Zombie (The Cranberries song)

The Troubles were a conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to 1998. During the conflict more than 3,500 people died and thousands more were injured.[2][3][4] The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), an Irish republican paramilitary organisation, waged an armed campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland and unite the region with the Republic of Ireland. Republican and Unionist paramilitaries killed thousands of people.[5][6] Over 10,000 bomb attacks were perpetrated by paramilitary groups in Ireland and England.[7][8]

The song was written in response to the death of Johnathan Ball, aged 3, and Tim Parry, aged 12, both of whom had been killed in the Warrington bombings, when two IRA improvised explosive devices hidden in litter bins were detonated in a shopping street in Warrington, England.[9][10] Ball died at the scene of the bombing as a result of his shrapnel-inflicted injuries, and five days later, Parry lost his life as a result of head injuries.[11][12] 56 others were injured, some seriously.[9] Parry died in his father's arms in a hospital in Walton, Liverpool.[13] The two boys had gone shopping to buy Mother's Day cards on one of the town's busiest shopping streets.[13][14]

There were a lot of bombs going off in London and I remember this one time a child was killed when a bomb was put in a rubbish bin – that's why there's that line in the song, 'A child is slowly taken'. [ ... ] We were on a tour bus and I was near the location where it happened, so it really struck me hard – I was quite young, but I remember being devastated about the innocent children being pulled into that kind of thing. 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.

— Dolores O'Riordan in 2017, on writing "Zombie".[15]

O'Riordan had "a feeling" that she had to write a song that reflected upon the event, before the song came to her "subconsciously" midway through the Cranberries' English Tour in 1993. Writing the core chords on her acoustic guitar,[15][16] O'Riordan returned to Ireland and continued to write the song after returning to her apartment after a night out.[17][15] The lyrics and chords of "Zombie" were written initially on an acoustic guitar by O'Riordan alone late that night—"I remember being in my flat, coming up with the chorus, which was catchy and anthemic", O'Riordan was to recall.[18]

The song structure was created and shaped without hindrance. The hook and the chorus "just came out really fast", then the verses came "quite easily", just as the writing of the lyrics, governed by no inhibitions—"they just came pouring out", she said.[15] O'Riordan took the song into the Cranberries' small rehearsal shed in Mungret, near Limerick city, and it was translated onto an electric guitar.[19] Drummer Fergal Lawler observed that O'Riordan was adamant that she wanted more distortion pedals on the guitars and asked for more strength than usual in drumming.[20][19] In 2017, O'Riordan said, "It was the most aggressive song we'd written".[18] According to Lawler, a rough version of the song was initially titled "In Your Head", which was included in the band's live set; it was then later revised to "Zombie".[21] The Cranberries' popularity grew exponentially during the North America Tour in 1993, promoting the release of their first album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, which earned them fans eagerly awaiting the band's second album.[22]

In early 1994, the Cranberries began performing "Zombie" in its final shape, and audiences responded with enthusiasm.[24][21] The song was recorded and mixed at The Manor Studio in Oxford and at Townhouse Studios in London in 1994 with producer Stephen Street.[25][26] They spent a long time working on getting the guitar settings right to give a suitably expansive sound. The sound came organically, while raising the volume, O'Riordan said "because we were using our live instruments, we were plugging in a lot, and we started to mess around with feedback and distortion".[18] The song, recorded during the grunge era, features a foggy, sludgy electric guitars sound, representing a radical departure from the band's signature sound of the early years—based largely on jangly guitar and strings.[17][27]

Particularly offended that terrorists claimed to have carried out these acts in the name of Ireland,[18] O'Riordan asserted: "The IRA are not me. I'm not the IRA. The Cranberries are not the IRA. My family are not. When it says in the song, 'It's not me, it's not my family,' that's what I'm saying. It's not Ireland, it's some idiots living in the past".[28][29] At the time, O'Riordan received criticism for "Zombie"'s "hard-hitting lyrics"; she nevertheless pointed out that the song was written from a humanitarian point of view.[18] O'Riordan had been the focus of a battle over censorship, fighting to see the song even released, as the record label was intent on preventing "Zombie" from reaching the airwaves.[30] The Cranberries' former manager Allen Kovac stated that Island Records urged them not to release the "politically urgent" song as a single, and that O'Riordan had ripped up a $1-million cheque the label offered her to work on another song.[31][30] "Dolores was a very small, fragile person, but very opinionated," said Kovac. "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", he said.[31] Island Records and management also claimed that the song was "too controversial, you might not get played on the radio".[19][21] Lawler recalled arguing to the record label that they "had been playing it live for a year", and telling them that "for a new song that the audience hadn't heard before, they really reacted to it".[21] Over time, "[w]e pushed and pushed and eventually they decided to release it", he said.[21] The release of the song occurred on the path to IRA's historic ceasefire announcement on 31 August 1994.[lower-alpha 1][33]

