If you remember the ’90s, it’s a good bet you remember the Cranberries. I certainly do. It’s hard to forget Dolores O’Riordan, another Irish singer with the voice of an angel.
One of her stops last week was NPR’s World Cafe. She spoke a little about her new album, which was inspired by experiences since she left the group – the death of her mother-in-law from cancer as well as the births of her children. She also played a few of her new tunes, a couple of which offer more proof that O’Riordan really is a hot rocker chick and not only a ballad singer. Although there’s a good possibility that the following may be another sign that I just turned 30, I really liked the new song “When We Were Young.” The chorus is all angsty and homesick: “I wanna get out / I wanna go home / Is anything better / than you on the phone.” Um, anyone can relate to that, right?
O’Riordan also played a few Cranberries classics, including “Linger.” Here’s a live Cranberries flashback with orchestral accompaniment (featuring Dolores with long blond hair):
O’Riordan also spoke with the interviewer about how she’s changed in her downtime since the Cranberries, as she rediscovered “life as a normal human being.” For her this meant cooking dinner and dropping her kids off at school. Apparently, she tells her kids that she’s famous for her music, not for being herself: “nobody really knows what I look like.” Beg to differ! I remember the hair and suspenders from her Cranberries days.
Not to mention her look in one of my all-time favorite videos, “Zombie,” which I’ve always thought was proof that music actually can intersect with politics and still create powerful, disturbing works that qualify as art.
(You know, I’d forgotten about the gold paint. Watching this in a post-Tipping the Velvet era, I’m having trouble not thinking of Nan at Diana Lethaby’s salon. Yikes!)
If you’re a Cranberries or an O’Riordan fan, the interview is worth a listen.
