16 January 2018 - Cranberries Singer Dolores O'Riordan Dies at 46

Cranberries singer Dolores O'Riordan dies suddenly aged 46
(BBC News, 15/01/2018)

The Cranberries lead singer Dolores O'Riordan has died suddenly at the age of 46, her publicist has confirmed.

The Irish musician, originally from Limerick, led the band to international success in the 90s with singles including Linger and Zombie.

A statement from her publicist said: "The lead singer with the Irish band The Cranberries was in London for a short recording session. 

Read on...

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The 90s

Dolores O'Riordan: an anguished 90s star whose voice lingers on 
Alexis Pertidis (The Guardian, 15/10/2018)

The rise of the Cranberries to vast success in the US was greeted with a degree of bemusement in the UK music press. It was 1993, a year in which Suede’s debut album, the Boo Radleys’ expansive Giant Steps and Blur’s Britpop-presaging Modern Life is Rubbish figured heavily in most British publications’ best-of polls. Why, out of all the up and coming guitar bands attempting to break the States, had Americans latched onto the Limerick quartet?

They were, after all, viewed as a very minor concern in the UK. Their 1991 debut EP Uncertain had attracted some attention – it was ethereal and experimental in a way that nothing else the Cranberries recorded would be, the spectral guitar textures, feedback and echo-laden vocals of Them suggesting they were cut from similar cloth to shoegazing bands like Slowdive or Chapterhouse. But then they had signed to a major label and made a far more straightforward-sounding debut album, Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, which had more or less vanished without trace on release. To compound the bafflement, the Cranberries had been championed by American MTV while touring second on the bill to Suede, then very much considered the dernier cri in British alternative rock: why on earth had they been overlooked in favour of their support act?

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Producer

Cranberries Producer Stephen Street Remembers 'Firebrand' Dolores O'Riordan 
Rolling Stone (Rolling Stone, 15/01/2018)

The music world was rocked Monday by the unexpected death of the Cranberries singer Dolores O'Riordan at the age of 46. Following news of the singer's death, famed producer Stephen Street, who worked with the Cranberries on their first two studio albums – 1993's Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? and 1994's No Need to Argue – penned a tribute to the singer he called "my Irish songbird" for Rolling Stone. 

In the remembrance, Street notes how O'Riordan transitioned from "nervous" "shrinking wall flower" to rock stardom. "The transformation was incredible to say the least," Street wrote. "Dolores gave so much of herself at the gigs and continued to do so over the next decade or so. Perhaps she could have tempered her behavior and been more measured but that wasn’t her way."

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The Cranberries

Hopefully she had an idea...
Joyce Fegan (Irish Examiner, 16/01/2018)

“They have no idea how good they are, of how important they might yet become,” read a 1991 review of the then unknown Cranberries, from their gig at UCC’s student bar.

Dolores was singled out for not needing to be told who she was, by fans or critics.

Born in Ballybricken, Co Limerick in 1971, as Dolores Mary Eileen O’Riordan, the singer was the youngest of seven children. 

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