By the time the single for "Zombie" was released on 19 September 1994,[34] as well as No Need to Argue the following month, with an accompanying music video for the song in heavy rotation on MTV, the Cranberries were catapulted to international stardom.[35][36] Shortly after the song and video came out, ideological beliefs came rushing to the forefront of local newspapers, criticizing O'Riordan for "writing about the Troubles";[19] of these comments, she "knew that would be the angle of the song, because it was controversial".[37] Assessing the cultural impact of their song, Hogan responded: "Because of this song, people thought we were a political band. ... Far from it. Dolores always wrote from the heart".[19] O'Riordan would later state, "If I think something, I have to say it. And I really don't care what anybody thinks, you know?".[38] NPR's Andrew Limbong, speaking after O'Riordan's death in 2018, said "even though it was a political song, it wasn't necessarily politics she was interested in writing about".[38][28] O'Riordan said, "I just cannot accept children being slaughtered at the hands of political violence", and hoped that "it might make people reflect a bit on our society and what we've become."[39] In 1994, "Zombie" was "the most played song ever on alternative radio in the history of America", as mentioned in the Los Angeles Times and in Kenneth L. Campbell's book, Ireland's History – Prehistory to the Present.[39][40] In retrospect, The New York Times and Billboard considered them as "one of the biggest rock bands in the world" of the 1990s.[36][41]

"Zombie" has been characterised by commentators as alternative rock[42][43] and grunge.[44][45] O'Riordan later said that the song was not a concerted effort to ride the grunge movement, but she stated that "this wasn't grunge, but the timing was good", adding, that "[w]e were just a different type of a band... and we had a lot of our own ideas".[17][37] The band's guitarist Noel Hogan noted in a Rolling Stone interview that the Cranberries were beforehand accepted by "the same kind of [grunge] audience".[27] O'Riordan was responsible for the heavier sound, a mere expression of her musical taste, as she would say later "we got it out of our system... all that anger out of our system".[21][37] Discussing the musical approach for the song and the requirement of a sound significantly louder, Hogan explained in a 2012 interview with Amsterdam's FaceCulture that "the heavier sound was the right thing for the song. If it was soft, it wouldn't have had that impact. It would stand out in the live set because of that".[18]

O'Riordan never revealed the origin of the "zombie" reference in the lyrics, a concept which admits a personal interpretation of its meaning.[37] However, there was a divergence of opinion among writers on the subject. Ed Power formulated his own hypothesis, saying that the word Zombie was "a commentary on how blindly cleaving to centuries old prejudices can reduce [one's] capacity for independent thought".[37] Graham Fuller commented that the metaphor perhaps "reanimates the children whose deaths inspired O'Riordan to write it".[46] Sonia Saraiya had a different view, saying that the Zombie is not the dead children, but "the dead children that populate your mind; the dead bodies you've seen in the images that you can't forget".[47]

"Zombie" topped the charts in eight countries.[20][76] On 29 October 1994, the song went to No. 1 on the US Billboard Alternative Airplay chart, spending twenty-three weeks on the chart.[80][20] Australian audiences were "particularly gripped by the song". Triple J listeners voted for "Zombie" as No. 1 on the Triple J Hottest 100, 1994 chart,[76][81] one of the largest public music polls in the world,[82] establishing for the first time ever that a female vocalist won the Triple J Hottest 100.[76] On 18 December 1994, the song reached No. 1 on the ARIA Singles Chart, where it remained for seven consecutive weeks.[83][84] The single peaked at No. 1 and spent twenty eight weeks on the Official German Charts.[85] On 25 December 1994, the single debuted at No. 27 on the Ö3 Austria Top 40, and climbed to No. 2, where it stayed for eight weeks.[86] "Zombie" debuted on the French SNEP Top 100 at No. 4 on 25 February 1995. The following week, the single moved to No. 1; it spent nine consecutive weeks at the top and a total of twenty-four weeks on the singles chart.[87]

