The Cranberries

Dolores O’Riordan had the perfect voice for her job. As lead singer with The Cranberries, this Celtic mezzo-soprano force of nature propelled her band to the top from the get-go. Her band’s classic debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? was a phenomenon in 1993, achieving 5xPlatinum status in the United States, double Platinum sales in the UK and kick-started the 40 million plus album sales the band has since achieved globally.

This result is all the more remarkable considering the band humble origins. Brothers Mike (bass) and Noel Hogan (guitar) first formed the group – then called The Cranberry Saw Us – in Limerick, Ireland, in 1989 with drummer Fergal Lawler and original singer Niall Quinn.

After the latter quit, Dolores O’Riordan answered an advert and swept everyone away when she promptly learned the existing songs and added new melodies and lyrics to works in progress. Two of those were “Dreams” and future breakthrough hit “Linger.” Streamlining the name to simply The Cranberries, the young band then signed with Island Records and once they teamed up with London-born producer Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, Kaiser Chiefs, Babyshambles) they became adept at writing superior jangly guitar-driven indie-pop songs.

Touring with Suede then proved a boon since The Cranberries were spotted by MTV who clocked O’Riordan’s charisma and star quality at once. The success of Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? was vindication for O’Riordan since her involvement in the writing and music with guitarist Noel Hogan was never less than wholehearted. She often delved into personal territory that gave her a reputation for being a global counsellor. That honest open-faced image wowed listeners and disarmed all but the hardest-hearted cynics.

The band’s second album No Need to Argue was even more successful and would sell more than 17 million copies. By now, Dolores was confident enough to add political observation pieces like “Zombie” to such private agenda numbers as “Ode to My Family” and the plaintive “I Can’t Be With You,” the latter coming backed with a thrilling version of the Bacharach and David epic “(They Long to Be) Close to You” when issued as a single.

The Cranberries decamped to Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin to make No Need to Argue and a third, chart-topping release, To the Faithful Departed (1996) with Canadian hard rock expert Bruce Fairbairn (Bon Jovi, AC/DC, Blue Oyster Cult, Kiss, Yes and others). The record was just as harrowing in places as anything else they’d done before, with attention focusing immediately on the murder ballad “I Just Shot John Lennon,” but there were also moments of light and shade in the sweet “When You’re Gone” and on the road ennui in “Hollywood.”

Following this suatained success, The Cranberries had been around the world twice and could easily have become blasé, yet 1998’s intensely personal Bury The Hatchet, revealed little drop off in quality, with tracks such a “Promises,” “You and Me,” and “Shattered” standing up among the band’s very best on a record which again yielded multi-platinum sales and a U.S Top 20 placing.

The Cranberries moved to MCA Records for 2001’s Wake Up and Smell the Coffee and also reunited with Stephen Street. Back came the soaring anthems and the soothing acoustic melodies but all involved decided it was time for some life outside the group. In the interim fans flocked to Stars: The Best of 1992-2002 and the ever-popular 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Best of The Cranberries. Both these are ideal places for new fans to begin discovering the band. Other compilations would mark the time before the first official onstage disc arrived – Bualadh Bos – The Cranberries Live, the title translating as “applause.”

With The Cranberries taking time out, O’Riordan made two well-regarded solo albums, Are You Listening? and No Baggage, before the band reconvened. Roses (2012) was delivered in time for Valentine’s Day with Dolores describing the mood in the camp as hyper but positive. “It’s really just right. There’s something there when we’re together that’s really good. It’s not something that money can buy. It’s not really something anyone can really emulate. It’s got to do with energy and chemistry and that kind of thing. It’s like putting on a perfect pair of shoes. It just fits.”

Following Roses, O’Riordan teamed up with The Smiths’ former bassist Andy Rourke in the short-lived project D.A.R.K., releasing the album Science Agrees, before returning to The Cranberries in 2017 for Something Else, released via BMG.

An acknowledgment of the band’s illustrious past, the record featured “unplugged” and orchestral versions of ten previously released singles, plus three new songs, recorded at the Irish Chamber Orchestra Building at the University of Limerick. In another nod to the band’s history, the sleeve presented a re-enactment of the front cover image of No Need to Argue with the four members each in very similar positions.

Re-establishing The Cranberries to the U.K. Top 20, Something Else was generally well-received, yet it became the band’s final release before Dolores O’Riordan’s tragic death, aged 46, in January 2018.

By that point, The Cranberries had completed demos of 11 new songs for a new record and – with full support from Dolores’ family and with production from Stephen Street – the remaining band members fashioned these new tracks into a final album, In The End, released through BMG in April 2019. With tracks such as “All Over Now,” “Wake Me When It’s Over” and “A Place I Know” recalling vintage Cranberries, the record received positive almost unanimous praise (Clash magazine declared that it evoked “the charged vulnerability of their first records”). It provided a suitably dignified epitaph for one of indie-pop’s most singular acts.

Format: UK English