Trivia / The Cranberries

• Acting for Two: Dolores in the music video for "This is the Day" with one of her characters holding a chain to allow a car to fly into orbit and sporting long hair.
• Alan Smithee: They didn't like Samuel Bayer's cut of the music video for "Ridiculous Thoughts", so they re-edited it with live footage and credited the director as "Freckles Flynn".
• Approval of God: Dolores loved Bad Wolves' Cover Version of "Zombie" and was set to collaborate with them to do a re-recording of it; sadly, she died before this took place.
• Black Sheep Hit: "Zombie", quite possibly their most famous song, is a dark, heavy, grunge-inspired track with loud, distorted guitars, which is a rare example of the hit being heavier than the band's usual output (as opposed to softer). The band said that it was heavy because the song was written out of anger, and changing the music would've diluted the message. The band did go on to include some heavier material on future albums ("Ridiculous Thoughts", "Hollywood", "Salvation", "Promises", "This is the Day", and "All Over Now" being some examples from each), but the album No Need to Argue on which "Zombie" appears is quite laidback and poppy in comparison to it.
• Chart Displacement: "Zombie" was not their second US Top 40 hit, in fact its status as an airplay single made it ineligible to chart. That being said, it was a Top 40 hit in the airplay charts. "Dreams" isn't either since it charted at number 42 (but charted at number 14 in the airplay charts). That honor goes to "Free to Decide"/"When You're Going". Also, in the Billboard Alternative Hits, their other #1 aside from "Zombie" was "Salvation".
• Creator Breakdown: Sadly, Dolores O'Riordan had a rough go of it, with a history of abuse, issues with bipolar disorder, anorexia, and at least one nervous breakdown. She noted that she was especially depressed while working on To the Faithful Departed. If the cause of her death (a drowning induced by alcohol) is also to be believed, she may have also had issues with alcoholism.
• Died During Production: Dolores passed away on January 15, 2018 at the age of 46. A month later, the surviving members said that they'd release her finished recordings as a final Cranberries album in 2019 and did so, In The End being released in April of that year.
• Distanced from Current Events: After 9/11, the video for "Analyse" had to be withdrawn and re-edited because of its imagery of planes and a chalk outline of a person. Whilst the video premiered before it, the single was only released on September 17th, a week after 9/11. This is partly why the single had very low chart positions in their native Ireland and UK (#28 and #89 respectively), but it was a Top 5 hit in Portugal, Spain and Italy.
• Dye Hard: Dolores was a natural brunette but occasionally bleached her hair blonde (as seen in the cover picture of No Need to Argue and back picture of Bury the Hatchet). At one point, she dyed her hair fuschia during the end of To the Faithful Departed era and auburn during the Wake Up and Smell the Coffee era. She wore hair extensions for the music videos for "Animal Instinct" and "This is the Day".
• Executive Meddling: More like Manager Meddling as their old manager Pearse Gilmore was responsible for his dictorial approach during the production of their early material.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Their first EP "Uncertain" has three tracks which haven't been reissued since, however are widely available online. The fourth track, "Them" was made available as a B-Side elsewhere (and later on their first album's 2002 reissue), though the intro was edited down compared to the Uncertain version. A music video was made for "Uncertain" but it remained unreleased until 2020 and a 50-second snippet was included as an extra for the DVD of Stars: The Best of the Cranberries 1992-2002.
  • "Chrome Paint", "A Fast One" and "Take My Soul Away" only exist on demo tapes, as do the demo versions of various album tracks. The band's first demo tape "Anything" with singer Niall Quinn (before Dolores joined the band) also only exists in this form. Fortunately, the band member Noel Hogan sent the owner of a fansite CD-Rs of all the demo tracks he had available, which he allowed to be leaked online.
  • In 2018, the group released a Super Deluxe Edition of "Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?", which featured a previously unreleased studio track, "Iosa", which was known to fans from one live performance in 1991. The compilation also included the majority of Dolores era demos, and though cleaner sounding than the leaks, they were still sourced from cassettes as the masters have long disappeared, so this is an official use of this trope.
• Missing Episode: There were twenty songs recorded for "Bury the Hatchet", but only 19 of them were released.
• Screwed by the Network: How Bury the Hatchet became unsuccessful in the US due to poor promotion (and due to their record label, Island Records, being lost in parent company PolyGram's acquisition by Seagram/Universal), which O'Riordan noted in an interview:
  Interviewer: “Oh Dolores, I just love your music, but when are you coming out with a new album?”
  Dolores: “We have a new album... it’s out now.”
  • Wake Up and Smell the Coffee also suffered from poor promotion in America. It was their only album released for the then-dying MCA Records, as Island was folded (but later reactivated) during Universal's PolyGram acquisition. That album also underperformed, and it would be their last album of new material until 2012's Roses.
• The Pete Best: Niall Quinn.
• Similarly Named Works:
  • "Dreams" shares the same name as one of Fleetwood Mac's hit songs^note Funnily enough, the band did a Cover Version of another popular Fleetwood Mac song, "Go Your Own Way".
  • "Just My Imagination" isn't a cover of The Temptations - which is technically "Just My Imagination (Running Away From Me)".
  • The band's final album, In The End shares the same name with one of Linkin Park's widely-acclaimed songs. Comes quite harsh in hindsight when one realizes that both band's vocalists died nearly within half a year apart from each other^Note Linkin Park's co-frontman/main vocalist Chester Bennington passed away on July 20, 2017. O'Riordan's passing on January 15, 2018 was just 5 days shy of 6 months since Bennington's passing.
• Two-Hit Wonder: They have only two hits in the US Billboard Hot 100, "Linger" and "Free to Decide"/"When You're Gone". However, they were more successful in the rock charts, airplay charts and mainstream Top 40. "Dreams", "Zombie", "Ode to My Family" and "Salvation" would've averted them from this trope had airplay-only singles been eligible to chart in the Hot 100 at the time.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Just before starting their six-year hiatus in late 2003, the band were in the process of recording their sixth album. They scrapped it when they decided to take an indefinite hiatus, though some of the songs would be re-recorded for their album Roses.
  • The band were supposed to be the opening act for a 1991 concert by Nirvana, but it was cancelled at the last minute by the latter.
  • "Analyse" almost appeared in the soundtrack for Sweet November.
  • Just before her death, Dolores was planning to re-record "Zombie" as a collaboration with American metal band Bad Wolves, who did a Cover Version of the song. The band eventually released it without her vocals, and the music video was dedicated to her, with proceeds for the said single going to O'Riordan's children.