Unlike The Sundays, my wife and I discovered The Cranberries together. We both liked their song, "Linger", when we heard it on the radio, and were privileged to see their television debut on the Letterman show. As became evident, Dolores O'Riordan was every bit as wispy (and suffering from stage fright!) as her voice. Yet in that innocence and frailty came a great strength.
Everybody Else... became a staple in our dating collection of CDs, though looking back it wasn't for the lyrics. "Linger" expresses the frustration a woman feels in being unable to leave her boyfriend, even after she catches him with another woman:
but I'm in so deep you know I'm such a fool for you you got me wrapped around your finger do you have to let it linger? do you have to, do you have to let it linger? -- "Linger"
That didn't quite fit our relationship... at all. However, the vulnerability in her voice somehow fit the band's Irish origins, singing about the hurt and desparation even in personal relationships. The only song on the album that doesn't express this sort of pain is "Dreams"; even then, the hint of normalcy and health is expressed in a dream, as opposed to a solid reality. The band has seen its share of atrocities in their native Ireland, and they express their outrage in later albums. In this album, they express more sorrow and heartache at a macrocosmic level in the problems of the general human experience of relationships. (Yes, too many prepositions in a row, sorry college English prof.)
More than the lyrical content, though, this album stands on the strength of O'Riordan's voice. She has a mystic, tribal quality in which one can immediately recognize the foreign-born influences; it gives the music a misty and celtic feeling, even in its "pop-iness". She employs a technique similar to yodeling and fills out the instrumentation nicely with her singing.
Like the previous entry, the ethereal voice and solid musical stylings of The Cranberries' first offering make it a great album for any collection.
Posted by pcg at November 17, 2003 9:44 PMI also am compelled by the heartache inherent in the Cranberries' music. I'll have to check out The Sundays - I don't know them. Sometime I'll share with you some other sad or deep "chick" music - Sinead, Holly Near, the Roches, Mary Chapin Carpenter, the list goes on and on and on. I'll listen to these women sometimes and want to pray for them and shake them and say "don't you know God loves you?"
I really think you should check out a Christian "chick." She sings about her desire to grow closer to God, and closer to her husband. This lady is named Sara Groves. One of my favorite songs by her is "Maybe there is a God" about a disturbed young lady whose parents try to get her to talk to a counselor about her problems, but on her own she ponders whether there is a God out there somewhere who loves her. The song I'd really like you to check out today, however, is "Fly" on her "All Right Here" CD. Borrow it from Nase. Love you!