Al Kalima Online LIVE SONG OF THE WEEK The Cranberries - Zombie 1999 Live Live concert at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy 1999 Paris, France Zombie The Cranberries
"Zombie" is a protest song by Irish alternative rock band the Cranberries. It was written by the lead singer, Dolores O'Riordan, about the young victims of a bombing in Warrington, England, during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The song was released on 19 September 1994 by Island Records as the lead single from the Cranberries' second studio album, No Need to Argue (1994). Critics have described "Zombie" as "a masterpiece of alternative rock", with grunge-style distorted guitar and shouted vocals uncharacteristic of the band's other work
While Island Records feared releasing a politically charged song as a single, "Zombie" reached No. 1 on the charts of Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, and Iceland. The song was ineligible for the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, but it reached No. 1 on the US Billboard Alternative Airplay chart. Listeners of the Australian radio station Triple J voted it No. 1 on the 1994 Triple J Hottest 100 chart, and it won the Best Song Award at the 1995 MTV Europe Music Awards. The music video was directed by Samuel Bayer, and featured O'Riordan singing while painted gold, and footage of war-torn Belfast. In April 2020, it became the first song by an Irish group to surpass one billion views on YouTube
The Troubles were a conflict in Northern Ireland from the late 1960s to 1998.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 more than 3,500 people, many from thousands of bomb attacks. One of the bombings happened on 20 March 1993, as two IRA improvised explosive devices hidden in litter bins were detonated in a shopping street in Warrington, England. Two children; Johnathan Ball, aged 3, and Tim Parry, aged 12, were killed in the attack. 56 people were injured. Ball died at the scene of the bombing as a result of his fragmentation-inflicted injuries, and five days later, Parry lost his life in a hospital as a result of head injuries O'Riordan decided to write a song that reflected upon the event and the children's deaths after visiting the town
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"
Knowing of the song's potential, the Cranberries wanted "Zombie" to be lead single in advance of the album No Need to Argue. 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. "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
On 16 January 2018, following O'Riordan's death, Colin Parry, father of IRA victim Tim Parry, thanked O'Riordan for the "both majestic and also very real lyrics". "Many people have become immune to the pain and suffering that so many people experienced during that armed campaign", he said. "To read the words written by an Irish band in such a compelling way was very, very powerful
On 23 November 1995, the Cranberries won the Best Song Award for "Zombie" at the 1995 MTV Europe Music Awards
In November 2022, the song was voted as the greatest Irish hit of all time by RTÉ 2fm listeners in compiling the ultimate Irish playlist for a television special shown on RTÉ One Following the death of O'Riordan in 2018, the hurling team from her home county of Limerick adopted "Zombie" as their anthem during their successful run to the All-Ireland Championship. It soon became a rugby anthem as well; Limerick-based Munster initially played it in tribute to O'Riordan, and crowd reaction led to it becoming a post-match staple
The song was re-popularised in 2023 after it was played after Ireland games at the 2023 Rugby World Cup. It was picked up by fans of the Irish team, with videos of fans singing the song in chorus accumulating hundreds of thousands of views on social media
"Zombie" topped the charts in many countries. On 29 October 1994, the song went to No. 1 on the US Billboard Alternative Airplay chart, spending twenty-three weeks on the chart. 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. the Australian audiences were "particularly gripped by the song", with Triple J listeners voting for "Zombie" as No. 1 on the Triple J Hottest 100, 1994 chart, establishing for the first time ever that a female vocalist won the Triple J Hottest 100. On 18 December 1994, the song reached No. 1 on the ARIA Singles Chart, where it remained for seven consecutive weeks. The single peaked at No. 1 and spent twenty eight weeks on the Official German Charts. 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. "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 forty-two weeks on the singles chart. The song reached No. 14 on the UK Singles Chart. After Cranberries' lead singer O'Riordan died in January 2018, "Zombie" charted at number 13 on the UK Singles Downloads Chart In 2023, the song saw a sales surge in the UK and Ireland during the 2023 Rugby World Cup; the song was played on speakers after every time the Irish team scored. "Zombie" peaked at number 11 on the UK Singles Downloads Chart during this time
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
