Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan ( ; 6 September 1971 – 15 January 2018) was an Irish musician who achieved international fame as the lead vocalist of the rock band the Cranberries. O'Riordan was the principal songwriter of the band and also played acoustic and electric guitars. She became one of the most recognisable voices in alternative rock and was known for her lilting mezzo-soprano voice, signature yodel, use of keening, and strong Limerick accent.
O'Riordan was born in County Limerick, Ireland to a Catholic working-class family. She began performing as a soloist in her church choir before leaving secondary school to join the Cranberries in 1990. The band released the number-one album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? in 1993; that album was followed by No Need to Argue (1994), To the Faithful Departed (1996), Bury the Hatchet (1999), and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (2001). The Cranberries went on hiatus in 2003. During the hiatus, O'Riordan released two solo studio albums: Are You Listening? (2007) and No Baggage (2009). The Cranberries reunited in 2009,
released Roses (2012), and went on a world tour. O'Riordan's other activities included appearing as a judge on RTÉ's The Voice of Ireland (2013–2014) and recording material with the trio D.A.R.K. (2014). The Cranberries' seventh album, Something Else (2017), was the last to be released during her lifetime.
Throughout her life, O'Riordan suffered from depression and the pressure of her own success; she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2015. O'Riordan died from drowning due to alcohol intoxication in January 2018 at the age of 46. After her death, the Cranberries released the Grammy-nominated album In the End (2019), which featured her final vocal recordings; the group then disbanded. With the Cranberries, O'Riordan sold more than 40 million albums worldwide during her lifetime; that total increased to almost 10 billion albums worldwide as of 2026. She was honoured with the Ivor Novello International Achievement award. In the months following her death, O'Riordan was named "The Top Female Artist of All Time" on Billboard Alternative Songs chart.
Early life and education
Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan was born on 6 September 1971 in Ballybricken in County Limerick, Ireland, the youngest of nine children, two of whom died in infancy. Her father, Terence Patrick "Terry" O'Riordan (1937–2011), worked as a farm labourer until a motorbike accident in 1968 left him brain damaged. Her mother, Eileen ( Greensmith), was a school caterer. and was named by her mother in reference to the Lady of the Seven Dolours.
O'Riordan was singing before she could talk. When she was five years of age, the principal of her school took her into the sixth class, sat her on the teacher's desk, and told her to sing for the twelve-year-old students in the class. She started with traditional Irish music
When O'Riordan was seven years old, her sister accidentally burned the family house down. The family's rural community was able to raise funds to purchase a new homestead for them. From the age of eight, she was sexually abused for four years by a person whom she trusted. At the age of ten, she sang in local pubs where her uncles took her. School principal Aedín Ní Bhriain said in the Limerick Post about O'Riordan's first day at Laurel Hill Coláiste at the age of twelve that she stood up in front of classmates and announced: "My name is Dolores O'Riordan and I'm going to be a rock star". She then stood on her chair and sang "Tra la la la la, Triangle". According to her school friend Catherina Egan, she was "boisterous, wild, but lovely". That same year, she met her first boyfriend, Mike O'Mahoney.
She described having a strict daily routine through her teenage years that consisted of going to piano lessons, going to church and doing homework. O'Riordan later admitted that she had neglected her school lessons in favour of writing music and songs, although at school she became head girl. Former principal Anne Mordan said in Nova about O'Riordan that she was a "delightful, unsophisticated, sensitive student, who enjoyed her time with us"; she described her as "a bright, kind, good-humoured girl, who loved her family, her friends, and had an easy relationship with all her teachers, both lay and FCJ sisters." During her six years at Laurel Hill Coláiste, O'Riordan won the Slógadh song contest almost every year, at several local events, and culminating in national singing competitions.
Around this time, O'Riordan divided the rest of her schedule among assisting her mother, learning the accordion from her dad, and having part-time employment at clothing shops. Her mother, whom she "adored", encouraged her to consider becoming a nun or get a college degree and become a music teacher; instead, she ran away from home at 18 and lived a couple of years with her boyfriend. In an interview with Vox magazine, O'Riordan clarified her reasons for leaving home: "At 18 I left home because I wanted to sing. My parents wanted me to go to college and things like that. I was really poor for a year-and-a-half; I remember actually being hungry, like I'd die for a bag of chips. That's when I joined the Cranberries".