Island Records declined the prospect of releasing "Zombie" as a single to US stores, stating they didn't want to run counter to the band's original ethos. Music critic Jon Bream of Star Tribune elaborated succinctly the label's analysis: "For the band, it's a question of credibility". Bream further noted that Island Records "simply didn't want the industry to typecast the Cranberries as a Top 40 act". After releasing the song, later in the year, the Cranberries affirmed their alternative identity, saying that they "didn't want to be considered just a pop band". Drummer Fergal Lawler said, "[t]hen you can go to the other extreme of being so alternative that no one buys your records. Luckily, we're kind of in the middle. We're a mix of pop, rock and alternative, I suppose".[39]

A version of "Zombie" was already played one year before the release of No Need to Argue, on the band's first European tour with Hothouse Flowers, after the release of Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?.[20]

On 13 August 1994, two months prior to the release of No Need to Argue, the Cranberries performed at the Woodstock '94 music festival in New York.[102] Towards the end of "Zombie", O'Riordan embodied what it meant to her, dedicating the song to others, like the victims of ethnic cleansing,[47] she declared that "this song is our cry against man's inhumanity to man, inhumanity to child", adding, "and war, babies dying, and Belfast, and Bosnia, and Rwanda".[103]

The Cranberries kept "Zombie" in their concert setlists throughout their career.[29] On 11 November 1994, the Cranberries featured as the musical guest on US talk show Late Show with David Letterman, performing the lead single one month after No Need to Argue was released. Junkee music editor Jules LeFevre, wrote that the footage captured "O'Riordan's extraordinary voice" and considered the live performance as "straight-up sublime".[104]

On 14 February 1995, the band recorded a nine-song set including "Zombie", for MTV Unplugged, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City.[105][106] Their acoustic performance was accompanied by Electra Strings quartet first aired on 18 April 1995.[107]

On 25 February 1995, the Cranberries played the song on their appearance on the US show Saturday Night Live, in a slow tempo performance that British author Dave Thompson called "one of the most powerful performances that the show has ever seen".[108][109] The episode came a week after record producer Denny Cordell, an early mentor to the Cranberries, had died. Writer Ed Power wrote that the performance "has the rawness of early grief", while Rolling Stone would later declare it "one of the greatest SNL turns".[37]

The band released a stripped-down version of "Zombie", recorded for Something Else, an unplugged album that features acoustic renditions of songs from their catalog, accompanied by the Limerick-based Irish Chamber Orchestra.[110] The song appeared on the set list of their 2017 tour, featuring the Irish Chamber Orchestra's string quartet.[111]

On 3 October 2019, the three surviving members of the Cranberries released footage on YouTube of the band performing "Zombie" live at the Astoria 2 in London in January 1994, taken from their live DVD titled the Cranberries Live. The song was fully formed and played eight months before it was released as a single.[24]

In March 2003, on the eve of the outbreak of Iraq War, the British Government and the Independent Television Commission issued a statement saying ITC's Programme Code would temporarily remove from broadcast songs and music videos featuring "sensitive material", including "Zombie". Numerous media groups complied with the decision to avoid "offending public feeling", along with MTV Europe. Since it violated the ITC guidelines, "Zombie" was placed on a blacklist of songs, targeting its official music video. The censorship was lifted once the war had ended.[112]

In August 2006, CBS censored an American Rock Star Supernova contestant's rendition of "Zombie", as a result of the lyrics and deleted all mentions of tanks, bombs and guns. Although CBS declined to comment, an employee claimed that it was "worried that the song might be seen as an anti-Iraq War statement".[113]

