Remembering Dolores O'Riordan: "As an Irish musician, she showed the world what we're capable of"

The Cranberries:

Fergal Lawler: “The thing we remember the most about Dolores is the craic we had. She’d be sat on the bus ripping the piss out of you.”

Noel Hogan:  “What Dolores also had, was a very low boredom threshold. Two days into rehearsals, you’d look over and see that look on her face. She mightn’t have said anything there and then but at seven in the evening you’d get a call from her asking, ‘What did you think of today?’ and before you could answer she’d go, ‘It wasn’t rock enough.’ She was always the metaller in the band.

"Initially, Dolores was very shy around us because we were strangers, but as we got to know each other better we realised that, ‘She’s well able to stand up for herself.’ She was never the ‘innocent colleen’ that the British music press made her out to be. She was a very smart person.” (2019)

R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe:

"[She] was young but definitely not naïve and always felt very together to me. There’s a storytelling tradition in Ireland that’s handed down, and she wound up inheriting both that and the Irish sense of humour; she was very funny to be around. I couldn’t believe that ‘Linger’ was the first thing she wrote with The Cranberries – what a song!

Dolores was a tiny woman doing a job that’s not easy for women, certainly, but she never showed fear of any kind and was a natural on stage. She had that 'If I’m gonna fall on my face, it’s fine. I’m just going get right back up and do it again…' attitude. I loved that about Dolores." (2021)

Moya Brennan:

"It’s hard to come out with something new, but Dolores certainly did that. Two things always struck me about her. How she was proud of being Irish and a woman in the music world. I loved her for that alone, and her strength of conviction.

"It’s a credit to how great Dolores was as a singer-songwriter, that you hear her songs being played continuously on the airwaves after she has sadly left this world. She certainly paved the way for other Irish artists, particularly women." (2020)

Pillow Queens:

"Dolores made our dreams of becoming musicians attainable in our minds, because we weren’t just hearing a woman’s voice in rock music, but that voice that had a gorgeous Limerick accent. The fact that 'Zombie' was the first YouTube video by an Irish artist to reach a billion plays proves that female musicians are not just here to tick a box." (2020)

Emma Langford:

"As a fellow Limerick woman. Dolores has always been a part of my life. We grew up in the same city, and went to the same school.

"Through her presence as a musician on a global level, she showed me that there was a place on the stage for me, as a woman in music who didn't necessarily want to fit the mould.

"As an Irish musician, she showed the world what we're capable of – maybe more importantly, she showed us back home in Limerick what we're capable of." (2020)

Michael Stipe's reflections were originally published in WHY CAN’T WE? – The Story Of The Cranberries and the Band’s Iconic Front-woman Dolores O’Riordan (As Told Through The Pages Of Hot Press) – which also features contributions from Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran, Olé Koretsky of D.A.R.K., acclaimed author Kevin Barry, and more: