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Remembering the Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan

The biggest and most widely accepted lie about ’90s teen culture is that everyone was disaffected, aloof, and cool. We were nothing of the sort. We were dreamers and bleeding hearts whose world was changing perhaps much faster than the generation before — digitizing at a rate we couldn’t understand — who dared to lurch forward and grab a measure of control of culture. Much of the art from that era doesn’t play well with the trademark ironic detachment of this one, even in a protracted ’90s nostalgia cycle that has revived sitcoms like Full House and Mad About You and reunited bands like Belly and Jawbreaker. A lot of totemic ’90s pop culture — see: loutish, feel-good stuff like Hootie and the Blowfish or Home Improvement and darkly philosophical work like NYPD Blue or Live’s Throwing Copper — exists as arcana in a modern landscape. The morality is too fussy and dated, and the intentions are too obvious and specific to enjoy the lasting cool of a band like Nirvana, whose searching intellectualism and inscrutable poetry saved it from the schmaltz that makes people hate Pearl Jam and the unbridled kookiness that lands Billy Corgan cat magazine covers, wrestling partnerships, and Infowars episodes.

It’s always disconcerting living to learn which works fall out of the popular consciousness after the decade in which they were created. I thought about this a month ago listening to Eminem’s “In Your Head,” a shaky Revival cut built around a sample of the chorus from the Cranberries’ “Zombie,” how the passage of time can flatten out context, how a song that, to me, has existed for nearly 25 years as a clarion call of youthful political outrage might, to a different set of ears, just be a mewling, half-remembered chorus. It feels like a misunderstanding of what the Cranberries and singer-songwriter Dolores O’Riordan did to the face of alternative music to remember them as grungy one-hitters. Even “Zombie” is bigger than just a clattering riff and a fluttering vocal. It’s a protest song about civilian death in the face of terroristic violence that all but name-checks the IRA and the Easter Rebellion. The Cranberries’ biggest single opened up awareness about overseas political strife while giving the alt-rock’s boys’ club a run for its money, and that’s saying nothing of the exhilarating, sometimes bizarre hit parade that was the Cranberries career in the ’90s.

The Cranberries were small-town folk, and you can hear it in the music. The records crafted after the band picked up O’Riordan as singer are insular mixes of C86 jangle, 4AD dream pop, traditional ’80s British guitar rock, and splashes of Celtic folk. “Dreams” sounds like the Cocteau Twins channeling the Psychedelic Furs; “Linger” carried a dash of Smiths. (Note that producer Stephen Street’s shimmering sound is the through line joining the Smiths, Blur, the Cranberries, the Furs, and countless others.) People immediately accused the band of ripping off the Sundays, but in retrospect, this was likely a case of the men running music criticism lacking the tools or the interest in appreciating the ways that women like Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval, My Bloody Valentine’s Bilinda Butcher, or Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell sired, mixed, and matched different characteristics of wistful late-’80s and early-’90s alt-rock to suit their own tastes. (A crucial scene in the L7 documentary L7: Pretend We’re Dead shows singer Donita Sparks grousing righteously over male critics repeatedly asking what it’s like to be a girl in a band. Kim Gordon’s 2015 autobiography repurposes the same question for its title. If you want to know how exhausting male interviewers got with O’Riordan, check this 1994 Rolling Stone profile that makes a big fuss about her being a “low talker” or watch this 1996 clip of the Cranberries on MTV Europe’s X-Ray Vision , where, instead of showing deference to a superstar guest, host Ray Cokes asks her whether “size matters” and how much she likes porn.)

The Cranberries weren’t infallible; they were a young band still discovering themselves even a few albums in. O’Riordan often wrote to a groove concocted by the band, singing spontaneously as words and melodies came to her and refining them later, but the finished product always seemed to center her emotion and perspective. Without vocals, No Need to Argue ’s “Ode to My Family” is just a lilting, pleasant guitar, bass, and tambourine exercise; O’Riordan’s plaintive, warbling lead and warm backing vocal are the show. That song is a great example of the brutalist emotion of Dolores O’Riordan’s songwriting. The lyric is about retreating into childhood memories when life gets taxing, but the stark simplicity of the words being used to describe the feeling of a mother and father’s love makes the singer feel like an impossibly small voice describing something much larger than itself, like the lyric is being delivered by an actual child. This style of writing could be a gift or a curse. It yielded iconic lines like the yearning “Oh, my life is changing every day, in every possible way” couplet at the top of “Dreams.” But critics called it cloying as time passed, and the Cranberries’ material got more pointedly topical on cuts like “Free to Decide” and “Salvation,” which tackled depression and drug abuse with the subtlety of an after-school special.

