Full name: Dolores Mary Eileen O’Riordan Burton. Career: Dolores O’Riordan is singer of the cranberries since 1990. She is vocalist of the band, she compiles all lyrics, plays acoustic and electric guitar, keyboard, flute and mandolin. Since 2003 she has started her solo career. Date of birth: September 6, 1971. Height: 5' 3,5" (1.61 m) Weight: 100lbs. Eyes color: deep-green. Hair: natural brunette, though she likes to change color of her hair. Place of birth: Ballybricken, Ireland (8 miles from Limerick, the third largest town in Ireland after Dublin and Cork). Parents: Terence O’Riordan e Eileen Greensmith. Marital Status: husband - Don Burton (former tour manager of Duran Duran, he was born on January 27, 1962). They married at Holy Cross Abbey, Tipperary, Ireland on July 18, 1994. Children: son Taylor Baxter (November 23, 1997), daughter Molly Leight (January 27, 2001), daughter Dakota Rain (April 10, 2005) and stepson Donny (the illegitimate child of Don). Siblings: 5 elder brothers and one elder sister.
Hobbies: shopping, cooking, fishing, movies
Languages: English, Gaelic. She studied Latin, to all appearances, and probably French (she speaks in French with French fans on her concerts) Musical predilection: R.E.M., The Sundays, The Smiths, Sinead O’Connor, Duran Duran, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and folk Celtic and African music. Musical experience: choir, playing the organ, pubs appearances, playing the piano (since she was 5 years old), playing the guitar (since 17). Education: college
Place of residence: cottage Peterborough in Ontario, Canada, villa Dingle in Ireland (sold in 2004).
Hobbies: shopping, cooking, fishing, movies
Languages: English, Gaelic. She studied Latin, to all appearances, and probably French (she speaks in French with French fans on her concerts) Musical predilection: R.E.M., The Sundays, The Smiths, Sinead O’Connor, Duran Duran, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and folk Celtic and African music. Musical experience: choir, playing the organ, pubs appearances, playing the piano (since she was 5 years old), playing the guitar (since 17). Education: college
Place of residence: cottage Peterborough in Ontario, Canada, villa Dingle in Ireland (sold in 2004).
DOLORES BIOGRAPHY
I don't remember being youngWas it so much fun?I don't remember feeling this freeIt was not for me(The Cranberries, "Every Morning")
Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan was born in Ballybricken, a town 8 miles outside Limerick on Sept. 6, 1971 in poor Irish family of farmers. Her parents are Eileen Greensmith and Terrance O'Riordan. Dolores was a seventh child. Her name is rather not typical for Ireland and it means "the seventh pain". After Dolores's birth Terrance got to a wheelchair due to a motorcycle accident. So the family lived in a poverty and in very difficult life conditions. What concerning her father Dolores answered: "I never really knew my father". Dolores grew up in a typical strict patriarchal catholic family. As she remembers, her parents have not dry-nursed with children, that's why she had a lot of time for herself. Though Dolores had elder sister, she preferred to play with five elder brothers. But boys have not treated Dolores kindly and tried to shake off smaller sister. According to Dolores, brothers sometimes threw whatever they had at Dolores during their games, and let her lying alone in the field. Probably since then she realized that it's much better to be a boy in this world. Her sister's life showed the real nature of the lot for girls from strict catholic families: husband, kitchen-range and a lot of children. That's why she was trying to get off being girl: she had short haircut, man's wear, she burned out and buried her dollies on the graveyard, played football, made friends with boys only. In fact she was a kind of rebel. "I thought everything was very unfair, I thought boys had an easier time. Girls were useless because they'd get pregnant so it was bad to be a girl". And she liked that. Often when boys refused Dolores to participate in their games, she went to the forest. She was walking though the forest and could talk to her dog for hours and let it into her secrets. "I think that it' was not so bad from on the one hand, nobody had impact on me and I could train myself to be a personality and a self-respect". Except the dog,
her grandfather Joe was the best friend of Dolores, later she wrote two songs dedicated to him (Atosa (Iosa) and Joe).
When she had to go to school she have understood that her desired way of life (of being boy) contradicted to what catholic society was expecting from her. Her older sister leaved parents' home and Dolores was the only girl who had to help her mother, who was teaching and admonished her all the time, so that Dolores got a lot of complexes concerning her exterior. When Dolores was 11 she wrote her first song "Calling" on the old synthesizer Yamaha and the drum-machine. "I started writing songs when I was 12. It's really great to recall them in memory. I still can't believe I could wrote such songs. One may thought that they were written by a person 20 years of age. I always perceived everything seriously and took it to heart, and my internal life was like a fight". Dolores remembers that that song was about one guy, who was 10 years older than Dolores, but still she liked him very much. He probably took her as a child. One he hugged her, but there was nothing more between them. He failed to realized how much Dolores loved him. Nevertheless, in that age you never know what you really want. According to Dolores, when she was 13 she hated herself. Her child's protective mechanism of being a boy failed and still she couldn't realize how to be a girl. "I just didn't want to become a woman, I didn't want to have fat flabby sides!" Dolores didn't care what boys were thinking about her, though she evoked their interest. Dolores thought: "Oh God, why do I live, what for... to please men on a leash? No, it's not for me for sure. I would better sit in a bedroom or go with mother on church service. That would be much gaily". The girl still spent all the time with boys, though she never tried to attract their attention. She hided her sexuality. She never wore dresses or skirts, she preferred to dress shabby jeans and t-shirts. She didn't get on with her girl class-mates, she preferred to stood aside. Once teachers and parents insisted that she had to have long hair cut, but Dolores plastered her hear with chewing gum and pressed that her hair was cut. Dolores went to school in ragged uniform to spite everybody. She had 10 ear-rings, though her teacher was in a habit of taking them off. When I was 12 I was asked to play the role of Dorothy in "The wizard of Oz". He already had wonderful voice by that time. "it's disgusting! I came to a hall full of teachers