“It wasn’t me”: the IRA Warrington bombing that inspired The Cranberries’ biggest hit
There’s a strong case to be made for The Cranberries being the definitive Irish band.
Their haunting brand of ethereal Celtic-influenced indie rock captures the spiritual essence of the country’s long history, while lead singer, the late Dolores O’Riordan, proudly fronts that with vocals heavily tinged in his native accent, but while the surface presentation of their band is inherently Irish, what makes them proud custodians of their country is their commitment to artistic activism.
While some of their standout hits explored the rather common subjects of love, loss and heartbreak, there were plenty of others who engaged with the social injustices that surrounded them. Inspired by a generation of Irish artists who tackled politicism head on, The Cranberries never shied away from the troubled realities that formed their artistic backdrop, and that’s displayed no better than on ‘Zombie’ – an emotional protest song that addressed the political violence of The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
It was a time when Ireland existed under a cloud of seemingly endless violence, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) spearheaded a campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland and unite the region with the Republic of Ireland. During that time, more than 3500 people were killed, with a large percentage of those being from bomb attacks.
It was one of those very incidents that inspired The Cranberries’ song – on March 20th, 1993, two improvised explosive devices were hidden in litter bins and subsequently detonated in a busy Warrington street, and hile 56 people were eventually injured from the attack, two children aged three and 12 were killed, shocking not only the world but O’Riordan, who then decided to write a song that reflected upon the tragedy.
She explained, “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.”
Adding, “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.”
The song was so on the nose that O’Riordan faced pushback in getting the song released, with the label even offering her a $1million fee to put the track to one side and focus on something else. But O’Riordan understood the weight of this song’s importance and abstained from any temptation and continued to release the song under its original form.
There are equal parts anger and empathy in the song, and it perfectly highlights The Cranberries as a band that represent the very best parts of a proud nation who wear their history and politics on its sleeve. Moreover, it follows the country’s long lineage of using music as a healing tool and something that can emotionally bind contrasting communities.