Some of these complaints were spot-on; 1996’s “I Just Shot John Lennon” is as warm and astute as a high-schooler’s book report about Mark David Chapman. But message songs like “Free to Decide” and “Salvation” worked in spite of hammy lyrics because Dolores O’Riordan’s genius was not so much lyrical as emotional and performative. Her songs weren’t just enticing arrays of notes and words, they were obstacle courses designed to facilitate cool tricks with her voice. O’Riordan’s exploration of the breaks in her voice is as inventive as the practices of instrumentalists like saxophonist Colin Stetson, whose positioning of microphones allows him to pick up noises made in the process of playing his instrument that listeners never considered to be musical. O’Riordan cracking her voice to the beat of “Zombie” and “Hollywood” and yawping around octaves in “Dreams” is an aesthetic choice so distinct and offbeat you could call it a trademark. Go deeper than that, and it’s whip-smart repositioning of limitations as strengths.

This pairing of a disarming delivery and a bludgeoning directness powered the Cranberries to the top of the charts in their heyday, but it could be argued that these same qualities make their music feel archetypally and sometimes embarrassingly specific to the ’90s. Obscurity is the final destination of most good art, but it’s sad to see the Cranberries slip into the sands of time, and doubly disappointing that it should take Dolores O’Riordan’s passing for us to properly assess what her music meant to a generation. Her journey from the outskirts of a lesser Irish city into international renown gave proof to the endless possibilities of big dreams. She gave insecurity and uncertainty a powerful voice. Her songs made it clear that asking questions is the path to getting answers. To the faithful departed, you are missed, you are legend.

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As lead singer of The Cranberries, Dolores O’Riordan brought a unique, inimitable voice to rock music, and left a lasting artistic legacy.

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The world was shocked, saddened, and caught off-guard by the sudden death of Dolores O’Riordan, on January 15, 2018. As lead singer of The Cranberries , the iconic County Limerick-born vocalist was an adventurous and truly singular talent fronting a band who weren’t just one of the great alt-rock acts of the 90s, but an outfit for whom longevity has long been guaranteed.

That O’Riordan’s untimely death robbed the music world of one its most distinctive voices is undeniable, but the extensive body of work she and her bandmates bequeathed will proudly live on. On their own, the statistics (which inform us that The Cranberries’ seven studio albums have collectively sold over 40 million copies) demand respect, but it’s the rich, bold and diverse content of these seven discs that continues to beguile fans old and new.

Listen to the best of The Cranberries on Apple Music and Spotify .

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The group achieved stratospheric success, but in time-honored rock’n’roll tradition, The Cranberries came from the humblest of beginnings. Formed by guitarist Mike Hogan, his bassist brother Noel and drummer Fergal Lawlor, in their native Limerick, during 1989, the classic Cranberries line-up only fell into place when budding vocalist/lyricist Dolores O’Riordan was recruited a year later.

Their initial dues-paying done on the UK and Irish indie circuits, the band’s first break came when Rough Trade label boss Geoff Travis took over their management. With help from Travis and further endorsement from key industry figures such as BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel and 2FM’s Dave Fanning, in Dublin, The Cranberries signed to Island and cut their much-acclaimed debut album, 1993’s Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? .

The question posed by the album’s title seemed moot at a time when grunge and alt-rock was on the rise, but the quality of The Cranberries’ debut soon set them apart from the pack. The fiery Celtic soul inherent in O’Riordan’s dextrous vocal delivery ensured that she garnered the lion’s share of the plaudits, but the whole band weighed in with consummate performances, and while the record’s breakthrough hits “Dreams” and the melancholic break-up song “Linger” have since defined Everybody Else… , its tracklist also concealed treasures such as “Pretty” and the gorgeous, chiming “Waltzing Back.”

Initially a slow-burner, Everybody’s Doing It… caught light after the transatlantic success of “Dreams” and “Linger,” eventually going quintuple-Platinum in the US alone. It barely prepared the band for the runaway success of their second LP, however, the Stephen Street-produced No Need To Argue , which moved 17 million copies worldwide.

