estate joins a long list of people who have demanded the former president stop using artists’ music at his rallies, including Prince’s estate, The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr, Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco, and the family of Tom Petty.
Contributing: Patrick Ryan
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