Career
1989–2003: Formation of the Cranberries, early success and stardom
In 1989, brothers Mike (bass) and Noel (guitar) Hogan formed the Cranberry Saw Us with drummer Fergal Lawler and singer Niall Quinn, in Limerick, Ireland. Less than a year later, Quinn left the band. The Cranberries reached their commercial peak with No Need to Argue, the top-selling album worldwide in the first half of 1995 and the world's best-selling album of the year by a European artist. The album produced the songs "Ode to My Family", "I Can't Be with You", "Ridiculous Thoughts" and the group's biggest international hit, "Zombie", which topped singles charts in several countries. By this time, O'Riordan had achieved both success and celebrity status.
O'Riordan's leg injury recurred unexpectedly and led to cancellation of the three concerts scheduled in Ireland for December 1994. Billboards William Goodman described O'Riordan performing "Barefoot and strutting onstage, an Irish warrior poet with a bleached blonde pixie cut, gold chain necklace, singing without a flinch, as if it were ordained". During the show, O'Riordan performed "Linger" as a duet with Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran.
The Cranberries' third album, To the Faithful Departed debuted at number two in the UK, and number four in the US, with the singles "Free to Decide", "When You're Gone" and "Hollywood". O'Riordan was the one who made the decision to take a break; Stephen Street later said that "perhaps she could have tempered her behavior and been more measured, but that wasn't her way." On 11 December 1998, she performed live with the Cranberries at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert at Oslo Spektrum, Oslo, Norway.
The Cranberries released Bury the Hatchet in 1999. and on the European Top 100 Albums, but did not match the commercial success of the group's first two albums. She sang "Analyse", "Panis angelicus", "Little Drummer Boy" and "Silent Night" with a 67-piece orchestra.
On 7 February 2002, O'Riordan and the Cranberries announced in Dublin that they had donated all the proceeds from their single "Time Is Ticking Out" to the Chernobyl Children's Project. She was accompanied at the Clarence Hotel by Ali Hewson and by the founder and executive director of the Chernobyl Children's Project, Adi Roche. O'Riordan had written the song in spring 2001 after seeing images shared with her by Hewson and Roche of children born with congenital anomalies and illnesses caused by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 26 April 1986.
In June 2003, O'Riordan met AC/DC singer Brian Johnson when the Cranberries were playing concerts with AC/DC and the Rolling Stones on the latest leg of their Licks World Tour, and they considered the idea of working together. In mid-July 2003, the two friends started collaborating on material for a project that was intended to be the rock opera version of Helen Of Troy, complete with "rousing anthems, tender ballads and minimal dialogue". Johnson said he had been working on the project for about seven years and that the musical was expected to feature many artists. O'Riordan stated that she had become a prisoner of her own celebrity and could not find a balance in her life. In The Independent, O'Riordan said she needed time not only to focus on her family and health, but also on her solo career.
In 2003, O'Riordan recruited Canadian music producer Dan Brodbeck and musicians to develop new compositions for a solo project. Among them was drummer Graham Hopkins, whom O'Riordan said she "loved for his energy". DeMarchi brothers' family had long been friends with Dolores O'Riordan's husband and their three children. On 29 May 2004, O'Riordan performed during the first concert of the Festivalbar, in Milan, Italy. In 2004, she appeared with the Italian artist Zucchero on the album Zu & Co., with the song "Pure Love". The album also featured other artists such as Sting, Sheryl Crow, Luciano Pavarotti, Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Macy Gray and Eric Clapton. Badalamenti later said that "she's a wonderful lyricist with an edge to her voice".
In 2005, she appeared on the Jam & Spoon's album Tripomatic Fairytales 3003 as a guest vocalist on the track "Mirror Lover". On 3 December 2005, O'Riordan made her third appearance at the Vatican's annual Christmas concert, where she performed "War Is Over", "Linger" and "Adeste Fideles" in duet with Italian tenor Gian Luca Terranova. Prematurely before the release of her first solo album, the former Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson mentor Tony Ciulla became her manager. She sang "Angel Fire" from her forthcoming solo album with an orchestra and Steve DeMarchi, also "Away in a Manger" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)".