• Mixed martial artist The Korean Zombie has used "Zombie" as his entrance song since his 2012 fight with Dustin Poirier.[114]
• Baseball player Chris Taylor selected "Zombie" as his entrance song for the 2019 Los Angeles Dodgers season.[115]
• The song features at the climax of Derry Girls series 2, episode 5 following the announcement of the IRA's ceasefire.[116]
• Flight simulator Digital Combat Simulator used a cover made by Damned Anthem for their "DCS WORLD | 2020 AND BEYOND" trailer.[117]
• The song was used in the second season of the Roswell, New Mexico television series as the background music for the scenes of the first episode titled "Stay (I Missed You)" that aired on 16 March 2020. Showrunner Carina Adly Mackenzie said that the song was used for several reasons, including as a "political connotation", adding that "[i]t's an incredibly powerful song" evoking "a lot of emotion".[118]
• The song features in the fourth episode of the first season of This Way Up when Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan sing it as their characters Aine and Shona, respectively.[119]
• In 2021, the song's acoustic version appeared in the final scene of Zack Snyder's zombie film Army of the Dead.[120][121]
• In 2023, drag queen contestant, Sasha Colby, gave a dance performance to the song in the season 15 premiere episode of RuPaul's Drag Race. Colby chose the song to honor her Irish heritage and the trauma of seeing the Warrington bombings on the news as a child.[122][123][124]
• In The Office episode "The Return", Andy sings part of "Zombie", much to the annoyance of his coworkers.[125]
• Professional wrestling tag team Violence is Forever (Kevin Ku and Dominic Garrini) currently use the song as their entrance theme.[126]

"Zombie"
Single by Bad Wolves
from the album Disobey
Released	18 January 2018 (2018-01-18)
Genre	Hard rock[201][202]
Length	4:15
Label	Eleven Seven
Songwriter(s)	Dolores O'Riordan
Bad Wolves singles chronology
"Zombie" (2018) "Remember When" (2019)

The American heavy metal band Bad Wolves recorded a cover of "Zombie" in 2017 while they were working on their debut album Disobey.[203] The band's singer Tommy Vext slightly altered the lyrics, inserting a reference to drones and replacing "since 1916" with "in 2018" to show that times haven't changed.[204] The band also added two extra stanzas to the end of the song which were not present in the original.[205] However, Vext said that "we weren't sure it if was going to make it onto the record. The song is a masterpiece and a massive hit. Some art is sacred—you become afraid to do a rendition of it".[206] On 21 December 2017,[207] Vext met Dan Waite—the Internal managing director of Bad Wolves' record label Eleven Seven Label Group-Europe[208] and a long-time close friend of O'Riordan—backstage at London's Wembley Arena at a heavy metal concert.[209][203] Then he asked Waite to send her the cover for consideration as well as her approval for its release. Vext commented that "I just got the courage to ask him to send her the song to see if she would approve of it. It's always a jarring thing to take on someone's piece of work: especially as the Cranberries were a massive band, and 'Zombie' was probably their biggest song".[210] On Christmas Eve 2017, Waite sent a text message to Vext that said O'Riordan had offered to "sing on it".[203][206] Vext described the situation: "it was a dream come true",[203] while the others musicians "almost didn't believe it".[210]

On 14 January 2018, O'Riordan flew from her home in New York City to London. According to O'Riordan's agent, Lindsey Holmes, the primary purpose of her flight was for a studio mixing session on Monday and Tuesday with Martin "Youth" Glover for her side project's second album, and she was also due to meet with the Cranberries' record label BMG.[211][212] On 15 January 2018, at 1:12 am GMT at her Mayfair hotel in London, O'Riordan left a voice message to Waite, where she expressed her thoughts, describing the cover as "awesome".[213][214] She also invited Waite to come in the studio, slated for later that morning, and listen to the results of her vocals recording.[215] O'Riordan was later found unresponsive in the bathroom and confirmed dead at 09:16 am.[216] Following her death, Bad Wolves said,

We are shocked and saddened at the news of Dolores' passing. [ ... ] We have always had deep respect for her as an artist and a vocalist and she was never afraid to bare her soul in her music and lyrics. 'Zombie' is an incredibly personal song and although we are a hard rock band, [w]e always felt the rawness and honesty she projected on stage and in her recordings was something to which all bands should aspire to, regardless of genre. When we heard she liked our version and wanted to sing on it, it was the greatest compliment a new band, or any band for that matter, could have received.[215]

