- Sinéad O'Connor had a complicated relationship with her trademark hit, "Nothing Compares 2 U."
- She stopped performing the song in 2015 because she could no longer "emotionally identify" with it.
Sinéad O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" was the biggest hit of her career and is widely regarded as one of the greatest power ballads of all time.
However, the Irish singer, who died aged 56 this week, had a complicated relationship with her marquee song.
"Nothing Compares 2 U" was originally released in 1985 by The Family, a band that Prince led as a side project to his solo career.
Only when O'Connor covered the song in 1990, however, did it become a hit.
O'Connor's version, which featured on her sophomore album "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got," topped charts all over the world and shot the Dublin-born star to international acclaim.
Sinéad O'Connor recalls meeting Prince
After she released the song, O'Connor said she was summoned to Prince's house.
Speaking on the Norwegian-Swedish talk show "Skavlan" in 2014, O'Connor said the meeting resulted in a "punch-up."
"He said he didn't like me saying bad words in interviews," O'Connor said. "So I told him to fuck off. He got quite violent."
"I had to escape out of his house at 5 in the morning," the singer said. "He packed a bigger punch than mine."
Prince died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl in 2016, aged 57.
In a New York Times interview in May 2021, O'Connor described Prince as a "violent abuser of women," however, she told People later the same month that she "sobbed" when he died.
"I just felt terribly sorry and sad for him of the loneliness of his death," she said. "The price you pay for being so successful is an awful, aching loneliness, and I think he was terribly lonely, terribly vulnerable."
"The loneliness of fame, I think, was his undoing," she added.
Why Sinéad O'Connor stopped performing 'Nothing Compares 2 U'
O'Connor's relationship with Prince wasn't the only trouble O'Connor faced in regard to "Nothing Compares 2 U."
In 2015, she stopped performing the song because she felt that she could no longer "emotionally identify" with it.
"After twenty-five years of singing it, nine months or so ago I finally ran out of anything I could use in order to bring some emotion to it," O'Connor wrote on Facebook in 2015, according to Rolling Stone.
"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," she added. "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."
Fortunately for her fans, O'Connor reversed her decision and once again began playing the song at her shows, including on her final tour, The 786 Tour, in early 2020.