Pink and Brandi Carlile are paying tribute to late musician Sinéad O’Connor with a surprise performance of “Nothing Compares 2 U” after the Irish singer-songwriter died Wednesday at 56. The “Try” singer, who recently embarked on the North American leg of her Summer Carnival tour, brought Carlile on stage Wednesday during her concert at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, Ohio, to perform O’Connor’s most iconic song.
O’Connor’s music was a major inspiration for Pink as a kid. “When I was a little girl, my mom grew up in Atlantic City and I used to go down to the Ocean City Boardwalk with my $10 and I would make a demo tape,” she recalled, via CBS. “I would make a little cassette tape and imagine it was my demo for the record company.” Pink’s favorite songs to record as a child were Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” and “Nothing Compares 2 U,” she said, adding, “In honor of Sinead, and in honor of my very very talented friend Brandi Carlile, I asked her if she would come out here and sing this song with me.”
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Following the performance, Pink reminded her fans to all be kind to one another, because you never know “what people are going through” and it’s “not hard to give people a smile.” She continued, “It’s not hard to be kind, I’m learning that lesson in this lifetime as well, we can all learn that together.” Carlile would go on to call the performance a “bittersweet moment” on her Instagram Story.
The “Just Give Me a Reason” singer is not the only artist to pay tribute to O’Connor on stage. Tori Amos took to the stage in San Francisco following the news of O’Connor’s death to perform a medley of “Three Babies” and “I Am Stretched On Your Grave.” Amos also took to Twitter with a written tribute, writing, “Sinead was a force of nature. A brilliant songwriter & performer whose talent we will not see the like of again. Such passion, such intense presence & a beautiful soul, who battled her own personal demons courageously. Be at peace dear Sinead, you will forever be in our hearts.”
Thursday, the London Inner South Coroner’s Court announced that the eight-time Grammy nominee’s death “is not being treated as suspicious,” although “no medical cause of death was given.” A day prior, London’s Metropolitan Police announced in a statement that authorities had responded to “reports of an unresponsive woman at a residential address” in South London at 11:18 a.m. that day, and that O’Connor was pronounced dead at the scene.