looking at me and the only thing I could do it was laughing. I already had strong character; I used to play tricks on my class-mates, disarrange order. I was the leader and it was too much to play the role of idiotic Dorothy for such a trouble-maker as I was. And of course I refused. They allowed me to play the role of a peasant. I had to sing outside the stage and then walked on the scene shoving a handcart. Beautiful voice and ardent desire of singing always attracted attention to Dolores. "One of my earliest memories is being about 5 I was at school and the headmistress brought me out of my class and up into the 6th class where the 12 year old girls were. She sat me up on my teachers desk and told me to sing for them. I loved it, singing was something I had that could win people over..." She also recalled: "I always loved and wanted singing, I started singing after I learnt how to speak. My mother also was singing always at home, but I haven't noticed that before my boyfriend told me that after he came home to me". Nevertheless, Dolores grew up in strict catholic family, she got her own opinion concerning religion: "I was never like: 'Hello, I'm a catholic and I'm into Jesus Christ and John and all the boys,' you know. When I was a teenager I was, like, falling asleep in church, but when it came to the hymns, then I was like yes!, because I loved the hymns, the Gregorian hymns", "Oh, great tunes. That's definitely where rock'n'roll came from!" "I suppose being brought up a Catholic was good, as opposed to having a mother into voodoo or white magic or something. It could be worse". "The catholic church does, for some people, leave lots of scars. And I have to say I didn't come out smiling from my Catholic childhood. I had lots of problems, you know, lots of hang-ups. But you get over it and get on with life. Whatever was good, take that with you. Whatever was bad, get over it, get it out of your head, leave it behind. And that's what I think I did. I don't go to church very much any more, you know". Dolores studied playing the piano, she sang in a choir. That's what exactly liked most of all. "I played harmonium in my church for 10 years, and I spent eight years with the classical piano. I used to go from school to piano lessons to home and maybe I'd have to got to church and then I might have some homework and go to bed. I came from a strict childhood. I didn't get out much, right up till I was 17. I kind of had to run away". So, Dolores was 17. At this age she had two very important events in her life: she learns playing the guitar and fell in love for the first time in her life. Mike O'Mahony was her first real love and Dolores decided that she had not got a chance living in Irish solitude. And she decided to leave parent's home under protest of parents. "I wanted to live in the city, because I wanted to get tough as a woman. I knew that if I stayed at home...the only way, as a woman, you could get out of my house was to get married, that whole catholic family thing. So I kind of did a runner". Dolores moved to Mike and lived for a long time with him, not working anywhere. "At 18 I left home because I wanted to sing," she recalls. "My parent s wanted me to go to college and things like that. I was really poor for a year-and-a-half; I remember actually being hungry, like I'd die for a bag of chips". It seems that for the first time Dolores took her life for principle that ''life with beloved is a love in a cottage''. But every day their relations were getting worse and worse... In spring 1999 her acquaintance told that her boyfriend just leaved one band, where he was a soloist. That guy was Nial O'Quinn and the band was called The Cranberry Saw Us. That band was looking for a new singer. Dolores who was singing in pubs for some time decided to try her luck. "When I start singing in the band I was still studying in the school. My parents were definitely against my choice. They wanted me to finish school and enter university. But I had my own way, because I wanted to be a singer since early childhood, and those guys were looking fir somebody like me". Hogan brothers (Noel and Mike) and drummer Fergal Lawler were founders of the new rock band. Dolores had pink catsuit on her first meeting with the band and that of course astonished guys. Her first words were: "OK, show me what do you have". Dolores took with herself poor-quality sequencer and sang them one of the songs of her idol Shinead O'Connor. Noel, Mike and Fergal were listening to Dolores with opened mouths and they had no doubt who would be a new singer of the band. Bass-guitarist [Mike] burst out laughing when he saw Dolores for the first time. He asked Dolores many a time: "Who do you think you are?" Guys from Limerick probably were waiting for a sexy, fashion-plate girl. But that boys were not like others in Dolores's life. Dolores remembers that she didn't like songs of the band: "They were not in my taste, but I saw their potential. It was Singing was easy for me so that's why I didn't care what was their first reaction on me, because I knew they would change it just after I open my mouth". In the same evening Noel gave Dolores a rough of one of his songs: "That was it," Noel remembers. "I had a tape of some of the music. I asked her to go off and write some lyrics for it. The next week she came back to the rehearsal room and she sang "Linger", which became one of the band's hits. Then in few days they wrote Sunday, and then other songs. While band's life was normalizing the private life of Dolores became the real hell: Mike O'Mahony abused her physically and psychologically, he used to beat her in the face and if she started crying he threatened throwing out the window. Strange as it may seem but Dolores really love him.. Many early songs are devoted to their doomed relationship. "I ran away from home and moved in with him, but the more successful I became, the more domineering he became and then physical violence stopped the relationship. It took me a year to get out because there was a lot of reverse psychology involved. There was this whole bit about: 'You're going to leave me now you are famous.' The more successful I got, the worse it became. I was scared. I was really frightened". Meanwhile the band had first gigs and made first demo-recordings and was renamed to more laconic "The Cranberries" on Dolores insistence. Local newspaper begun writing about them. And they became a subject of interest of many recording companies, among which were one local recording company Xeric Records. After few listening the company temporary contracted with the band. The band realized that they can't fix everything by themselves so they started looking for a manager. Piers Gilmore, the head of the Xeric Records, proposed himself to be a new band's manager. And guys didn't have really any choice as
to entrust their budget to him.
"The performance of The Cranberries consisted of four timid little teenagers, with the front person standing sideways like a statue, afraid to budge in case she tripped and fell. We weren't performers at that stage, but I think it was the potential they saw". ''I didn't like myself on the stage. Everything was ok with vocals, but I was irritated when people were gaping on me. In Ireland you could sing sitting and people will enjoy your singing even not knowing you. Nobody cares about your cloths. But after I joined the cranberries I noticed that disapproved my fashion style. When we were performing in London for the first time everyone was exasperated by my behave on the scene. They taught that I should face to the crowd. I thought in a different way, I wanted to move along the stage. It was lasting for 2 years. Meanwhile journalists were seeing at me stupid catholic girl and were trying to throw mud at me''. After selling demos of the band more and more record companies were interested in the band. Piers Gilmore (band's manager) received tons of calls. In June he rejected proposals of the following record companies: Warner, Virgin, CBS, Rough Trade, EMI and Imago. The band signed the contract with Island Records for six albums. Because the contract with Xeric was ending Gilmore hurried them demanding that first single and album had to be recorded at that year. In August the cranberries recorded their debut video for the first single Uncertain. In few weeks after very difficult work in a very short terms Uncertain EP was recorded. It was released in October, 1991. It was the first commercial mini album recorded on CD and LP. Gilmore insisted upon releasing it in that short terms. He wanted to take profit from the contract with Xeric, before the band would be in the charge of Island Records. That hurry cost much for the band. Release was pitiable and awaiting the miracle press defamed the cranberries. It was big disappointment for everybody. In February,1992 under tyrannical pressure by Piers Gilmore the cranberries were forced to get back to the studio if they didn't want to cancel a contract. Thus, against their will the band started recording the album under label of Xeric. The album was recorded under total control by Gilmore, who wanted to combine dancing rhythms with guitars. After month of infernal work in the studio only 3 songs of medium quality were recorded. After all the band lost all patience and they decided to refuse Gilmore's services. By mutual consent they decided to keep in secret the reason of the conflict for three years. Complication in the present state of affairs weighed heavily on everybody and especially on Dolores. She was depressed and lost much in a weight. In the end Dolores was bedridden for few weeks. "Everything was too much for me to bear. There was a period when I couldn't get up by myself. In that moments you understand that life it's not just a light stroll and you never know what could happen with you in the future. It was a very difficult period for me. Everything I wanted then to sing and to play in the band not attaining to the level of musical industry. You won't hold out working on demand for a long time". "It's a callous, shark, cruel industry". "People abuse the things they've been given. So I just got sick. I was depressed, I was too young, I'd never traveled anywhere, I'd had no success and no achievements and suddenly I had all this attention and ridicule. I lost around three stone in weight. I was traumatized. I just wanted to be in my bed where I used to sleep when I was a little girl, when I was happy and there was no pressure and no paranoia and no hurt. I didn't want to get up ever again". “The media started giving me a really hard time. There were just pictures of me kind of shopping, packing my groceries, on the front cover of all the magazines, all the Irish papers and stuff like that. And it was just kind of really bitchy on their behalf. And they were just saying that I was being a little pop star, and I was pulling the Irish shows -- not caring, obviously, about how I felt as I person, as one side of the media can be like that. It can be very insensitive and uncaring towards many types of artists, you know?” "It's harder being a manufactured, pop artist, you know. You're given a song and the manager says here honey, get a boob job. We were just so much more lucky in that respect". "The Cranberries were beginning to learn about the fickle nature of the music industry. That was an awful time for us when the debut single didn't do too well. I still had faith in the band but I had no faith in the music industry and then I lost faith in the world. I was 18 and in home in Limerick and I got really depressed''. Finally Dolores got over it but still the future of the band was uncertain. The cranberries needed a manager, doesn't matter who. And they found Jeff Travis from the Rough Trade. He had some business already with the cranberries, but then they were under control of Piers Gilmore, so they couldn't collaborate. At last the cranberries freed and Jeff Travis just couldn't miss possibility to work with th cranberries and he agreed. Under his guidance the band was directed to Steven Street, producer. Next half a year the band spent in Windmill Lane Studio with Steven Street, recording their debut. The album was ready in October, 1992, though to elude a conflict with Gilmore release was delayed up to April, 1993. In September, 1992 Dolores broke up with Mike O'Mahony, and it traced in many early cranberries songs. Dolores didn't want to hear anything about men for a long time. After their first single Linger of the Everebody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We album was released British slashing
articles appeared. But their tour to the USA made them really famous.
In 1994 the cranberries recorded their second album No Need To Argue and first single Zombie became a real world music hit. The antiwar song was dedicated to children who were killed in terrorist
attack.
"It was written on an English tour about, when there was a big eruption of trouble between Northern Ireland and London, and it was doing my head in. For a while, things were gnawing at me about the whole bombings thing, and I was reading articles about what was going on in Bosnia and the way women and, more painfully, kids were being treated. "At that time there was the bomb in Warrington, and those boys were killed. I remember seeing one of the mothers on television, just devastated. I felt so sad for her, that she'd carried him for nine months, been through all the morning sickness, the whole thing, and some...prick, some airhead who thought he was making a point, did that". The fact that the IRA claim their atrocities are carried out for the greater good of Dolores's homeland seems to strike a particular dischord: "The IRA are not me. I'm not the IRA. The Cranberries are not the IRA. My family are not. When it says in the song,"It's not me, it's not my family", that's what I'm saying. It's not Ireland, it's some idiots living in the past, living for a dream. OK, I know that they have their problems up there, but there was no reason why that child should have been taken, why that woman should have gone through that". Death of a child stimulated Dolores to write Zombie. Child's life was taken away. She was shopping with her son in a shop of London in 1993. Unfortunately the boy was in a wrong place at a wrong time. He died. Political and territorial difficulties between the UK and Northern Ireland were the main reasons for putting bombs there. Everything began in 1916, when a they signed a treaty under which 6 counties were hand down to the UK. And after that death, war, injustice and everything like that continues up to date. Dolores on No Need To Argue album: "I think these songs have a strong confrontational feeling to them. A lot went down with the band since the first album, and a lot went down with me personally, and I think that's reflected in these songs. I couldn't really enjoy the success of the first album, because while it was happening I was having quite a bad time personally. I was really unhappy for a long time, but I didn't really have the courage to face up to the situation. I was really confused for a long time, but eventually I sorted things out. These songs come out of a period in my life that I'd like to forget, but I don't mind singing about it". In March Dolores got injured, skiing in Swiss Alps, she harmed her knee. But in June her life was headily changed. "One night we came into the bar (Dolores and a friend) and she said (Dolores's friend) to me "I think he likes you." So then he was trying to buy me wine and stuff. Eventually, he stood up and said to our tour manager and to my band: "Well good night guys, see you tomorrow." And then he walked over and he picked me up and he threw me over his shoulder. I was like, "I changed my mind, I like men again!" That man was Don Burton, Canadian, tour-manager of Duran Duran. Dolores was chatting with him for all evening. She told him everything about herself. Don also told Dolores that he is single and he has a little son. Dolores found soul-related person in him and after 10 days after they had met she proposed to marriage to him. That man was Don Burton, Canadian, tour-manager of Duran Duran. Dolores was chatting with him for all evening. She told him everything about herself. Don also told Dolores that he is single and he has a little son. Dolores found soul-related
person in him and after 10 days after they had met she proposed to marriage to him.
They married at Holy Cross Abbey, Tipperary, Ireland on July 18, 1994. After that Dolores became a target for paparazzi who effusively were writing how Dolores got married dressed only in crawlers! It is said that after Dolores's father had seen the wedding dress he exclaimed: "That's great, of course, but where is the dress?" :) Don came for Dolores on a cart. Approx 200 persons presented on her wedding. 1995 and 1996 were pretty difficult years of cranberries' life: tense touring and constant pressure by mass-media. Many Dolores's friends have gone from here life, she was afraid of losing her love to Don, she worried about war conflict on Balkan, she criticized woman who made abortions, the world's reigning violence upset her, lot of died women and children in the war. Dolores said that her only buddy at that
time was CNN channel with it's horrible news from different parts of the world.