The music video for "Ordinary Day", directed by Caswell Coggins, was filmed in Prague, in February 2007. Are You Listening? was released in May 2007. The album entered and peaked at number 23 on the Billboard Top Rock Albums ranking, and number 77 on the Billboard 200. "Ordinary Day" was its first single, released in late April, and was produced by BRIT Awards winner, Martin "Youth" Glover, whose previous credits included the Verve, Embrace, Primal Scream, U2 and Paul McCartney. In August, "When We Were Young" was released as the second single from the album. Colm O'Hare of Hot Press averred that O'Riordan could have chosen to exploit the underlying sonorities of the Cranberries on Are you Listening? to keep her devotees waiting until the reunion, but instead, "she's done something far more ambitious by releasing this multi-layered collection of songs that traverses styles and genres". At that time, the couple split their time between Dublin and her husband's native Canada "surrounded by bears, wolves and all that great outdoor stuff", said O'Riordan.
O'Riordan performed live on television many times in 2007 in support of Are You Listening?. She travelled to over 22 countries in Europe, North America and South America on the 2007 O'Riordan world tour. On 21 March 2007, she performed on TV show Taratata in Paris, France. On 20 April 2007, O'Riordan made an appearance live on The Late Late Show on RTÉ in Dublin. On 16 May 2007, she appeared on Carson Daly's late-night show, Last Call with Carson Daly, in Burbank, California, in an episode that aired on 18 May 2007. She also appeared on 17 May 2007, on NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in Burbank, California, in an episode that aired on 19 May 2007. On 25 May 2007, O'Riordan performed during a live broadcast of Channel 7's Sunrise in Sydney, Australia. In May 2007 she played six songs acoustically at True Music with Katie Daryl on Hdnet in Los Angeles, California, in an episode that aired on 2 September 2007. The same month she performed on the Heaven and Earth Show aired on BBC One. On 29 June 2007, O'Riordan took to the stage of Festivalbar in Catania, Italy. On 2 August 2007, Sanctuary Records UK division ceased their activity and was acquired by UMG at about $88 million. O'Riordan commented, "they started off as a management company for Iron Maiden, maybe 25 years ago. But they've been around forever and now they've become a record company, and I thought, that looks grand and solid—they're indie and they'll be good. Jesus, six months into Are you Listening? they got bought out by Universal in the States...". On 19 November 2007, she cancelled the remainder of her European Tour (Lille, Paris, Luxembourg, Warsaw and Prague) due to illness. In December 2007, she performed in a few small American clubs, including Des Moines, Nashville, and Charlottesville, Virginia.
thumb|right|O'Riordan promoting her debut solo album [[Are You Listening? (album)|Are You Listening? in 2007]]
In 2008, O'Riordan won an EBBA Award. Every year the European Border Breakers Awards recognize the success of ten emerging artists or groups who reached audiences outside their own countries with their first internationally released album in the past year.
In January 2009, the University Philosophical Society (Trinity College, Dublin) invited the Cranberries to reunite for a concert celebrating O'Riordan's appointment as an honorary member of the Society, which led the band members to consider reuniting for a tour and a recording session. Of the event, embracing her performance with the Cranberries, O'Riordan stated that "the minute we started playing it felt like we'd never stopped", pointing out that "it's a chemistry. It just fits". O'Riordan released her second album No Baggage, featuring 11 tracks, in August 2009. The first single "The Journey" was released on 13 July 2009, followed by a second single, "Switch Off the Moment". The music video for "The Journey" was directed by Robin Schmidt and filmed in 16 mm on 8 May 2009, at Howth Beach Pier and at Howth Summit, Dublin, Ireland. The music video aired on 29 July 2009. O'Riordan said of No Baggage "I probably haven't worn my heart on my sleeve like this since the second album No Need to Argue".
2009–2012: Comeback and Roses
thumb|left|upright|O'Riordan performing with her signature [[Gibson SG electric guitar in Paris in May 2010]]
On 25 August 2009, while promoting her solo album No Baggage in New York City on 101.9 RXP radio, O'Riordan announced the Cranberries Reunion World Tour of 107 concerts. O'Riordan reported that she had thought about how much she missed the band before making the decision to tour again. She added that Lawler and the two Hogan brothers were "a big part of my heart and soul". O'Riordan and the Cranberries allowed their songs "Dreams", "Empty" along with "Apple Of My Eye" and "Stupid", to feature in the film released in the US in October 2013.
