Dolores O’ Riordan died January 15, at the age of 46. The singer of the Cranberries, with an angry, fragile, or angelic voice has passed away in the afterlife and in London where she had come to record one last time.

The last of a family of seven children, the passionate Irish singer was known not only for her talent but also for convictions and a soul that she has never denied, which the media and the good thinkers have never forgiven her, even in death. 

Pro family (Ode To My Family), Irish patriot (God Be With You), the author of the texts of the Cranberry Sauce, which accompanies Thanksgiving, knew how to subtly put his convictions forward. She was also pro-death penalty, taking Singapore as an example, and anti abortion, like any Irish Catholic born in 1971 (The Icicle Melt).

There is, however, a misconception that admirers of Dolores should avoid, especially those interested in the IRA and the Northern Irish conflict. 

Patriot and Catholic as she was, she never lent her support to the cause of the IRA, even condemning violence and war through her most famous song,  Zombie . The idea is less to take a stand against the IRA, and in particular its armed wing, than to try to intervene between the belligerents and to impose a kind of peace on the Church.

The chorus doesn’t say anything else: ‘But you see, it’s not me / It’s not my family / In your head, I’m your head, they are fighting / With their tanks, and their bombs / And their, and their guns / In your head, they are crying.’. 

Where tanks refer to British troops, bombs refer to IRA attacks, although the  Black and Tans   engaged in similar actions. What Dolores is screaming is a supplication and a prayer. She is a young woman who was 22 at the time of the Warrington bombing mentioned in the song and who has known only poverty and war.

The Cranberries is therefore less a ‘nationalist’ group than a Catholic group, and an Irish group. Source