Why Sinead O'Connor will never perform Nothing Compares 2 U again

Sinead O'Connor.

It remains Sinead O'Connor best-known song but New Zealand is the last place she'll perform it - and for that fans can partly blame a local bird trying to sing along.

Encoring at Womad in New Plymouth, O'Connor decided to sing Nothing Compares 2 U, her 1990 hit of the song originally written by Prince.

But she got through two verses of the heartbreaking hymn before she was distracted by a duck, got the giggles and departed the stage.

"Funniest moment ever onstage tonight," she posted later. "There was a tiny lake between the stage and the audience. Just as [I] finished singing 'Its been so lonely without you here, like a bird without a song' a duck got to the front of stage and went 'QUACK QUACK!'. Couldn't finish. Too funny."

Now the the Irish singer says she has ceased singing the classic for good.

On her Facebook page O'Connor wrote: "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.

"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. I don't want audiences to be disappointed coming along to a show and then not hearing it, so 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".

O'Connor recorded the song as a tribute to her mother who had died in 1985.
Her version of the song was included on her second album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, released in 1990.

The album sold over two million copies in America and was also double platinum in the UK.

The song won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance in 1991, however O'Connor refused to accept the award.

- nzherald.co.nz