"Nothing Compares 2 U"

Sinéad O'Connor
(Ensign/Chrysalis, 1990)

In many ways, the song isn't hers: Prince wrote it, Nellee Hooper co-produced (with those lush, ghostly dance beats and strings), and MTV made it as inescapable as it was irresistible, in a video that for a change simply showed a singer singing and let that perfectly shorn head and that voice do the rest. And the voice was all soul: alternating chest tones, head tones, and that signature Sinéad back-of-the-throat glottal catch to convey multiples levels of emotion: love, anger, grief, resignation. She hasn't sounded this righteous again since she dissed the pope.

-- Jon Garelick