I stumbled across The Cranberries on the NPR Tiny Desk Concerts. They played their hit “Zombie” from the ’90s. This Irish band was obviously coming from their own context in a song with strong words about the pain of violence and the deathly numbing of our brains as we silence ourselves: “When the violence causes silence, we must be mistaken…” The haunting vocals of lead singer Dolores O’Riordan are prefect for the lyrics. But I heard it in the wake of the mass slaughter in Las Vegas, the latest in a long string of mass killings to which we respond with mere prayers and no change in our laws or behavior. “Zombie” the spirit of the times captures it perfectly.
Catch The Cranberries in their Tiny Desk Concert:
UPDATE:
On January 15, 2018 Dolores O’Riordan died at age 46. BBC article about her details her rage about the killing of two children in an IRA bombing that sparked her to write “Zombie.” Click here to read BBC’s article.
UPDATE #@:
Bad Wolfes was going to do up update with Dolores O’Riordan, but she died the day they were going to record. So Bad Wolfes proceed with the 2018 update, which references to drone warfare among other things. As Tommy Vext said, “Her lyrics, confronting the collateral damage of political unrest, capture the same sentiment we wanted to express a quarter century later. That is a testament to the kind of enduring artist Dolores was and will remain forever. The band is donating the proceeds from the song to her children.