The Cranberries reformed and the tour began in North America in mid-November, followed by South America in mid-January 2010 and Europe in March 2010. In 2010, O'Riordan told Billboard magazine that playing with Fergal Lawler, Noel, and Mike Hogan worked better dynamically with her voice. By 2010, O'Riordan suffered from vocal cord nodules which caused her doctor to prescribe six weeks of inability to perform. Consequently, concert dates were cancelled and postponed, but the recurring problem persisted until 2012.
On 1 July 2011, a concert entitled "TU Warszawa"—"Here, Warsaw" was the main event of the inauguration of Poland's presidency of the EU council. O'Riordan performed "Zombie" and "I Lied" (English version of the Polish song "Skłamałam") with the Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, in Warsaw, Poland. At this point in her career, to keep up with her bookings, negotiations and finances, O'Riordan began to be managed by Danny Goldberg, former Kurt Cobain and Nirvana manager. Goldberg has also managed Sonic Youth and Courtney Love's band Hole. O'Riordan celebrated the reunion by touring with the Cranberries across Asia in July 2011, where the crowd was "impressed with her wide vocal range and strong vocal control". During the six years of their hiatus, O'Riordan and Noel Hogan occasionally shared ideas. In 2011, they recorded their sixth album, Roses with longtime producer Stephen Street, released in February 2012. In May 2012, the final two concerts of the North American tour of the Cranberries had to be postponed for a then undisclosed reason, which was later said to involve from O'Riordan's "hectic touring schedule"; this caused some uncertainty about the upcoming European leg of the tour. For the second leg of the Roses World Tour, O'Riordan hired a touring backing vocalist, Johanna Cranitch. During anterior tours, backup vocals were performed by the band's backup guitarist, Steve DeMarchi. In November 2012, the extent to which her father's 2011 death was affecting O'Riordan was made public when she admitted in Le Télégramme that she was unable to perform "Ode to My Family" throughout the 32 shows of the second leg of the European tour; O'Riordan said "I hope to be able to sing it back one day, but for now, it's too soon".
2013–2018: The Voice of Ireland and Something Else
O'Riordan replaced Sharon Corr as one of the mentors on RTÉ's The Voice of Ireland during the 2013–14 season. O'Riordan reached the final of the competition with her act Kellie Lewis, who finished in second place. In October 2013, O'Riordan and Marco Mendoza reconvened their partnership and were working on the songs for her announced third solo album scheduled for 2014, and presumably some film possibilities. Her final performance at the Vatican Christmas concert occurred in December 2013, In the autumn of 2013, as her hometown of Limerick was preparing to start its tenure as Irish City of Culture in 2014, O'Riordan was approached by the city to play a special gig. During a New Year's Eve party under the Spire of St Mary's Cathedral, she performed with a quartet from the Irish Chamber Orchestra, playing "Linger", "Zombie" and one solo, "The Journey".
In mid-January 2014, between shoots for The Voice, O'Riordan stated that she had written 15 songs for a solo album and she planned to go to Los Angeles to elaborate the start of the album. In April 2014, disillusioned by her experiences in the music industry, O'Riordan told Barry Egan that the record business made her "extraordinarily wealthy, but sucked the blood out of her, like a particularly ferocious vampire".
In late April 2017, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the band, the Cranberries released a new studio album Something Else, featuring acoustic versions of their greatest hits, and backed by the Irish Chamber Orchestra. Three new songs appear on this album: "Rupture," "Why" and "The Glory" the last song written by O'Riordan and Noel Hogan, in their song-writing partnership. The album was well received by critics; reviewers have praised "the return of one of Ireland's finest songsmiths", and reacted favourably to the orchestral and acoustic reimagining. Music critic Karen Gwee has described O'Riordan's voice "more measured, more labile and rich with maturity", whilst "the thinness of her voice dilutes the anxious energy of "Animal Instinct", one of the album's tracks".