Though spawning four UK Top 40 hits, No Need To Argue found The Cranberries stretching sonically. The album’s trailer single, the churning, grunge-inflected “Zombie,” was an outspoken protest song concerning the deaths of two young children in an IRA bombing, while the record also spawned introspective fare such as the uileann pipes-enhanced “Daffodil’s Lament” and the evocative “Ode To My Family” – the latter provoking one of O’Riordan’s most affecting vocals.

Riding the crest of a wave, The Cranberries’ third album, To The Faithful Departed , was a muscular, arena-sized rock record which featured several of the band’s signature hits, among them “Salvation” and the upbeat, radio-friendly “When You’re Gone.” Riding high on the charts, it eventually peaked at No.2 in the UK and at No.4 on the Billboard 200, en route to going double-platinum.

Relishing the changing trends in the post-Britpop world, The Cranberries enjoyed further success with 1999’s Bury The Hatchet and 2001’s Wake Up And Smell The Coffee . The former spawned strident UK Top 20 hit “Promises” though several of its stand-out tracks, including the wistful, acoustic “Just My Imagination” and “Animal Instinct“ (O’Riordan’s ode to becoming a mother for the first time) harked back to the dreamy indie-pop sound that originally made these Limerick stalwarts’ names.

Produced by a returning Stephen Street, Wake Up And Smell The Coffee arguably remains the dark horse of The Cranberries’ catalog, housing two finely-wrought, if often overlooked singles, “Analyse” and the environmentally-conscious “Time Is Ticking Out.” In the album’s wake, The Cranberries then went on hiatus, though a reunion in 2009 led to an ambitious comeback album, Roses , in 2012.

Proffering their most eclectic set of songs, the Stephen Street-helmed Roses took in everything from the loops and electronica framing “Fire And Soul” to the reggae-flavored “Raining In My Heart,” along with plenty of the band’s patented, Celtic-flavoured dream-pop on “Tomorrow’ and the blissful “Astral Projection.”

Not a new studio album as such, 2017’s Something Else found The Cranberries recasting ten of their key hits in orchestral and/or “unplugged”-style acoustic settings akin to Tori Amos’ Gold Dust . Issued in April 2017, it showcases the richness and maturity inherent in Dolores O’Riordan’s voice, and while it wasn’t intended as a swansong, Something Else adds a graceful, dignified full stop to a highly covetable artistic legacy.

Outside of The Cranberries, Dolores O’Riordan also recorded two solo albums, Are You Listening? (2007) and 2009’s No Baggage , and collaborated with artists renowned for their maverick approach, among them Zucchero, Jah Wobble and – more recently – DARK: a New York-based project also featuring The Smiths’ former bassist, Andy Rourke. That public figures ranging from politicians to Irish President Michael D Higgins are mourning O’Riordan’s passing, and critics cite the debts the likes of Adele and Florence Welch owe her, all proves how deeply she’s left her mark on popular culture.

Looking for more? Discover our 20 best Cranberries songs .

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Dolores O’Riordan: Inside Cranberries Singer’s Final Days

By David Browne

David Browne

Dolores O’Riordan appeared to be in good spirits the second weekend in January. On the 12th, the Cranberries frontwoman and her longtime bandmate, guitarist Noel Hogan, spoke by phone about a March tour and starting their first studio album in six years. “She was great,” says Hogan. “We spoke about getting back to work.” Two days later, O’Riordan e-mailed him several fresh songs that would be considered for that next band album.

Sadly, those plans never came to be. On the morning of January 15th, O’Riordan was found dead in a London hotel room. She was 46. At press time, the results of an autopsy and toxicology report had not been announced, and police were treating the death as unexplained but not suspicious. (The coroner’s investigation has been adjourned until April 3 “as they await the results of further tests,” according to that office .) The news marked the shocking end for a singer whose steely, siren-like voice and lyrics about both the personal and the political made her one of the most potent stars of the alt-rock era. As U2 said in a group comment, “She had such strength of conviction, yet she could speak to the fragility in all of us.”

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Born in 1971, O’Riordan was raised near the Irish city of Limerick, the youngest of seven. She idolized her dad, a farm laborer who was injured in a bike accident that prevented him from working. But a degree of darkness overshadowed her early life. At one point, her sister accidentally burned down the family home. Later, Dolores said that as a child she had been sexually molested by an older man. As O’Riordan told Rolling Stone in 1995, “I have a lot of secrets about my childhood.”

