Sinéad O’Connor says she will no longer perform Nothing Compares 2 U, the hit track which earned the Irish singer global success in 1990. Citing her inability to “emotionally identify” with the song, Connor affirms that she would no longer be doing her “job right” by singing the single during future live shows.
According to the artist, around nine months ago, she realised that she had no genuine connection with its lyrics and could not deliver a convincing enough performance. “OK, the time has come for me to cease singing Nothing Compares 2 U. The first principle of the manner in which I’m trained as a singer (bel canto) is we never sing a song we don’t emotionally identify with,” she explained in a Facebook post on 16 March.
I don’t want audiences to be disappointed coming along to a show and then not hearing it, so I am letting you know here that you won’t. If I were to sing it just to please people, I wouldn’t be doing my job right, because my job is to be emotionally available. I’d be lying. You’d be getting a lie. My job is to give you honesty. I’m trained in honesty. I can’t act. It just isn’t in my training. I have ceased singing other songs over the years for the same reason.
Nothing Compares 2 U was written by Prince, who originally recorded the track as part of an album with his funk group Family. Picked up by O’Connor, her emotive interpretation transformed the song into the ultimate anthem of loss and pain, its success further boosted by the song’s iconic music video.
Speaking to the Guardian in 2014, Connor appeared appreciative of the song’s longstanding connection with her audience and rejected the idea that many artists may grow to resent their most ubiquitous single: “Well, it’s brilliant. I certainly understand that about Nothing Compares 2 U. Everyone remembers where they were and what was going on in their life at the time they heard it – whether they loved someone or didn’t love someone,” she said.
O’Connor’s version of the song was a worldwide hit and topped charts in the singer’s native Ireland, as well as Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the US.
She released her 10th album, I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, on 11 August 2014.