Third album To The Faithful Departed was done the utmost of the cranberries power. It was more gloomy, aggressive than previous albums. Critics were divided in opinion: some were giving highest marks to albums, but other threw mud at the cranberries and deride it. In the end the band couldn't stand up to criticism, Dolores couldn't bear it anymore (her knee trauma also strongly influenced on her), she lost much in weight, constantly smoked and drunk a wine. "You know, it was a beautiful album, and I really don't think we could have done any better. We were living in the public eye, we were living in hotel rooms for six or seven years, and we had no lives. So obviously you're going to turn around and get depressed and write an album like To The Faithful Departed, which is all about 'Can I really save the world?' I was really depressed, and I was really thinking, 'Hmm. Maybe I should die now.' I was really down, and I was obsessed with the notion of death- for awhile anyway". "When we created To The Faithful Departed it was obvious that we were at the breaking point, we lost fun. The pleasure totally has gone from our life". "I guess the thinness was a good thing, because if it wasn't for that, I don't think I would have gotten away. It got to a point where I was just so thin - I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything pleasurable, anything easy. But of course, I could smoke 500 fags a day". "I remember it got to a point where I couldn't sit down comfortably in chairs, I was really that thin". "I just didn't want to hear it because there was such pressure on me to finish the tour, and I guess I wanted to be bloody perfect". "You know, I was just quite sick and stressed from working too much and just not coming home and not having any sense of reality, I felt like I had no real kind of love around me, no stability. You end up being kind of messed up". "I was just collapsing under the grueling schedule and everything that was going on - it was just too much. But when I reached out for help, nobody wanted to hear it. Nobody wanted to know that I wanted to cancel [the tour]. Because at the end of the day, it's a lot of money for a lot of people, and you're just a bloody product". "It was such an amazing dream, and when it did happen I just never wanted it to end. I never wanted to give up, I wanted to keep doing it forever. And it ate me up". "I said that if I ever went back to singing again it would have to be because I missed it. I remembering deciding that we needed to come back to music on our own terms, not the madness that passed for living in the early years". Doctors prescribed Dolores sole healing - the enduring rest. So Don and Dolores went to rest on Caribbean Islands, where they spent the end of 1995. Dolores didn't wanted to hear about reunion of the band, she retired with her husband in Canada, in Toronto suburb. At that times guys were traveling throughout the world, though separately. "The truth was I didn't have a home for a long time. I was living in a flat with an old boyfriend when I joined the band, and split up with him when I was 20. So I had no home for a long time, except that cottage in Canada. [Dolores is married to Canadian Don Burton, her ex-tour manager.] So in the last couple of years we managed to get out home together, and it's amazing. I love it. It feels so good to have a home, somewhere that you can call yours. Escapism, it's lovely". "My husband had me freaked out for the first year here, that wolves and bears would get me. But Canada is such an
amazing country in terms of animals and landscape. We'll be back".
Dolores started enjoying her life and in the beginning of 1997 she found out, that she is pregnant. "I thought, now I want to have a baby. Because you've had three albums, sold 20 something million. That's more that I thought I would do at 25. Now I would like to have a baby because I'd like to grow up with my child". "During the pregnancy what happened was I found myself singing, and I was really glad because the love for singing came back, and it came back naturally. And I guess it came back because I was going through such a nice, happy, normal, human things again. You have to let it come back. It takes a bit of time but if it's in your soul, it'll come back as soon as your wounds heal". Dolores's life has been changed once again, her baby became the main aim of her life. She dedicated Animal Instinct, Shattered, You And Me to her son Taylor. Dolores and The Cranberries decided to treat show business in different way, and not to take everything very much to heart. In September 1997 guys flied to Toronto to Dolores (she was on her 7th month of pregnancy), where in Metal Work Studio they recorded songs to their next album. In the same time they received e-mails with threats from one German fan, who wanted to became a member of Dolores's family. The madman was imprisoned, and the incident inspired the cranberries to write "Such A Shame" song. On November 23, 1997 Taylor Baxter Burton, Dolores's first child, was born. He became the main inspiration for Dolores,
she dedicated many songs to him.
Dolores changed her image, she stopped wearing short haircuts and eccentric clothes. She became more feminine, long-haired (though she cut them later again). "Of course, yes. I'm...I'm a woman now. I've travelled, I'm married, I've done lots of things and seen a lot now. Anyway inevitable I would feel differently at 18 than when I was 21 or 22, wouldn't I?" “I've got a beautiful husband and a beautiful child. It's natural to want to be liked, but if somebody thinks that I'm shit, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it”. "It took about six to eight months for me to come down. And then I got pregnant and had a baby. And I just learned to be really, really happy and fell in love with my baby and my husband. I got to know my family. I learned
what it was to have fun again".
After that Dolores was ready to work again in show business. In 1999 the band released their 4th album Bury The Hatchet. They made a deal to work without stresses, shock, no depression and disappointment, only with optimism. The Cranberries has changed their style of music. "There are songs on this album that you could never write on tour. There's humour, there's happiness, there's sheer cheekiness. When you're on tour your living a certain life, and you feel that people are looking at you too much. It's not the greatest place to write songs. When you go home you're really relaxed, and you're just writing songs as a human being, and I think that people relate to them more". "Life is strange, but at the end of the day, when you're lying on your death bed, you look back and you think, 'Have I had a happy life?' Was it fun, and what have I to show?' It's fine having money but you can't take that with you. That's not what it's about. You can't take your materialism with you to the grave, but you can take beautiful memories and you can die with a big smile on your face". "When we came back together to start working, we said, 'We'll bury the hatchet on the past, between ourselves, between ourselves and the critics,' We wanted to learn from everything that had happened instead of dwelling on it". "We recorded at Metalworks when I was seven months pregnant. My voice sounded very different then. There were certain sounds, when I was very big, [that] I didn't think I could make, because I couldn't breathe right; but when I started to sing it felt so right. After I had the baby, I was going to re-do them, but I listened to it and knew I couldn't re-create it". Dolores dedicated herself to her husband Don, son Taylor and her stepson Donny. In the end of 2000 The Cranberries full of optimism began recording songs for the 5th album. Dolores's second pregnancy
once again inspired her. On January 27, 2001 Molly, the second child in Burtons' family was born.