TMZ published O'Riordan's final voice message on 5 April 2018.[213][214] Bad Wolves released the cover on 18 January 2018 as the second single from their debut album Disobey. The cover was released without her vocals as a tribute.[217][205] The cover topped the US Billboard Mainstream Rock chart in May 2018 for three weeks and peaked at No. 54 on the Hot 100.[218] In June 2018, at a concert in New York City, Bad Wolves donated $250,000 to O'Riordan's children.[219] The idea of making a donation was set up by Allen Kovac,[220] Eleven Seven Label Group founder,[221] and former manager of the Cranberries,[31] who also managed them during the original release of "Zombie".[222]

In an interview, bassist Kyle Konkiel shared his thoughts on the new cover's sound:

[Our version] is kind of a darker more melodic feel than the original, which had a lot of heavy guitars and that legendary bassline and more focus on the actual instruments than the lyrics themselves.

— Kyle Konkiel.[223]

On 18 October 2020, American singer Miley Cyrus performed a cover of the song at NIVA Save Our Stages at Whisky a Go Go, a fundraiser concert streamed live on YouTube and that performance quickly became viral online with individuals appreciating Cyrus' fine, raw vocals.[249] Cyrus later on released her live cover to digital and streaming platforms and announced that the track would be one of the two (the latter being another viral take at Blondie's "Heart of Glass") covers that would be a part of her seventh full-studio album Plastic Hearts.[250]

On 20 October 2020, the Cranberries publicly gave Cyrus their seal of approval.[251] Sharing Miley's performance to their official Twitter page, the Cranberries wrote alongside it: "We were delighted to hear of Miley Cyrus' cover of Zombie at the Whisky a Go Go #SOSFEST in LA at the weekend. ... It's one of the finest covers of the song that we've heard. We think Dolores would be very impressed!".[251]

On 28 November 2020, in reaction to the Cranberries "acknowledging it and writing that it honoured Dolores", Cyrus said to Stephen Byrne on RTÉ 2fm: "also [saying that] they liked my interpretation of the song – it just meant a lot".[252] She further stated that she felt like it was "really timely, even though it was a cover and maybe an older song, it just felt like it was super right now", adding that the lyrics "just really resonated" with her.[252]

• In late 1994, a cover version by Spanish mákina group Ororo was released in conjunction with the original version. This version reached No. 1 in Spain and No. 16 in Austria.[256][257]
• In 1995, a Eurodance cover version by Italian quartet A.D.A.M. featuring Amy reached No. 16 in the UK Singles Chart,[258] No. 65 in Australia,[259] No. 20 in France, No. 7 in Ireland,[260] No. 9 in Italy, and No. 35 in Belgium.[261]
• In 2011, Christina Parie covered the song on The X Factor Australia. After her performance, the song re-entered the ARIA Top 100 Singles Chart at No. 69.[262]
• In 2017, Dutch hardstyle DJ Ran-D released a cover of the song on Armada Records which was certified gold in the Netherlands in 2019.[263]
• In February 2018, the pop rock band Dreamers released a cover of the song.[264]
• In 2018, Ghostly Kisses' sophomore EP This City Holds My Heart closed with a cover of the song.[265]
• On 16 January 2019, to mark the first anniversary of O'Riordan's death, Chicago rapper Vic Mensa released a cover song through his punk-inspired band named 93Punx.[266] On 27 April 2020, one week after the Cranberries music video reached one billion views on YouTube, 93Punx released their music video including their own live footage and interspersed with scenes from the original video.[267]

• List of anti-war songs

• Radden Keefe, Patrick (2020). Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. New York: Anchor. ISBN 978-0-385-52131-4.
• McKittrick, David; McVea, David (2002). Making Sense of the Troubles: The Story of the Conflict in Northern Ireland. Belfast: New Amsterdam Books. ISBN 978-1-561-31070-8.
• Post, Jerrold M. (2008). The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda (1st ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-2306-1269-3.
• English, Richard (2012). Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA. London: Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-447-21249-2.
• Pulliam, June; Fonseca, Anthony J. (2014). Encyclopedia of the Zombie: The Walking Dead in Popular Culture and Myth. Louisiana: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4408-0388-8.