Music became her escape. In grade school, her voice stood out: “If I started to sing, then all the others in the room would stop and listen,” she told Rolling Stone . In 1990, she met a local band, the Cranberry Saw Us, and replaced the departing lead singer. Thankfully, they were rechristened the Cranberries. “Dolores came and sang a few songs she had written,” says Hogan. “We were blown away that this small girl from Limerick had such an amazing voice. The fact that she wasn’t already in a band was a miracle.”

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Initially, O’Riordan was a shy performer, even singing with her back to the audience. “There was no big act,” says Hogan. “I think [that] resonated with people.” Despite their newness, the Cranberries were swept up in the Nineties alt-rock major-label bidding fever. Their 1993 debut, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? , begat crashing-wave hits like “Linger” and “Dreams,” powered by the blend of the band’s guitar shimmer and O’Riordan’s luxurious, haunted voice. That album and its 1994 follow-up, No Need to Argue , sold millions of records, and the Cranberries even taped an MTV Unplugged .

According to former manager Allen Kovac, O’Riordan intentionally decided to set her band apart with politically urgent lyrics; she wrote its biggest hit, 1994’s “Zombie,” about two children killed during a 1993 bombing in England by the Irish Republican Army. Kovac says Island Records urged them not to release it as a single. (In his telling, she ripped up a $1 million check the label offered her to work on another song.) “Dolores was a very small, fragile person, but very opinionated,” says Kovac “Her belief was that she was an international artist and she wanted to break the rest of the world, and ‘Zombie’ was part of that evolution. She felt the need to expand beyond ‘I love you, you love me’ and write about what was happening in Ireland at the time.”

In the summer of 1994, O’Riordan married Don Burton, a tour manager of Duran Duran; the couple eventually moved to his native Canada and had three kids. But she and the Cranberries soon hit a rough patch. “Dolores gave so much of herself at the gigs,” says Stephen Street, who produced their first two albums. “Perhaps she could have tempered her behavior and been more measured, but that wasn’t her way.” A 1996 tour was cut short while she dealt with exhaustion. “I had to fly to Ireland and take her to a doctor,” Kovac says. “He said to her, ‘You’re not healthy enough to tour.’ My belief was you had to deal with those issues, but I don’t think she ever got through.”

The Cranberries never again repeated their early level of success — their 2001 album Wake Up and Smell the Coffee peaked at 45 — but even as their sound grew edgier and punkier, they never lost their fan base, for whom the troubled O’Riordan remained a relatable pop star. The Cranberries’ music remained in demand, used in soundtracks from The Sopranos and Gossip Girl to You’ve Got Mail. (A sample of “Zombie” threads through “In Your Head” on Eminem’s new Revival .) As Hogan says, “There are songs I hear today that we wrote over 20 years ago and I see and hear people singing along with them.”

Thousands Gather for Dolores O'Riordan Memorial in Ireland

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When the Cranberries broke up in 2003, O’Riordan recorded two under-the-radar solo albums, and the Cranberries regrouped in 2009, eventually releasing one of their strongest albums, Roses , three years later. But O’Riordan’s life remained chaotic. She later claimed she tried to overdose on pills in 2012 and had a drinking problem. Her marriage ended in 2014, the same year she was arrested for stepping on the foot of a flight attendant and head-butting a police officer; a judge spared her from jail after determining she was mentally ill at the time. (“You can’t arrest me — I’m an icon!” she yelled at the police.) She was subsequently diagnosed as bipolar. “Dolores had a lot of things going on in her life over the past 10 years — good and bad,” says Hogan. “But what made Dolores connect with people was her honesty. What you saw was what you got.”

“Dolores was so disappointed when we had to cancel the last tour … She did everything in her power to fix the back problem but it persisted and won in the end.” – Cranberries co-founder Noel Hogan

Again, O’Riordan powered through it all with music. With the end of her marriage, she moved to New York and began working with a new band, D.A.R.K., featuring former Smiths bassist Andy Rourke (who calls her talent “breathtaking”) and DJ Olé Koretsky, who eventually became her life partner. The band’s 2016 debut, Science Agrees , took O’Riordan’s voice into new, electronica areas. But she never fully abandoned the Cranberries, who last year unveiled Something Else, a collection of new and old material played unplugged and orchestrated. In an interview with the BBC to promote it, O’Riordan admitted, “I’ve had health issues the last few years.” Those problems – specifically back pain from years of playing guitar for so many years – led to a canceled tour. “Dolores was so disappointed when we had to cancel the last tour,” says Hogan. “She did everything in her power to fix the back problem but it persisted and won in the end.”

