By 1994, grunge was in its last throes as Nirvana was done, Alice in Chains were on hiatus, Pearl Jam was growing more uncomfortable with success and fighting with Ticketmaster and punk rock was all of a sudden becoming fashionable.
Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We?
One band who got their start just as rock music was changing was the Irish band, The Cranberries who achieved international fame with their multi-platinum debut record, 1993’s Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We?
The album featured several hit songs including “Linger” and “Dreams” but in 1994 the band released the biggest song of their career as they readied to release their sophomore record 1994’s No Need to Argue.
“The Troubles” In Northern Ireland
Released in September of 1994, “Zombie” was an anti-war anthem that took aim at the religious violence in Northern Ireland, also known as “The Troubles”.
It was a far cry from the music heard on the band’s debut record, but by this point in time, the violence in Northern Ireland was relentless and occurring almost on a weekly basis. Up until this point, almost 3,500 people had died and tens of thousands were injured in more than 30 years of conflict.
One incident in particular inspired the creation of the song. On March 20, 1993, explosives hidden under a garbage can in the city of Warrington in Northwestern England took the lives of 3 year old and 12 year old boys and injured dozens of others.
The two boys had gone shopping to buy Mother’s Day cards on one of the town’s busiest shopping streets and at the same point in time, The Cranberries were on tour in the UK and frontwoman Deloris O’Riordan was on the band’s tour bus in London when she heard the news.
“…These bombs are going off in random places. It could have been anyone, you know?..” – Deloris O’Riordan
Almost 25 years after writing the song, O’ Riordan would look back on the track, “I remember at the time there were a lot of bombs going off in London and ‘The Troubles’ were pretty bad. I remember being on tour and being in the UK at the time when the child died, and just being really sad about it all.
These bombs are going off in random places. It could have been anyone, you know? So I suppose that’s why I was saying, ‘It’s not me’ – that even though I’m Irish, it wasn’t me, I didn’t do it. Because being Irish, it was quite hard, especially in the UK when there was so much tension.
It’s a tough thing to sing about, but when you’re young you don’t think twice about things, you just grab it and do it. As you get older you develop more fear and you get more apprehensive, but when you’re young you’ve got no fear.”
“…’Zombie’ was quite different to what we’d done before.” – Deloris O’Riordan
The song was originally written by O’Riordan on an acoustic guitar late one night by herself during the group’s UK tour. When O’Riordan took it into rehearsals, they played the song on an electric guitar, with her remembering, “It was extremely busy and we were working all the time around the clock. That song came to me when I was in Limerick, and I wrote it initially on an acoustic guitar, late at night.
I remember being in my flat, coming up with the chorus, which was catchy and anthemic. So I took it into rehearsals, and I picked up the electric guitar. Then I kicked in the distortion on the chorus, and I said to my drummer, ‘Maybe you could beat the drums pretty hard.’ Even though it was written on an acoustic, it became a bit of a rocker. That was the most aggressive song we’d written. ‘Zombie’ was quite different to what we’d done before.”
The band recorded the song in Dublin with producer Stephen Street, who spent a fair deal of time getting the guitars to sound like other alternative music that was popular at the time.
“…There were a lot of bands around that were part of the grunge thing, and this wasn’t grunge, but the timing was good…” – Deloris O’Riordan
O’Riordan pushed back against the assertion that the band was capitalizing off the popularity of grunge music, “It came organically because we were using our live instruments, we were plugging in a lot, and we started to mess around with feedback and distortion. When you’re on tour, you start to mess around a bit more with the live side of things.
There were a lot of bands around that were part of the grunge thing, and this wasn’t grunge, but the timing was good. We couldn’t have really fitted in with grunge, because we were just a different type of a band. We were Irish and from Limerick, and we had a lot of our own ideas. A lot of the grunge bands were very similar to each other.”
The Cranberries’ former manager Allen Kovac revealed to Rolling Stone Magazine that the group’s label, Island Records urged them not to release the “politically urgent” song as a single.
“Her belief was that she was an international artist and she wanted to break the rest of the world, and ‘Zombie’ was part of that evolution.” – Allen Kovac
The label offered O’Riordan $1 million to do work on a different song, but she ripped up the cheque, with Kovac remembering, “Dolores was a very small, fragile person, but very opinionated. Her belief was that she was an international artist and she wanted to break the rest of the world, and ‘Zombie’ was part of that evolution. She felt the need to expand beyond, ‘I love you, you love me’ and write about what was happening in Ireland at the time,”
While the band was already famous from their first album, “Zombie” catapulted them to a new level of popularity. Also helping the band make a lasting mark was the music video in which footage of the conflict in Northern Ireland is spliced with O’Riordan, who was painted gold and in the company of silver painted cherubs.
The band turned to Samuel Bayer to direct the video. He had a pretty impressive list of credits including working on Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video and Blind Melon’s video for “No Rain”. Bayer would fly to Belfast shortly after the ceasefire to get footage of the area – those are real British soldiers and local children you see in the video.
“He was telling me how tense it was and how he was blown away by the whole thing.” – Deloris O’Riordan
O’Riordan praised Bayer, saying, “I actually thought the director was very brave. When he got back, he was pretty pumped – there was a lot of adrenaline pumping through him. He was telling me how tense it was and how he was blown away by the whole thing. He got footage of the kids jumping from one building to another, and he got a lot of footage of the army. He was a very good director.”
Upon its release as the first single from the band’s sophomore record, “Zombie” hit No. 1 in several countries on the rock charts and would be certified platinum in Germany and Australia.
At the MTV Awards, The Cranberries beat out both Michael Jackson and TLC to win the Best Song award but that paled in comparison when the band also got the opportunity to perform the song live at the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony to honour those who brought a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
“I wouldn’t change anything about it…” – Deloris O’Riordan
No Need To Argue would go on to sell almost 20 million copies, based on the strength of the single. O’Riordan looked back on the success of the single and album, saying, “I wouldn’t change anything about it, because it did so well. It was well-written and it was well-composed. I think it did so well because it’s hard to categorize it and I still like singing it.”
The band re-released the song with an acoustic version that was played alongside the Irish Chamber Orchestra for the band’s record titled, “Something Else.”
The song got another boost when modern rock band Bad Wolves covered the song in early 2018. O’Riordan was supposed to sing on the cover but she sadly passed away before she could contribute to the song. In response, Bad Wolves mulled releasing the cover but went through with it and it topped the rock charts. The band donated $250K to O’ Riordan’s 3 children.
In 2020, The Cranberries became the first Irish band to hit one billion views on YouTube with their song “Zombie”.
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