In May 2017, the band started the world tour as acoustic concerts, with a string quartet. Most of the time, O'Riordan sang seated on a stool. After eleven shows, O'Riordan was said to be in "excruciating pain". The Cranberries published on social media the cancellation of the sold-out tour in Europe and North America, stating that O'Riordan's back problem was in the mid- to upper area of her spine and diaphragmatic movements associated with breathing and singing exacerbated the pain. During her rest, O'Riordan had been planning a new album of the Cranberries, and had written and recorded demo versions in her final years.
O'Riordan's last public performance was on 14 December 2017 in New York City, where she sang three Cranberries songs at Billboards Christmas party. On 15 December 2017, Eminem released his album Revival which included a large sample from the song "Zombie" as the hook for his rap song "In Your Head".
Artistry
Influences
O'Riordan's deeply religious mother had a strong influence on her musical development, introducing her to Elvis Presley at an early age. O'Riordan's Catholic education and experience playing the church organ also introduced her to classical church music genres such as Gregorian chant, which she described as having "great melodies." Months before she died, O'Riordan tested the resonance and the acoustics of the Glenstal Abbey church in Ireland to sing there. O'Riordan stated that this apprenticeship by this detachment of the world in a raw and devoted setting influenced a lot of her development as an artist and as a musician. In her teenage years, O'Riordan spent much of her time with her brothers who listened to heavy metal music, while being equally passionate about rock and Gaelic folk music.
When she had reached the age of 16, R.E.M., Depeche Mode, which constituted her primary musical influences. Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees, O'Riordan stated of the grunge decade; "creatively it was a really great time", mentioning Pearl Jam, Blind Melon and Nirvana. She wrote the song "I'm Still Remembering" six months after the death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. In 2009, talking about her three favourite albums, O'Riordan mentioned the Smiths' album The Smiths, Depeche Mode's album Violator, and the original soundtrack of the film The Mission. Her other musical influences include Morrissey, Led Zeppelin, also Metallica, and James Hetfield whom she met in 1995. She drew her influences from everyday life, events that occurred in the world, or her friendly and romantic relationships. Her yodeling signature came from listening to her father singing that way: she also cited female rock singers "like Sinéad O'Connor and Siouxsie Sioux".
Songwriting and musicianship
O'Riordan penned her first song, called "Calling", at the age of 12. She was the lead lyricist and co-composer of the band's songs with guitarist Noel Hogan, although she wrote a lot of the song structures. In the early days of the Cranberries, Hogan gave her a sequence of chords he had composed; a week later she came back with lyrics finished of "Linger" and wrote "Sunday" shortly after. O'Riordan described in 1993 that she chose to be a singer and songwriter for the creative aspect, "something new", saying that she would not have been happy singing traditional Irish music for a living. O'Riordan had a preference for solitude as an approach to writing songs. According to Hogan, the Cranberries never changed their writing process after their first encounter. Throughout their partnership, O'Riordan and Hogan never sat in a room together and wrote at the same time.
thumb|upright|left|O'Riordan performing in [[Montreal in 2009]]
O'Riordan tended to write her ideas continuously through the day, although most of the melodies came in the night since she struggled with insomnia; and so, she had a history of sleeping pills dependence in the course of her career. She experienced writer's block for months during one period of her life.
O'Riordan noted in Ultimate Guitar on her writing process, "lyrics are very important for me to make sure that I'm portraying whatever it is I need to portray. So I sit there but the funny thing is they've come to me anywhere". [ ... ] 'Oh, I have to go get a pen quick'. In the middle of the night when you're trying to go to sleep and they're going around in your head, your words, and you just get up and go out and write them down". O'Riordan wrote songs about themes that have evolved over the course of her career, her experience taught her to never feel inhibited and always make an effort to try other things artistically. O'Riordan stated in The Independent that she wrote about what is getting to her at the time, she said that writing lyrics was, "about the things you need to talk about, I write to get my emotions out. It's self-therapeutic".
In the National Post, music producer Dan Brodbeck commented that on the first day at the studio after being hired, she played him a few chords and a piano medley, then left him alone with little guidance. O'Riordan came back a few hours later and accredited his work, then she took a microphone and started singing lyrics off the top of her head; Brodbeck stated: "it was always spur-of-the-moment, gut reaction stuff".