The day before she died, O’Riordan flew to London (one source says she flew from New York to Dublin, where she stayed for a short while before continuing on to London). There, work again beckoned. She was planning to meet with Youth about the second, near-completed D.A.R.K. album, and she was also carving out time to add her vocals to a new version of “Zombie” by the L.A. metal band Bad Wolves.

After midnight on January 15th, O’Riordan left two voicemail messages for Dan Waite, a label executive who had set up the collaboration with Bad Wolves (and who had worked with the Cranberries in the early 2000s). In her messages, O’Riordan talked lovingly about her kids, expressed their thrill at the Eminem sample and sang a snippet of the Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony” (which Youth had produced). “She was in a good space,” says Waite . “I’ve seen a few things saying she was depressed but she was definitely making plans for the week” — including, he says, dinner with him and his wife.

Instead, O’Riordan will be buried today in Limerick.

Dolores O’Riordan was the lead singer of hits like “Linger” and “Zombie” with the Irish band the Cranberries. Watch below.

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The Cranberries: five of Dolores O’Riordan's best performances

From earnest teenage dreams to political angst and later motherhood, the Limerick-born singer was one of the most distinctive voices of the 1990s

• News: Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan dies aged 46

“I want more, impossible to ignore”: call it a self-fulfilling prophecy. When the Cranberries released Dreams in September 1992, hardly anyone paid attention. This came after three years of trying to get the band off the ground, marred by disagreeable managers and working with ill-matched producers. Still, the Irish group kept the faith, eventually recording their debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, with Stephen Street, and supporting Suede on a 1993 tour of the US. An MTV producer attended a show and was smitten, so the network started playing their videos, including Dreams. Their lucky break made them one of the biggest Irish bands to penetrate America, and they cemented their pull on the pop culture by popping up on a wildly varied array of film and TV soundtracks: Dolores O’Riordan’s weightless, hopeful yearning floated through everything from grungy teen drama My So-Called Life to Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express and the first Mission: Impossible.

In an interview with the Guardian last year, O’Riordan admitted that their first proper hit single – reaching Number 14 in the UK, and 8 in the US – was about her first kiss. The lyrics on the page tell a story of teenage naivety (“Oh, I thought the world of you, I thought nothing could go wrong”) as the optimism of Dreams gives way to a stark newfound awareness of how casually cruel lovers can be. “Everything’s so dramatic at 17, so I poured it into the song,” she said. But Linger has endured because O’Riordan gave it so much more weight than most tales of teen innocence get. Her disappointment is palpable, but stronger – bolder – still is the tone of admonishment she directs at the cad who kissed her only to walk off with her friend a day later.

Anyone who had the Cranberries down as dreamy purveyors of teenage longing had a shock coming to them when they heard Zombie, the lead single from their second album, 1994’s No Need to Argue. They brought the angsty, grungy undercurrent of their sound to the fore for a chilling song that paid tribute to two boys, aged 12 and just three, who were killed in an IRA bombing in Warrington in 1993. O’Riordan took advantage of the band’s new global status to deliver a stark message about the pointless bloodshed, hardening her dreamy call to a guttural cry. “It’s a tough thing to sing about, but when you’re young you don’t think twice about things, you just grab it and do it,” she told Team Rock last year.

The band’s third album, 1996’s To the Faithful Departed, continued their political streak with lead single Salvation, which set an anti-drugs message against brisk grunge pop. It’s noticeably less subtle – and therefore less striking – than Zombie: “To all the people doing lines, don’t do it, don’t do it,” O’Riordan implored. But the preachy message concealed starker truths about the position the band found themselves in in 1996, exhausted and beleaguered by the press. “It’s not so much like an anti-drug song,” O’Riordan told MTV’s Kurt Loder. “It’s kind of anti the idea of becoming totally controlled by anything, any substance at all, because I know what’s it’s like. And it wasn’t a nice experience and it didn’t get me anywhere. It just confused me more.”

