"I live as I choose or I will not live at all."
Dolores O'Riordan, 1996
Dolores O’Riordan announced on her first day of school that she was going to be a rock star. And that she was.
Formed in 1989 as The Cranberry Saw Us, The Cranberries were four kids from Limerick who’d go on to sell out arenas across the globe; described by the Rolling Stone as ‘Ireland’s biggest musical export since U2’.
When the shy, soft-spoken Dolores auditioned for brothers Noel and Mike Hogan’s band, they sent her away with a cassette containing rough instrumental sketches. Whilst they weren’t sold on her immediately after her audition, when she returned with the lyrics to the song Linger that, unbeknownst to them, would become an international hit, she was recruited on the spot.
“I don’t think anyone sounded like her before or probably will again.”
Noel Hogan on Dolores, 2021
The Cranberries carved out a sound that was entirely singular. Dolores’ voice - a keening, lilting instrument rooted in something ancient - set against guitars that shimmered and jangled. Their lyrics of longing and loss, of Ireland and violence, written with a beautiful almost diaristic simplicity that made complex emotions and subjects accessible to anyone who heard them.
At a time of peak ‘90s nostalgia, it’s no surprise the band have found particular resonance in the younger generation of online ‘yearners’, who've been exposed to their music through their parents and iconic needle drops in film and TV. For example, Dreams features in the most recent Netflix adaptation of One Day and serves as the opening credits song for Derry Girls. The vulnerability of their music will continue to enchant new audiences for years to come.
Join us as Rough Trade's Cammy ranks the pop-rockers' complete catalogue.
The Cranberries were my musical awakening. They've always existed in the spaces between moments, in the times we weren't actively trying to make a memory. When I was a kid, my mum showed my sister and me the Zombie music video. We were captivated. I think it was the first time that music sounded serious to me - I watched it on repeat for weeks.
My brother learned Linger on the guitar, and we sang it to a pub full of people at my nan’s birthday - the first song he’d fully cracked. They’ve always followed my family around. Whenever we’re in a taxi or at a bar, The Cranberries come on and it feels like a nod. An ode to my family.
They followed me to uni too. Sitting on my housemate’s bed until the red wine turned our teeth black, his Remembering Dolores on the turntable.
For a band so woven into the fabric of my own memories, it always felt strange that their place in the wider conversation was never quite as secure. Critics were warmest before they’d released a record - when live shows and demo tapes built their early buzz. Deemed too pop for the alternative crowd, too raw for easy listening, too Irish for Britpop, too successful to be taken seriously. They remain a group that divides critics and fans alike.
The reassessment has been slow and is still ongoing. This is mine.
8. Roses (2012)
A comeback record after an eleven year hiatus. The band return matured and show that even though much time had passed, their unique and melancholic alt-rock essence was still intact. Not the strongest of comebacks, but one that was welcomed with open arms by fans nonetheless.
7. Wake Up and Smell The Coffee (2001)
Something quieter happens on this record. With Stephen Street, the producer behind four other of the band's albums and some of The Smiths' finest moments, back behind the desk for the first time since No Need to Argue, the album has the same simple clarity of their earlier work. There’s a heartwarming youthfulness to it that the middle albums, for all their ambition, had slightly lost along the way.
But familiarity and magic aren’t the same thing. The foundations are right, yet the songs don’t have quite the same spark the way they once did.
6. Something Else (2017)
Released for the band's 25th anniversary, this album serves as a comforting and introspective journey down The Cranberries enduring catalogue. Some of my favourite songs, alongside three new tracks, stripped back into an acoustic version, featuring a quartet from the Irish Chamber Orchestra. This orchestral contribution adds sophistication and melancholy beyond just simply unplugged versions and the overall effect of the record is one of quiet reflection.
5. To The Faithful Departed (1996)
A catholic prayer to the dead, this album was made in tribute to two people close to the band who had passed away. Denny Cordell of Island Records, who discovered and signed them, and Dolores’s grandfather Joe O’Riordan.
Critics were unsparing - Rolling Stone gave it two out of five stars, citing overproduction - and the political tracks were also not too well received. I Just Shot John Lennon remains its most contested moment as it felt ever so slightly clumsy and overreaching. Commercially, the album was huge, and that gap between critical and public reception tells its own story.
Dolores was severely unwell during the making and touring of this record - eventually the world tour had to be stopped entirely. While When You’re Gone remains one of my favourite songs across their whole discography, when looking at the record as a whole, the reach exceeds the grasp here more than anywhere else. However, when listened to in the context of what Dolores was carrying at the time, it is impossible to hear it coldly.
To The Faithful Departed is The Cranberries most misunderstood album.
4. Bury The Hatchet (1999)
After the chaos of To the Faithful Departed, this was the band quietly resetting. The sound of the fourth album marked a noticeable, and welcome, shift, feeling very much like a return to their earliest sound. It reintroduced the atmospheric and layered textures that I loved so much on the first record, in contrast with some of their more hard-edged later material. An exhale almost.
Storm Thorgerson - the designer behind The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here - put a naked man in the Arizona desert being watched by a giant floating eye on the cover. Pitchfork put it in their list of the worst record covers of all time. Harsh. Thorgeson said it was about paranoia and surveillance, even in the vastness of empty space.
Notable tracks on here include Animal Instinct, Promises and Just My Imagination. A confident record from a band who had every reason to doubt themselves.
3. In The End (2019)
Both sickeningly sad and beautiful in equal measure. The most painful kind of oxymoron, In The End stands as a monumental, and deeply emotional, release for the band and the lovers of their music worldwide.
Released posthumously, this album was meticulously built from vocal demos Dolores recorded prior to her passing. The surviving members - Noel and Mike Hogan and Fergal Lawler - finished it in her absence, immortalising her distinct and unforgettable voice and bringing closure to a remarkable four-decade long journey in her honour.
The closing track, paired with the album's cover serves as the truest metaphor of the cycle of life. A bittersweet farewell from Dolores and from the band.
2. No Need to Argue (1994)
No Need to Argue is the album where Dolores’ keening is at its most powerful. It has something ancient in it, like the ululating wail of a banshee which, when accompanied with a darker more fuzzed-out guitar sound, makes your hairs stand up on end.
The album’s most successful and divisive track is Zombie - a protest song written in direct response to the IRA’s Warrington bombings, which killed two children. Growing up in an Irish catholic family (plastic paddies, albeit) I am not unfamiliar with the weight of that conversation. It drew criticism from multiple directions; too simple for some and too pointed for others. Whether you agree with the way she said it or not, the fact is that a pop-rock song from a band of twenty-somethings generated a huge level of conversation and, at its heart, was simply a plea to both sides of the violence.
"The album title was a statement of intent - a band announcing themselves with quiet determination."
1. Everyone Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We (1993)
I wish I could have been less on the nose with my choice of top place, but I’ve turned it over enough times. I must speak my truth! Any album that can transport you back to your childhood is a winner.
Before a single note had been officially released, the industry was excited. A fierce bidding war broke out over the band, with Island Records ultimately scoring. After some managerial turbulence, the band brought in Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records, and enlisted Stephen Street to capture whatever it was that The Cranberries had. He captured everything.
Dolores’s lilting, layered vocals against the jangle of Noel Hogan’s guitar. Lyrics that are almost disarmingly simple and honest in a way that only the very best writing manages to be. ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’, after all. Songs about being young and heartbroken that don’t try and dress it up or make it overly profound.
The album title was a statement of intent - a band announcing themselves with quiet determination.
Not a single skip on one of the most stellar debut albums ever made.