Come on now, admit it - who here likes/has liked the Cranberries?

Truly, I have caused sorrow here.

"zombie" is one of the most wretched singles of the nineties. I fondly remember everett true/taylor parkes devastatingly funny review of one of their albums in the melody maker. i think i still have a clipping of it somewhere. i could post it here if anyone is interested???

So there.

A REAL TURKEY

Some people like THE CRANBERRIES. EVERETT TRUE and TAYLOR PARKES don’t.

THE CRANBERRIES
TO THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED

Reasons to hate The Cranberries.
1) Dolores O’Riordan. Her arrogance. Her petty small-mindedness. Her redneck worldview. Her incessant preaching. The fact you can actually see the mean-spiritedness of her thoughts imprinted on her pinched little face. Those American flag jumpsuits. Her cold love of money. The way she’s Sinead O’Connor for people who can’t confront even elementary contradictions. Her anti-abortion stance. Her absolute lack of self-irony. The way she makes even the most fundamental and wonderful emotions sound trite. The way America loves her cliched, stereotypical take on Ireland. Her reduction of serious political issues to 10-second sound-nibbles. Her dress sense. The obscene way she made legions of students slow-dance to the most crushingly banal political lyric (“And their tanks and their bombs and their tanks and their guns…”) since Paul McCartney’s “Give Ireland Back To The Irish”. That wedding.
2) Dolores O’Riordan. Her smug conceit masquerading as concern for all mankind.
3) Dolores O’Riordan. Her lyrics. The fact that no one in her obviously highly technological camp has bothered to buy her anything more than a Second Year rhyming dictionary. The fact that she sees fit to write a song about John Lennon – a bigoted, misogynistic, self-loathing, tantrum-prone asshole who also happened to write some great songs – 15 years after the event, and gloss over all his faults. The fact that she does so by writing the infantile lines, “It was a fearful night of December 8th/He was returning home from the studio late/He had perceptively known that it wouldn’t be nice/Because in 1980 he paid the price…With a Smith & Wesson 38/John Lennon’s life was no longer a debate.” The fact that every person in her camp is clearly so in awe of her (temper? Power? Capacity for retribution? Fragile ego?) that they didn’t take her gently to one side and go, “Er, Dolores, perhaps it’d be better if someone else wrote the lyrics…”
4) Dolores O’Riordan. Her videos. You know how much Dolores hates to be typecast as a “thick Paddy”? Has she actually watched any of her own videos? The way they reinforce received notions of Ireland as a backwards country populated entirely by broken-toothed, bowl-headed, crying schoolkids in grey V-neck jumpers dancing around streets lit by the occasional Armalite flare? And the odd horse – y’know.
5) Dolores O’Riordan. Her lyrics. Guess whose only contact with “real life” has been MTV news and the occasional venture onto the street outside the Four Seasons? Check “War Child”: “I spent last winter in New York and came upon a man/He was sleeping in the streets and homeless, he said ‘I fought in Vietnam’…” You fucking patronising, prematurely middle-aged cow.
6) Dolores O’Riordan. Her music. The opening song here (“Hollywood”) starts like Stiltskin. Only not as good. Then we’re onto Foreigner territory. With the odd mandolin thrown in, for “local” colour.
7) Dolores O’Riordan. Her lyrics. Check “I’m Still Remembering”: “They say the cream will always rise to the top/They say that good people are always the first to drop/What of Kurt Cobain, will his presence still remain?/Remember JFK, ever saintly in a way….” (Yeah, and an adulterous ego-maniac who started the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War, in another way.) Check: “Bosnia” (no, seriously, folks) – “Bosnia was so unkind, Sarajevo changed my mind…Rummmpatitum, rummmpatitum/Traboo, traboo, traboo…” (We’re quoting from the official lyric sheet.) The theremin and musical box used (spookily!) to spice up the music have the unfortunate effect of making the song sound like something from “The Twilight Zone”.
The situation in the former Yugoslavia seems to have particularly troubled Dolores while she was writing the songs for this album (what’s wrong, dearie? Nothing better on TV?). After all, as she helpfully points out in the heady, emotive (all right: we’re lying) “Free To Decide”, “You must have nothing more with your time to do/There’s a war in Russia and Sarajevo too.” This is, incidentally, the most perceptive insight she offers throughout. (Who are the people who take this woman seriously? Where do they live? Where do they go to at night? Please don’t invite us.)
8) Dolores O’Riordan. Her voice. The way she turned what was a dazzling, intoxicating gift into an atonal cornkrake skree by infusing it with her personality. Now it emparts no emotion of any kind, save for pettiness, bitterness, self-righteousness. She tries to suggest such broad sweeps of emotion with her songs but, somehow, they always end up sounding so fucking small.
Not that we’d want to belittle her.

Originally printed in the Melody Maker, April 27, 1996

aint that just the way

"What of Kurt Cobain, will his presence still remain?" -- comedy gold

Dud: The Cranberries.

GENIUS

It gave me heaves then. Now it makes me hate.

Google images has let me down tonight. Sigh...

http://www.the-cranberries.de/gallery/live/dolores/dollive95.jpg http://graphics.boston.com/sports/patriots/superbowl/galleries/halftime_u2/1.jpg

I also liked "Zombie" for being so silly. It gave me giggles. Not at 8:30 in the morning, though.

ELL OH ELL!

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=58594&item=4742806946&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

He/she/it is a treat.

Hasn't held up too well.

I'm at work and the PA is blasting the Cranberries' greatest hits.
I feel a sudden urge to kill.

i remember that section in 'dreams'. you know the bit that goes "LaaaaRR LaR La LaRR LaR La LaaaaaRRRRR". that was sort of moving. or maybe.

I used to really like "Zombie" for a couple of months back then.

lololol I should track down that "Bosnia" song, it seems like it would be a treat

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=bosnia+cranberries&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title#

lolololol

SARAJEEEEEEEEEEEVO
SARAJEEEEEEEEEEEVO

fucking priceless, no wonder Jewel released "Pieces Of You"

I. JUST. SHOT. DOLORES.

omg the end of this with the music box

why did no one stop her, lololololol

Re: "Dreams" - lol do you remember the video for that song, where they were hosing of a tree-stump looking thing which was caked in mud & it ended up being a mystical, naked dude curled up in the fetal postition & the band were all like "whoah, symbolic.."

The first album is perfectly fine minor-key jangle pop - a nice companion piece to The Sundays' first album. "Linger" is timeless. The second album was OK, but "Zombie" being such a megahit was obviously the beginning of the end b/c it gave DO'R the misguided creative licence to tackle topical, politically-motivated lyrics. And we all know how that turned out.

Overall: a perfectly fine minor band, wrongly eleveated to major-player status, who let it go to their heads & embarassed the hell out of themselves.

OH MY GOD

Ugh @ "perfectly fine" x 2. I've seriously gotta self-edit.

I thought "Linger" was pretty dreamy at age 14.

This is nice, despite the sort of creepy and/or on-the-nose overtones of a lyric about a hotel in London.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=229&v=AG1LGI0Gf_Y

Four tracks into the new (and final) Cranberries album and admittedly I'm enjoying it a lot. For me, this is easily a better record than Roses... it might turn out to be their best since No Need to Argue, actually.