Dolores O’Riordan died five years ago – Il Post

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On January 15, 2018, five years ago, Dolores O’Riordan died, best known for being the lead singer of the Cranberries, an Irish rock group that achieved great success all over the world in the 1990s. Her body was found at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, London. She was 46 years old, and in town for a “short recording session.”

The Cranberries, and O’Riordan with them, became very famous around the time their first two records came out. They played a rock heavily influenced by traditional Irish music: among the most appreciated and recognizable elements there was O’Riordan’s voice, which was characterized by a strong accent and was decisive for the success of the group. In May 2017, after releasing a greatest hits collection, The Cranberries canceled their European tour after a few dates due to O’Riordan’s health problems, which were described on the band’s website as back problems. Just before Christmas 2017, O’Riordan had written a post on Facebook where she said she felt better and sang some songs at a private event.

O’Riordan was born in 1971 in Limerick, South West Ireland, had six brothers and became the voice of the Cranberries in 1990, after reading an advert in a local newspaper (the band Cranberry Saw Us were looking for a singer). Together with the Cranberries she released seven records, the last of which was released in 2017. Their first success was the song “Linger”, from 1993, which reached the Top 10 of the American and Irish charts.

No need to argue, released in 1994, was the most successful album, with around 17 million copies sold worldwide. It contained “Zombie”, the song that gave the Cranberries international fame and became one of the most popular songs of the 1990s. It was written after the Warrington attacks, carried out in 1993 by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Irish independence military organization, in which a three-year-old boy and a twelve-year-old boy were killed: the lyrics of the song spoke of the violence carried out in Twentieth century in the struggle for Northern Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom.

– Read also: Six beautiful Cranberries songs

In 2003 the Cranberries disbanded, because the members wanted to pursue their respective solo careers: O’Riordan released solo Are You Listening? in 2007 and No Baggage in 2009, before reuniting with the band in 2009. O’Riordan had three children, with her husband Don Burton, former tour manager of Duran Duran, whom she separated after twenty years of marriage in 2014. That same year , O’Riordan had been arrested at Shannon Airport in Ireland because she had assaulted a stewardess on a scheduled flight and a police officer who had intervened in the meantime: however, she was not sentenced because she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxc3O4mQV74

In a 2013 interview quoted from BBC O’Riordan said she was abused as a child and later developed an eating disorder. On that occasion she spoke of her family, and in particular of her children, as her “salvation of her”.

After O’Riordan’s death, the hypothesis of suicide had been evaluated, also in relation to the fact that in September 2017 he had written a farewell letter. After a few months, however, the investigators charged with clarifying the circumstances of her death had explained that she O’Riordan had drowned in the bathtub of her room at the Hilton hotel on Park Lane in London after alcohol poisoning. They had also specified that it had been an accident and not a voluntary gesture. Even the psychiatrists who followed her had said that in the days before her death O’Riordan was “in a good mood”.