Animal Instinct

O’Riordan once described 1996, and the tour for To the Faithful Departed, as “the worst time of my life”. She admitted that she was “underweight, drinking too much and very depressed”, owing to work-induced stress and media hostility. So the band went on hiatus, eventually returning in 1999 with Bury the Hatchet. It was another volte-face, rejecting the heaviness that had accrued over their previous two records for a return to the guileless AOR of their debut. On second single Animal Instinct, O’Riordan sang with awe and fear of how her baby had helped her find herself again after a period in the wilderness. Although they were out of step with pop, the video, in which O’Riordan wears a daisy crown and peasant dress, was in keeping with the earth mother look popularised by Madonna at the turn of the millennium. O’Riordan went on to pursue a solo career in 2004, and then two new Cranberries albums, 2012’s Roses and last year’s Something Else, the latter featuring largely acoustic reprises of their earlier material. It was a sophisticated collection, though it couldn’t hold a candle to their endearingly earnest early years.

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Remembering Cranberries frontwoman Dolores O'Riordan on the sixth anniversary of her death

From "zombie" to "linger" to "dreams," there was no one quite like dolores o'riordan and the cranberries..

Dolores O'Riordan, the Irish solo artist and frontwoman of The Cranberries, died unexpectedly in London on January 15, 2018.

It is impossible to state how important the music of  O'Riordan and The Cranberries - Noel Hogan, Mike Hogan, and Fergal Lawler -  was to so many people around the world, but especially their native Ireland.

The rock band with humble Limerick beginnings finally made it into the mainstream music scene in the early-mid-90s after a few fits and starts, channeling a wide range of emotions, from the longing and melancholy of unrequited love to the anger and pain of The Troubles, in Northern Ireland. The power and adaptability of O'Riordan's voice made you believe she could do anything as an artist. 

Here are some of the best songs by The Cranberries and from Dolores O'Riordan's solo career:

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Though their song Linger would become The Cranberries' first big hit, "Dreams" was, in fact, the first single they released, back in 1992, as a lead-up to the album "Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can't We?" It's a delicate yet soaring track, and what is often described as O'Riordan's "Irish power yodel" is a real tour de force. 

This was their first big hit, and it's very easy to hear why. "Linger" was one of the first songs The Cranberries worked on when O'Riordan joined the band, and it was all about first attraction and rejection. In an interview with The Irish Times , O'Riordan explained the song's very relatable origins: 

“It was inspired by a night I had at a club called Madonna’s. This guy asked me to dance and I thought he was lovely. Until then, I’d always thought that putting tongues in mouths was disgusting, but when he gave me my first proper kiss, I did indeed ‘have to let it linger’. “I couldn’t wait to see him again. But at the next disco, he walked straight past me and asked my friend to dance. I was devastated. Everyone saw me being dumped, publicly, at the disco. Everything’s so dramatic when you’re 17, so I poured it into the song.

With "Zombie", their next big hit, O'Riordan proved her voice could also harness sheer power and anger. "Zombie" was the number-one hit from their 1994 album "No Need to Argue". They wrote it while on tour in 1993, in memory of Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry, two young boys who were killed in the IRA bombings in Warrington.

"Ode to My Family"

Their second single from "No Need to Argue", "Ode to My Family" dreamily contrasts the happiness and comforts of childhood with the loneliness of adulthood and fame. From the framed photos of JFK to singing in the back room of a pub, the music video did an excellent job conjuring that place and time as well. 

"Salvation"

Has there ever been a more rocking song that encourages a generation of fans to say no to drugs than The Cranberries' 1996 song "Salvation"? Unlikely. It was the lead single from their third studio album "To the Faithful Departed."

"Ordinary Day"

The lead single from O'Riordan's 2007 debut solo album "Are You Listening?", "Ordinary Day" very honestly grapples with O'Riordan's own struggles.

The Cranberries on NPR's Tiny Desk Concert

And lastly, for an especially intimate acoustic set, marvel at this 2012 Tiny Desk Concert The Cranberries did at NPR headquarters for the release of their 2012 album, Roses. 

Rest in peace, Dolores. 

*Originally published in 2018. Updated in January 2024.  

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Coming Soon

It doesn’t feel like 6 years since we received that Monday morning call from London Metropolitan Police with the devastating news that we had lost our beloved Dolores. In many ways it feels like it was just yesterday.

While she is no longer with us in the physical sense and we sorely miss her, we are comforted by the fact that her memory lives on in our hearts and minds, and in her songs and music.

On this poignant day we’re honoured to announce that we have big plans for her music this year and we will soon be announcing details of new releases. To keep up to date watch this space, or better still, you can join our new mailing list.

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Dolores O’Riordan’s 3rd solo album announced

Dolores O’Riordan (Estate) have partnered with BMG to release unreleased solo recordings on what should become Dolores’ 3rd solo album. Further announcements soon…

The breaking news was shared on Dolores’ Birthday (today!) on D’s official website – doloresoriordan.com – and socials ( Twitter X , Facebook , Instagram )

edit 1: and by BMG themselves on bmg.com

edit 2 : it would appear that Dan Brodbeck will be producing the album, although no official confirmation has been published yet.

8 Responses to Dolores O’Riordan’s 3rd solo album announced

BMG themselves have posted about it on their website, but no further information as yet. https://www.bmg.com/uk/news/Dolores-ORiordan-solo-unreleased-new-music-to-be-released.html

Thanks for the link.

I guess, If it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be not soon… And as I know, before her death she was working on the 8-th album of The Cranberries “In The End”. Maybe she was doing something for solo album, but it became it The Cranberries final album. For example songs: Lost, Catch Me If You Can, Summer Song

Personally I have read this a few days ago and it’s been bothering me ever since. 1st, it’s prolly gonnabe the same thing they have done with “In The End” album which is cut up parts of songs made into one. 2 now that AI can replicate artists and make them sing whatever how do we know this won’t be used? I’m sure she hasn’t made any music to the “3rd” album just like ITE album, the beats she wanted won’t be hers but reimagined by someone else. I would have been excited for another Cranberries album than her incomplete solo album… Idk [just my imagination] I guess…

Totally agree with you Cordell. I also hope there won’t be AI, see these bloody enhanced pics everywhere on the net, they absolutely suck and everyone seem to like them. AI sucks anyway. About the solo album I do hope they will use the old songs from the No Baggage era (or was it AYL?) where Dolores composed more than 20 songs (or was it 30?) to only choose a dozen for the album and bsides. To me it’s more like, are they good songs? They were not chosen back then in the final list by Dolores, so maybe they are not good songs, simple as that, so why recycling them now. Is this album a good idea, maybe, maybe not, time will tell. Bittersweet, excited to hear new material, and worried it may be inappropriate. In The End is a great album and they did a great job so let’s hope for the same here. I’m also worried for the album cover, but that’s another story.

I even don’t believe that something’s gonna be released.

It’s well known that Dolores had loads of unreleased tracks (2nd D.A.R.K album, Eric Alexandrakis/Electrons and Angelo Badalamenti collabs, unreleased solo tracks etc) and was working on a solo album before reuniting with The Cranberries for Something Else as far back as 2015 (if I’m not mistaken).

I’m guessing those sessions were when she recorded “Why?”, “Rupture”, “Lost”, “Catch Me”, “Wake Me”, “Got It” and “Summer Song”. I have a feeling all those tracks were potentially recorded for a solo album but then she used them for The Cranberries’ albums. I know The Cranberries re-recorded the music for the tracks that ended up on In The End, but if you look at the album credits for Something Else, it doesn’t look like they played much on Why? or Rupture, so I think there’ll be loads of full band recordings completed.

I’m confident that this album is going to be genuine and made up of songs she completed before she died. There’s no way they’re going to use AI. That seems ridiculous to me. Her family wouldn’t do that to her legacy, and neither would Dan Brodbeck. I’m really looking forward to hearing these songs. Honestly, I’m so grateful. I never thought we’d get to hear more songs from her. I’m still hoping we get to hear the Electons/DARK/Angelo tracks at some point too.

Yeah, I also guess that Why, Rupture, Lost, WakecMe Wnen It’s Over, Catch Me If You Can, Got It, Summer Song were recorded for Dolores’ 3rd solo album, but then she decided to make them as Cranberries songs. Even I have put attention, a couple of years ago, that on single Why there musicians, that were recording with her songs for Are You Listening and No Baggage. And in Summer Song signed Den Broadbeck, that was working with her on No Baggage. So I guess, we will probably hear again the songs above on her 3rd solo album But anyway interesting what it’s gonna be. Hope it will see the light somewhere in 2024… And yes, me too waiting for DARK second album and other her unreleased music, she was working on between 2013 and 2017

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