Their new Wake Up And Smell The Coffee album was the most optimistic and "light". Even "cold" reviews of musical critics couldn't mar the cranberries' pleasure: Dolores stopped worrying what people were thinking about her, she just was enjoying every moment of her life, love her family. They named their fifth album "Wake Up and Smell the Coffee" because "that was I am feeling in current moment of my life, and it seems guys also do. That sounds killing, really! It posses songs which we just weren't able to create before. I think the more wrinkles you have the wiser you are". "There was a point in the last year or so when I finally saw the beauty I had been blind to for so long, These songs say 'don't stress worrying about tomorrow, next week, next year, when there's so much beauty around".
My life is more perfect now. I thought it would never happen, but lastly I achieved everything I wanted.
"It's a total cliche, but, you know, the kids really do change everything. I'd probably still be out there gigging in strange cities for a few extra meaningless zeros on a paycheque if it wasn't for them. They gave me a whole new focus, they affect everything I do from the way I write to the way I perform. I've come a long way from having CNN as my only buddy, haven't I?" "We've proven ourselves by now, so we're really relaxed and really enjoyed ourselves in the studio, totally going with the flow". It was the main motto of their work in 2002, in which The Cranberries released the collection of their best songs "Stars: The Best of 1992-2002". “We've completed a circle. It's been an incredible lesson in life but we feel like we're at the end of an era and at the beginning of a different kind of era. We started as teenagers than we went to America and we become very big, [only] a few Irish bands did it -- we did! Than we played around the world and we decided to take a break because we lost our own identity. And than we got together just for fun and we've got the fun back into the band that we've lost to become such a big and famous band. We captured that fun again and now we feel like beginning again just like we were teenagers”.
In 2003 after few summer gigs Dolores decided to start her solo career. "I want to do what I couldn't afford to myself for the last 10 years. Every time when I wanted to take a break I became pregnant or had anorexia. Now I have 2 children and I'm completely exhausted!" At first the was going to record sixth album but Dolores lost ionterest to it and boys agreed with her. Noel also started his solo project named as Mono Band. For all that time Dolores and Dolores were living in Canada. They came to Ireland for the few times. Dolores is writing songs for her solo album. On March, 2004 a woman who worked as a childminder for the Cranberries singer Dolores O'Riordan-Burton and her husband, Donald Burton, has brought High Court proceedings against the couple. Ms Joy Fahy, who previously also worked as a childminder for U2 drummer Larry Mullen, is suing the Burtons, who live at Riverfield Stud, Kilmallock, Co Limerick, claiming breach of contract and false imprisonment arising from her employment with the couple as childminder for their son from June 1999. But
Dolores and Don won the case.
In many articles of that time rumors were spread that The Cranberries were taking a break or broke up. At first their official site denied all rumors but on March, 2004 after the concert in San-Remo (March, 2004), where Dolores O’Riordan performed Ave Maria (Schubert version), which is one of the soundtracks to the Passion of the Christ Mel Gibson’s film, singer confirmed that cranberries will take a break in their career. Dolores said that after 13 years as the cranberries singer she would like to try herself in different new spheres of the music. She said about cranberries future: “I’m not very sure, you know, right now I’m kind to try different things…” And this means that it’s a new ‘’non-cranberries’’ period in Dolores life. On April, 2004 Dolores O'Riordan has recorded and contributed a song entitled "Angels Go to Heaven" to the Italian horror movie EvilEnko. The song was written by Dolores and Angelo
Badalamenti.
As a part of her solo career Dolores sang in a duet with Zucchero performing "Pure Love" (original
title of Zucchero song "Puro Amore") in Albert hole, London, then in Milan, Italy, and also in Festivalbar.
On 06 June, 2004 Dolores made a surprise appearance on Friday at Lisbon's Rock in Rio festival, after lending her support to Amnesty International in a conference for the organization, where she performed old cranberries songs "Linger" and "Zombie". June, 2004 Dolores collaborated with German Jam & Spoon and in result she recorded a "Mirror Lover", which is unusual for The Cranberries song, for Tripomatic Fairytales 3003 album of Jam & Spoon. On April 11, 2005 Dolores gives birth to a baby girl (her third child) Dakota Rain. October 19, 2005 a guest shared links for 2 new solo songs of Dolores's upcoming album: "Letting Go" and "In The Garden". As n The Garden appears to be song No.5, it's possible that it was taken from some 5-track demo. Major Italian newspapers Il Giornale and La Repubblica reported that Dolores would be alongside performers Riccardo Cocciante, Gigi D’Alessio, Claudio Baglioni, Dolcenera, Alex Britti, white Eyes Peas, Negramaro, Mango, Nicky Nicolai and Stefano Di Battista Quartet this year. This year's concert will take place on December 3,
2005 and will be broadcast on Italian TV network Canale 5 and on radio network RTL 102.5 at 9:00 PM on December 24.
In new Hot Press interview Dolores said her future solo album would be released in spring-summer, 2006 and that the forthcoming solo album is the most "dark and personal". She also confirmed that "white Widow," a song that she originally recorded in 2003, will finally see release on the album: "There’s a very intricate and eerie song on it, ‘The white Widow,’ which is about watching my husband’s mum die of cancer. There’s another one, ‘Letting Go,’ which leaked on to our site and made me realise how out of control this piracy thing’s got. Hot Press also teases that that they have details of her (new?) collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti, but for that, you'll have to pick up the next print issue of Hot Press. Badalamenti said last year that he wanted to work with her to create " another kind of Dolores O'Riordan".
her grandfather Joe was the best friend of Dolores, later she wrote two songs dedicated to him (Atosa (Iosa) and Joe).
