With her band The Cranberries, Dolores O’Riordan wrote Irish music history and became a global star. In 2018 she died under tragic circumstances at the age of just 46. We remember the life of a unique singer.
Dolores O’Riordan was born on September 6, 1971, into a Catholic family in Ballybricken, Limerick, Ireland, as the youngest of seven children. Her mother, Eileen O’Riordan, was a housewife and her father, Terence O’Riordan, worked as a mechanic. Her childhood was significantly influenced by both Catholicism and her love of music.
In an interview with “The TelegraphIn 2001 she looked back nostalgically on her childhood, especially her relationship with her siblings: it was “comfortable and extremely loving”. Her mother was the head of the family and took care of everything. Her father, on the other hand, had suffered an accident in the late 1960s and was “quiet and introverted”.
Childhood and musical beginnings
It is often reported that Dolores sang before she could speak. “I think I was five years old when I started singing. Because there were so many children in the family, it was obvious that I had this super talent. It was like, ‘Listen to how the little one sings,'” the singer recalled in a 1999 interview with “Forbes“. “My uncles used to take us to the pub. You know, it’s kind of a tradition for the kids to go to the pub with their uncles or aunts or whatever. They eat chips and lemonade and whatever and hang out. And for a kid that’s a great change. I was singing in the pubs when I was nine or ten years old.”
She fondly remembered those pub performances: “It was really nice to sing for people and people loved listening to me. And when I went into the pub they would say, ‘Oh, there’s little O’Riordan, would you sing that song?’ And they always asked me to sing a lot of country songs – Dolly Parton and stuff like that, which I always sang.”
Dolores O’Riordan: Sexual abuse in her childhood
Unfortunately, despite many beautiful memories, her childhood was anything but easy. As she recounted decades later, she was sexually abused by someone she trusted between the ages of eight and twelve: “I see it as cleansing,” she said of her decision to go public. “It’s a way to empty the closet – no more corpses. Just peace and healing. No baggage.” It was Irish music that shaped Dolores O’Riordan’s early years.
She played the tin whistle, and later also the piano, guitar and bódhrán. When she started a new school at the age of 12, she introduced herself with the words “I’m Dolores O’Riordan and I’m going to be a rock star.” “I left home when I was 18 because I wanted to sing. My parents wanted me to go to college and stuff like that. I was really poor for a year and a half; I remember being hungry, dying for a bag of chips. Then I joined the Cranberries,” she once said.
(Photo: Independent News and Media/Getty Images)
Founding of The Canberries
The Cranberries were formed in 1989 by brothers Mike Hogan (bass) and Noel Hogan (guitar), along with drummer Fergal Lawler and singer Niall Quinn. At that time the group was still called The Cranberry Saw Us. A little later the singer position became vacant and Quinn left the band. It was he who suggested Dolores O’Riordan – a friend of a friend. In 1990 she appeared at the rehearsal, sang some of her own pieces such as Sinéad O’Connor’s “Troy” – and impressed everyone with her voice. But the band gave her another homework assignment – she should work on an unfinished demo. When O’Riordan returned with the finished piece – an early version of “Linger” – she was part of the band.
Dolores O’Riordan: Mega success with “Zombie”
The band signed with Island Records in 1991, and two years later the debut album “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?” was released. With songs like “Linger” the album was a huge success. But it was the follow-up “No Need To Argue” that made the band superstars. The song addressed the Northern Ireland conflict (The Troubles) and was inspired by a bombing in Warrington, England, in 1993, in which two young children died. “Zombie” reached the top of the charts in several countries and became an international hit.
“I draw from many different life experiences: births, deaths, war, pain, depression, anger, sadness. I’m also obsessed with mortality. I have bipolar disorder and struggle with mood swings – I go from one extreme to the next. But I think that was irrelevant when writing ‘Zombie’ because the event was so massive at the time – it was all over the papers,” O’Riordan recalled to “Songwriter Magazine“. “I just remember being young and spirited, without any inhibitions, I had no problems and just wrote what I thought.”
The band followed up with several albums, which were also successful. It wasn’t until 2001 that the lull came: “Wake Up And Smell The Coffee” didn’t really take off commercially. From 2003 to 2009 the band was put on ice – and the band members devoted themselves to solo projects. O’Riordan’s first solo album, “Are You Listening?”, was released in 2007, and another album, “No Baggage,” followed in 2009.
Dolores O’Riordan: A look at her private life
In 1994, Dolores married Don Burton, Duran Duran’s former tour manager. There are three children from this marriage. In 2009, the family moved to Canada, where O’Riordan, who found her own fame difficult, hoped to be treated as normal.
Depression, addiction and tragic death
O’Riordan suffered greatly from the terrible experiences of her childhood. She struggled with severe mental illness throughout her life. She struggled with depression and was bipolar. The death of her father in 2011 tore her into a deep hole – her marriage to Burton ended in divorce in 2014. In an interview with The Belfast Telegraph she revealed that she tried to take her own life in 2013 – but was “determined to stay here for the children”.
In the same interview, she also talked about her addiction problems: “I’m pretty good, but sometimes I reach for the bottle,” she said. “The next morning everything is much worse. I have a bad day where I have bad memories and I can’t control them, and then I reach for the bottle. I drink drunk, so to speak. That’s my biggest weakness at the moment.”
In 2018 she was found dead in a bathtub in her London hotel. Alcohol poisoning of 3.3 per mille was found in her blood. The coroner believes her death was an accident.