{"id":146595,"date":"2018-01-16T02:37:58","date_gmt":"2018-01-16T07:37:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=146595"},"modified":"2018-01-16T02:37:58","modified_gmt":"2018-01-16T07:37:58","slug":"dolores-oriordan-voice-of-the-cranberries-dies-at-46","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/16\/dolores-oriordan-voice-of-the-cranberries-dies-at-46\/","title":{"rendered":"Dolores O’Riordan, voice of The Cranberries, dies at 46"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"O'Riordan<\/a>
O’Riordan performing with The Cranberries in March 2012 (Photo By Eva Rinaldi – The Cranberries, CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LONDON — Dolores O’Riordan, whose urgent, powerful voice helped make Irish rock band The Cranberries a global success in the 1990s, died suddenly on Monday at a London hotel. She was 46.<\/p>\n

The singer-songwriter’s publicist, Lindsey Holmes, confirmed that O’Riordan died in London, where she was recording,<\/p>\n

\u201cNo further details are available at this time,\u201d Holmes said, adding that O’Riordan’s family was \u201cdevastated\u201d by the news.<\/p>\n

Her Cranberries bandmates — Noel Hogan, Mike Hogan and Fergus Lawler — tweeted that O’Riordan \u201cwas an extraordinary talent and we feel very privileged to have been part of her life.\u201d<\/p>\n

London’s Metropolitan Police force said officers were called just after 9 a.m. Monday to a hotel where a woman in her 40s was found dead. The police force said the death was being treated as \u201cunexplained.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hilton hotel in London’s Park Lane confirmed that a guest had died on the premises.<\/p>\n

Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins said O’Riordan and The Cranberries \u201chad an immense influence on rock and pop music in Ireland and internationally.\u201d<\/p>\n

O’Riordan was born on Sept. 6, 1971 in Ballybricken, southwest Ireland. In 1990, she answered an ad from a local band in nearby Limerick city — then called The Cranberry Saw Us — that was looking for a lead singer.<\/p>\n

A name change and a confluence of factors turned The Cranberries into international stars. Their guitar-based sound had an alternative-rock edge at a time when grunge was storming the music scene.<\/p>\n

The band’s songs — on which O’Riordan was chief lyricist and co-songwriter — had a Celtic-infused tunefulness. And in O’Riordan the group had a charismatic lead singer with a distinctively powerful voice.<\/p>\n

Heavy play on MTV for their debut single \u201cDream\u201d and the singles that followed helped bring the group to the attention of a mass audience.<\/p>\n

The Cranberries’ 1993 debut album, \u201cEverybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?\u201d, sold millions of copies and produced the hit single \u201cLinger.\u201d<\/p>\n

The follow-up, \u201cNo Need to Argue,\u201d sold in even greater numbers and contained \u201cZombie,\u201d a visceral howl against Northern Ireland’s violent Troubles that topped singles charts in several countries.<\/p>\n

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar tweeted Monday that \u201cfor anyone who grew up in Ireland in the 1990s, Dolores O’Riordan was the voice of a generation. As the female lead singer of a hugely successful rock band, she blazed a trail and might just have been Limerick’s greatest ever rock star. RIP.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band released three more studio albums before splitting up in 2003. O’Riordan released a solo album, \u201cAre You Listening,\u201d in 2007, and another, \u201cNo Baggage,\u201d in 2009.<\/p>\n

The Cranberries also reunited that year, resulting in the album \u201cRoses\u201d in 2012.<\/p>\n

For a time, O’Riordan was one of Ireland’s richest women, but she struggled with both physical and mental health problems.<\/p>\n

The Cranberries released the acoustic album \u201cSomething Else\u201d in 2017 and had been due to tour Europe and North America. The tour was cut short because O’Riordan was suffering from back problems.<\/p>\n

In 2014, O’Riordan was accused of assaulting three police officers and a flight attendant during a flight from New York to Ireland. She pleaded guilty and was fined 6,000 euros ($6,600.)<\/p>\n

Medical records given to the court indicated she was mentally ill at the time of the altercation. After her court hearing O’Riordan urged other people suffering mental illness to seek help.<\/p>\n

She told London’s Metro newspaper last year that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and she spoke to the Irish News about her battles with depression.<\/p>\n

O’Riordan said depression \u201cis one of the worst things to go through,\u201d but that \u201cI’ve also had a lot of joy in my life, especially with my children.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get ups as well as downs. Sure, isn’t that what life’s all about?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

O’Riordan is survived by her ex-husband, the former Duran Duran tour manager Don Burton, and their three children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON — Dolores O’Riordan, whose urgent, powerful voice helped make Irish rock band The Cranberries a global success in the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":146611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,106],"tags":[43433,43428,43430,5792,43429,43434,43432,43431],"class_list":["post-146595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","category-hollywood","tag-cranberries","tag-dolores-oriordan","tag-fergus-lawler","tag-ireland","tag-lindsey-holmes","tag-michael-d-higgins","tag-mike-hogan","tag-noel-hogan","mauthors-jill-lawless","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}