When she had to go to school she have understood that her desired way of life (of being boy) contradicted to what catholic society was expecting from her. Her older sister leaved parents' home and Dolores was the only girl who had to help her mother, who was teaching and admonished her all the time, so that Dolores got a lot of complexes concerning her exterior. When Dolores was 11 she wrote her first song "Calling" on the old synthesizer Yamaha and the drum-machine. "I started writing songs when I was 12. It's really great to recall them in memory. I still can't believe I could wrote such songs. One may thought that they were written by a person 20 years of age. I always perceived everything seriously and took it to heart, and my internal life was like a fight". Dolores remembers that that song was about one guy, who was 10 years older than Dolores, but still she liked him very much. He probably took her as a child. One he hugged her, but there was nothing more between them. He failed to realized how much Dolores loved him. Nevertheless, in that age you never know what you really want. According to Dolores, when she was 13 she hated herself. Her child's protective mechanism of being a boy failed and still she couldn't realize how to be a girl. "I just didn't want to become a woman, I didn't want to have fat flabby sides!" Dolores didn't care what boys were thinking about her, though she evoked their interest. Dolores thought: "Oh God, why do I live, what for... to please men on a leash? No, it's not for me for sure. I would better sit in a bedroom or go with mother on church service. That would be much gaily". The girl still spent all the time with boys, though she never tried to attract their attention. She hided her sexuality. She never wore dresses or skirts, she preferred to dress shabby jeans and t-shirts. She didn't get on with her girl class-mates, she preferred to stood aside. Once teachers and parents insisted that she had to have long hair cut, but Dolores plastered her hear with chewing gum and pressed that her hair was cut. Dolores went to school in ragged uniform to spite everybody. She had 10 ear-rings, though her teacher was in a habit of taking them off. When I was 12 I was asked to play the role of Dorothy in "The wizard of Oz". He already had wonderful voice by that time. "it's disgusting! I came to a hall full of teachers looking at me and the only thing I could do it was laughing. I already had strong character; I used to play tricks on my class-mates, disarrange order. I was the leader and it was too much to play the role of idiotic Dorothy for such a trouble-maker as I was. And of course I refused. They allowed me to play the role of a peasant. I had to sing outside the stage and then walked on the scene shoving a handcart. Beautiful voice and ardent desire of singing always attracted attention to Dolores. "One of my earliest memories is being about 5 I was at school and the headmistress brought me out of my class and up into the 6th class where the 12 year old girls were. She sat me up on my teachers desk and told me to sing for them. I loved it, singing was something I had that could win people over..." She also recalled: "I always loved and wanted singing, I started singing after I learnt how to speak. My mother also was singing always at home, but I haven't noticed that before my boyfriend told me that after he came home to me". Nevertheless, Dolores grew up in strict catholic family, she got her own opinion concerning religion: "I was never like: 'Hello, I'm a catholic and I'm into Jesus Christ and John and all the boys,' you know. When I was a teenager I was, like, falling asleep in church, but when it came to the hymns, then I was like yes!, because I loved the hymns, the Gregorian hymns", "Oh, great tunes. That's definitely where rock'n'roll came from!" "I suppose being brought up a Catholic was good, as opposed to having a mother into voodoo or white magic or something. It could be worse". "The catholic church does, for some people, leave lots of scars. And I have to say I didn't come out smiling from my Catholic childhood. I had lots of problems, you know, lots of hang-ups. But you get over it and get on with life. Whatever was good, take that with you. Whatever was bad, get over it, get it out of your head, leave it behind. And that's what I think I did. I don't go to church very much any more, you know". Dolores studied playing the piano, she sang in a choir. That's what exactly liked most of all. "I played harmonium in my church for 10 years, and I spent eight years with the classical piano. I used to go from school to piano lessons to home and maybe I'd have to got to church and then I might have some homework and go to bed. I came from a strict childhood. I didn't get out much, right up till I was 17. I kind of had to run away". So, Dolores was 17. At this age she had two very important events in her life: she learns playing the guitar and fell in love for the first time in her life. Mike O'Mahony was her first real love and Dolores decided that she had not got a chance living in Irish solitude. And she decided to leave parent's home under protest of parents. "I wanted to live in the city, because I wanted to get tough as a woman. I knew that if I stayed at home...the only way, as a woman, you could get out of my house was to get married, that whole catholic family thing. So I kind of did a runner". Dolores moved to Mike and lived for a long time with him, not working anywhere. "At 18 I left home because I wanted to sing," she recalls. "My parent s wanted me to go to college and things like that. I was really poor for a year-and-a-half; I remember actually being hungry, like I'd die for a bag of chips". It seems that for the first time Dolores took her life for principle that ''life with beloved is a love in a cottage''. But every day their relations were getting worse and worse... In spring 1999 her acquaintance told that her boyfriend just leaved one band, where he was a soloist. That guy was Nial O'Quinn and the band was called The Cranberry Saw Us. That band was looking for a new singer. Dolores who was singing in pubs for some time decided to try her luck. "When I start singing in the band I was still studying in the school. My parents were definitely against my choice. They wanted me to finish school and enter university. But I had my own way, because I wanted to be a singer since early childhood, and those guys were looking fir somebody like me". Hogan brothers (Noel and Mike) and drummer Fergal Lawler were founders of the new rock band. Dolores had pink catsuit on her first meeting with the band and that of course astonished guys. Her first words were: "OK, show me what do you have". Dolores took with herself poor-quality sequencer and sang them one of the songs of her idol Shinead O'Connor. Noel, Mike and Fergal were listening to Dolores with opened mouths and they had no doubt who would be a new singer of the band. Bass-guitarist [Mike] burst out laughing when he saw Dolores for the first time. He asked Dolores many a time: "Who do you think you are?" Guys from Limerick probably were waiting for a sexy, fashion-plate girl. But that boys were not like others in Dolores's life. Dolores remembers that she didn't like songs of the band: "They were not in my taste, but I saw their potential. It was Singing was easy for me so that's why I didn't care what was their first reaction on me, because I knew they would change it just after I open my mouth". In the same evening Noel gave Dolores a rough of one of his songs: "That was it," Noel remembers. "I had a tape of some of the music. I asked her to go off and write some lyrics for it. The next week she came back to the rehearsal room and she sang "Linger", which became one of the band's hits. Then in few days they wrote Sunday, and then other songs. While band's life was normalizing the private life of Dolores became the real hell: Mike O'Mahony abused her physically and psychologically, he used to beat her in the face and if she started crying he threatened throwing out the window. Strange as it may seem but Dolores really love him.. Many early songs are devoted to their doomed relationship. "I ran away from home and moved in with him, but the more successful I became, the more domineering he became and then physical violence stopped the relationship. It took me a year to get out because there was a lot of reverse psychology involved. There was this whole bit about: 'You're going to leave me now you are famous.' The more successful I got, the worse it became. I was scared. I was really frightened". Meanwhile the band had first gigs and made first demo-recordings and was renamed to more laconic "The Cranberries" on Dolores insistence. Local newspaper begun writing about them. And they became a subject of interest of many recording companies, among which were one local recording company Xeric Records. After few listening the company temporary contracted with the band. The band realized that they can't fix everything by themselves so they started looking for a manager. Piers Gilmore, the head of the Xeric Records, proposed himself to be a new band's manager. And guys didn't have really any choice as
to entrust their budget to him.
