The day everyone became a fan of The Cranberries
While sitting in a press conference on Tuesday morning, my phone pinged out: “Listen, were you a big Cranberries fan? Dolores is dead,” the message read. The sender was my colleague. The deceased she was referring to was Dolores O’Riordan; front woman of the Irish rock band ‘The Cranberries’. I knew what her text was leading to. She wanted a column on it. An ode to Dolores, of sorts.
Thankfully, for shocks sake, I wasn’t a super fan of the quartet. If I was, her blunt delivery by way of text would have hit hard. Nonetheless, even as ‘not-quitea-fan,’ it did strike a chord. Another music great, dead and gone.
Being a kid in the nineties, I remember her songs well: Linger, Zombie, Dreams (in fact, that’s about the only ones I can recall). But then it struck me. She was older than me, but not old enough to die.
A quick search on Google confirmed my thoughts: Dolores was just 46. She bid adieu to the world as a woman in her forties; a mother-of-three. It was far too soon. I wasn’t a super fan, I was a stranger, yet somehow her death left me feeling a little sad. Maybe it was the empathy I felt for her three kids, her family. Or maybe I was a bigger fan than I thought?
As seems to be standard when any celeb pops their clogs nowadays, the world’s social media blew up when news of her sudden death hit the headlines that day. Hashtags of ‘GoneTooSoon’ flooded many a Twitter and Instagram handles. A whole host of reminiscences suddenly came flooding back to people in their droves.
On January 16, 2018, everyone became a ‘big fan’ of Dolores from The Cranberries.
I guess that was my stance too, though; bereaved ‘fan,’ because as soon as I climbed into my car to head to office, I played Zombie on my phone. That was my nod to Dolores. My farewell by way of a song named after the living dead. Distasteful, but not on purpose!
That evening I found myself typing an array of Dolores-related questions into Google. Where did she grow up? I knew she was Irish like me, but from where exactly? Turns out, she was from Limerick, just a stone’s throw from my mother’s hometown in the Emerald Isle. Like my mother, she came from your typical big Irish family and was the sister to eight siblings. Then I continued with my ‘research’.
Prior to my colleague’s message, I hadn’t heard her name uttered for years, so naturally, I wanted to find out what she had been up to since The Cranberries vanished from the music scene in the early 2000s? The findings were pretty grim. Battling a host of health issues including anorexia, depression and bipolar disorder, this woman didn’t die free of wounds or scars. And it’s those scars that will probably unravel the reason for her sudden death, which right now is unknown. In a way, the new information continued to tug at the heartstrings.
For me, her early departure from the world didn’t dig up wistful memories of listening to her music as a young teen. Those memories didn’t really run deep. But there was one line I read in The Guardian’s obituary to Dolores which did strike me: “She was a tomboy, burying her dolls in the garden and spending most of her time with her heavy-metal-loving brothers.”
That brought with it some personal connect. Our childhoods were pretty much a mirror match. As the only sister to an older brother and five male cousins, I too was a tomboy like Dolores. She was a rugged kid who got stuck in and didn’t give a s**t that flowery dresses and Barbies were the ‘preferred’ tools of choice for little girls.
It was that same attitude that translated into her songs. She was an artiste who wrote lyrics, no holds barred. You couldn’t fault her for that.
Although I may not have heard her name uttered in years, I did blast out her music from time to time. And ironically, just last weekend before her impending death, her haunting vocals to Linger bounced off the four walls in my studio apartment.
I chose to play that record as more of a goad to my friend. He’s a big fan of heavy metal and a staunch non-fan of The Cranberries. I set out to irritate him, and I succeeded.
See, he finds it fit to rip The Cranberries to shreds whilst in my company. They’re Irish, I’m Irish, so to him, his prodding will cut deep, like I have some personal affection for the band. I don’t, yet he continues.
So when I heard of Dolores’s demise, I sent him a text: “Did you hear Dolores from The Cranberries died? It broke her heart finding out you hated her music.”
But his reply wasn’t quite the words of compassion I was looking for.
“I wish she hadn’t died. Now her music is going to be playing everywhere.”
I wasn’t a super fan, I was a stranger, yet somehow her death left me feeling a little sad... I knew she was Irish like me... turns out, she was from Limerick, just a stone’s throw from my mother’s hometown in the Emerald Isle