A Deepfaked Gollum Performs a ‘Precious’ Cover of Sinead O’Connor’s Version of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’

Ian Walters (previously), a 6th grade history and science teacher in Oakland, Californa, has returned as Gollum from The Lord of the Rings to perform a “precious” cover Sinead O’Connor‘s version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” (which was originally written by Prince).

Nothing can stop these tears from falling
Tell me precious, where did we go wrong
We can put our hands around the neck of every Hobbit we see
But they only remind us of you
And we got tortured by the dark lord
But guess what we told him
Guess what we told him precious
We screamed “SHIRE” and “Baggins”
Then we cried and cursed and gurgled
Like we do, but he’s a fool
Because nothing compares, nothing compares
To you my precious.

Unlike the previous videos, Walters worked with animator Chris Umé to employ”deepfake” technology in order to actually have Gollum mimic the original Sinead O’Connor music video.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.