"The performance of The Cranberries consisted of four timid little teenagers, with the front person standing sideways like a statue, afraid to budge in case she tripped and fell. We weren't performers at that stage, but I think it was the potential they saw". ''I didn't like myself on the stage. Everything was ok with vocals, but I was irritated when people were gaping on me. In Ireland you could sing sitting and people will enjoy your singing even not knowing you. Nobody cares about your cloths. But after I joined the cranberries I noticed that disapproved my fashion style. When we were performing in London for the first time everyone was exasperated by my behave on the scene. They taught that I should face to the crowd. I thought in a different way, I wanted to move along the stage. It was lasting for 2 years. Meanwhile journalists were seeing at me stupid catholic girl and were trying to throw mud at me''. After selling demos of the band more and more record companies were interested in the band. Piers Gilmore (band's manager) received tons of calls. In June he rejected proposals of the following record companies: Warner, Virgin, CBS, Rough Trade, EMI and Imago. The band signed the contract with Island Records for six albums. Because the contract with Xeric was ending Gilmore hurried them demanding that first single and album had to be recorded at that year. In August the cranberries recorded their debut video for the first single Uncertain. In few weeks after very difficult work in a very short terms Uncertain EP was recorded. It was released in October, 1991. It was the first commercial mini album recorded on CD and LP. Gilmore insisted upon releasing it in that short terms. He wanted to take profit from the contract with Xeric, before the band would be in the charge of Island Records. That hurry cost much for the band. Release was pitiable and awaiting the miracle press defamed the cranberries. It was big disappointment for everybody. In February,1992 under tyrannical pressure by Piers Gilmore the cranberries were forced to get back to the studio if they didn't want to cancel a contract. Thus, against their will the band started recording the album under label of Xeric. The album was recorded under total control by Gilmore, who wanted to combine dancing rhythms with guitars. After month of infernal work in the studio only 3 songs of medium quality were recorded. After all the band lost all patience and they decided to refuse Gilmore's services. By mutual consent they decided to keep in secret the reason of the conflict for three years. Complication in the present state of affairs weighed heavily on everybody and especially on Dolores. She was depressed and lost much in a weight. In the end Dolores was bedridden for few weeks. "Everything was too much for me to bear. There was a period when I couldn't get up by myself. In that moments you understand that life it's not just a light stroll and you never know what could happen with you in the future. It was a very difficult period for me. Everything I wanted then to sing and to play in the band not attaining to the level of musical industry. You won't hold out working on demand for a long time". "It's a callous, shark, cruel industry". "People abuse the things they've been given. So I just got sick. I was depressed, I was too young, I'd never traveled anywhere, I'd had no success and no achievements and suddenly I had all this attention and ridicule. I lost around three stone in weight. I was traumatized. I just wanted to be in my bed where I used to sleep when I was a little girl, when I was happy and there was no pressure and no paranoia and no hurt. I didn't want to get up ever again". “The media started giving me a really hard time. There were just pictures of me kind of shopping, packing my groceries, on the front cover of all the magazines, all the Irish papers and stuff like that. And it was just kind of really bitchy on their behalf. And they were just saying that I was being a little pop star, and I was pulling the Irish shows -- not caring, obviously, about how I felt as I person, as one side of the media can be like that. It can be very insensitive and uncaring towards many types of artists, you know?” "It's harder being a manufactured, pop artist, you know. You're given a song and the manager says here honey, get a boob job. We were just so much more lucky in that respect". "The Cranberries were beginning to learn about the fickle nature of the music industry. That was an awful time for us when the debut single didn't do too well. I still had faith in the band but I had no faith in the music industry and then I lost faith in the world. I was 18 and in home in Limerick and I got really depressed''. Finally Dolores got over it but still the future of the band was uncertain. The cranberries needed a manager, doesn't matter who. And they found Jeff Travis from the Rough Trade. He had some business already with the cranberries, but then they were under control of Piers Gilmore, so they couldn't collaborate. At last the cranberries freed and Jeff Travis just couldn't miss possibility to work with th cranberries and he agreed. Under his guidance the band was directed to Steven Street, producer. Next half a year the band spent in Windmill Lane Studio with Steven Street, recording their debut. The album was ready in October, 1992, though to elude a conflict with Gilmore release was delayed up to April, 1993. In September, 1992 Dolores broke up with Mike O'Mahony, and it traced in many early cranberries songs. Dolores didn't want to hear anything about men for a long time. After their first single Linger of the Everebody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We album was released British slashing
articles appeared. But their tour to the USA made them really famous.
In 1994 the cranberries recorded their second album No Need To Argue and first single Zombie became a real world music hit. The antiwar song was dedicated to children who were killed in terrorist
attack.
"It was written on an English tour about, when there was a big eruption of trouble between Northern Ireland and London, and it was doing my head in. For a while, things were gnawing at me about the whole bombings thing, and I was reading articles about what was going on in Bosnia and the way women and, more painfully, kids were being treated. "At that time there was the bomb in Warrington, and those boys were killed. I remember seeing one of the mothers on television, just devastated. I felt so sad for her, that she'd carried him for nine months, been through all the morning sickness, the whole thing, and some...prick, some airhead who thought he was making a point, did that". The fact that the IRA claim their atrocities are carried out for the greater good of Dolores's homeland seems to strike a particular dischord: "The IRA are not me. I'm not the IRA. The Cranberries are not the IRA. My family are not. When it says in the song,"It's not me, it's not my family", that's what I'm saying. It's not Ireland, it's some idiots living in the past, living for a dream. OK, I know that they have their problems up there, but there was no reason why that child should have been taken, why that woman should have gone through that". Death of a child stimulated Dolores to write Zombie. Child's life was taken away. She was shopping with her son in a shop of London in 1993. Unfortunately the boy was in a wrong place at a wrong time. He died. Political and territorial difficulties between the UK and Northern Ireland were the main reasons for putting bombs there. Everything began in 1916, when a they signed a treaty under which 6 counties were hand down to the UK. And after that death, war, injustice and everything like that continues up to date. Dolores on No Need To Argue album: "I think these songs have a strong confrontational feeling to them. A lot went down with the band since the first album, and a lot went down with me personally, and I think that's reflected in these songs. I couldn't really enjoy the success of the first album, because while it was happening I was having quite a bad time personally. I was really unhappy for a long time, but I didn't really have the courage to face up to the situation. I was really confused for a long time, but eventually I sorted things out. These songs come out of a period in my life that I'd like to forget, but I don't mind singing about it". In March Dolores got injured, skiing in Swiss Alps, she harmed her knee. But in June her life was headily changed. "One night we came into the bar (Dolores and a friend) and she said (Dolores's friend) to me "I think he likes you." So then he was trying to buy me wine and stuff. Eventually, he stood up and said to our tour manager and to my band: "Well good night guys, see you tomorrow." And then he walked over and he picked me up and he threw me over his shoulder. I was like, "I changed my mind, I like men again!" That man was Don Burton, Canadian, tour-manager of Duran Duran. Dolores was chatting with him for all evening. She told him everything about herself. Don also told Dolores that he is single and he has a little son. Dolores found soul-related person in him and after 10 days after they had met she proposed to marriage to him. That man was Don Burton, Canadian, tour-manager of Duran Duran. Dolores was chatting with him for all evening. She told him everything about herself. Don also told Dolores that he is single and he has a little son. Dolores found soul-related
person in him and after 10 days after they had met she proposed to marriage to him.
They married at Holy Cross Abbey, Tipperary, Ireland on July 18, 1994. After that Dolores became a target for paparazzi who effusively were writing how Dolores got married dressed only in crawlers! It is said that after Dolores's father had seen the wedding dress he exclaimed: "That's great, of course, but where is the dress?" :) Don came for Dolores on a cart. Approx 200 persons presented on her wedding. 1995 and 1996 were pretty difficult years of cranberries' life: tense touring and constant pressure by mass-media. Many Dolores's friends have gone from here life, she was afraid of losing her love to Don, she worried about war conflict on Balkan, she criticized woman who made abortions, the world's reigning violence upset her, lot of died women and children in the war. Dolores said that her only buddy at that
time was CNN channel with it's horrible news from different parts of the world.
Third album To The Faithful Departed was done the utmost of the cranberries power. It was more gloomy, aggressive than previous albums. Critics were divided in opinion: some were giving highest marks to albums, but other threw mud at the cranberries and deride it. In the end the band couldn't stand up to criticism, Dolores couldn't bear it anymore (her knee trauma also strongly influenced on her), she lost much in weight, constantly smoked and drunk a wine. "You know, it was a beautiful album, and I really don't think we could have done any better. We were living in the public eye, we were living in hotel rooms for six or seven years, and we had no lives. So obviously you're going to turn around and get depressed and write an album like To The Faithful Departed, which is all about 'Can I really save the world?' I was really depressed, and I was really thinking, 'Hmm. Maybe I should die now.' I was really down, and I was obsessed with the notion of death- for awhile anyway". "When we created To The Faithful Departed it was obvious that we were at the breaking point, we lost fun. The pleasure totally has gone from our life". "I guess the thinness was a good thing, because if it wasn't for that, I don't think I would have gotten away. It got to a point where I was just so thin - I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't do anything pleasurable, anything easy. But of course, I could smoke 500 fags a day". "I remember it got to a point where I couldn't sit down comfortably in chairs, I was really that thin". "I just didn't want to hear it because there was such pressure on me to finish the tour, and I guess I wanted to be bloody perfect". "You know, I was just quite sick and stressed from working too much and just not coming home and not having any sense of reality, I felt like I had no real kind of love around me, no stability. You end up being kind of messed up". "I was just collapsing under the grueling schedule and everything that was going on - it was just too much. But when I reached out for help, nobody wanted to hear it. Nobody wanted to know that I wanted to cancel [the tour]. Because at the end of the day, it's a lot of money for a lot of people, and you're just a bloody product". "It was such an amazing dream, and when it did happen I just never wanted it to end. I never wanted to give up, I wanted to keep doing it forever. And it ate me up". "I said that if I ever went back to singing again it would have to be because I missed it. I remembering deciding that we needed to come back to music on our own terms, not the madness that passed for living in the early years". Doctors prescribed Dolores sole healing - the enduring rest. So Don and Dolores went to rest on Caribbean Islands, where they spent the end of 1995. Dolores didn't wanted to hear about reunion of the band, she retired with her husband in Canada, in Toronto suburb. At that times guys were traveling throughout the world, though separately. "The truth was I didn't have a home for a long time. I was living in a flat with an old boyfriend when I joined the band, and split up with him when I was 20. So I had no home for a long time, except that cottage in Canada. [Dolores is married to Canadian Don Burton, her ex-tour manager.] So in the last couple of years we managed to get out home together, and it's amazing. I love it. It feels so good to have a home, somewhere that you can call yours. Escapism, it's lovely". "My husband had me freaked out for the first year here, that wolves and bears would get me. But Canada is such an
amazing country in terms of animals and landscape. We'll be back".
Dolores started enjoying her life and in the beginning of 1997 she found out, that she is pregnant. "I thought, now I want to have a baby. Because you've had three albums, sold 20 something million. That's more that I thought I would do at 25. Now I would like to have a baby because I'd like to grow up with my child". "During the pregnancy what happened was I found myself singing, and I was really glad because the love for singing came back, and it came back naturally. And I guess it came back because I was going through such a nice, happy, normal, human things again. You have to let it come back. It takes a bit of time but if it's in your soul, it'll come back as soon as your wounds heal". Dolores's life has been changed once again, her baby became the main aim of her life. She dedicated Animal Instinct, Shattered, You And Me to her son Taylor. Dolores and The Cranberries decided to treat show business in different way, and not to take everything very much to heart. In September 1997 guys flied to Toronto to Dolores (she was on her 7th month of pregnancy), where in Metal Work Studio they recorded songs to their next album. In the same time they received e-mails with threats from one German fan, who wanted to became a member of Dolores's family. The madman was imprisoned, and the incident inspired the cranberries to write "Such A Shame" song. On November 23, 1997 Taylor Baxter Burton, Dolores's first child, was born. He became the main inspiration for Dolores,
she dedicated many songs to him.
Dolores changed her image, she stopped wearing short haircuts and eccentric clothes. She became more feminine, long-haired (though she cut them later again). "Of course, yes. I'm...I'm a woman now. I've travelled, I'm married, I've done lots of things and seen a lot now. Anyway inevitable I would feel differently at 18 than when I was 21 or 22, wouldn't I?" “I've got a beautiful husband and a beautiful child. It's natural to want to be liked, but if somebody thinks that I'm shit, I'm not going to lose any sleep over it”. "It took about six to eight months for me to come down. And then I got pregnant and had a baby. And I just learned to be really, really happy and fell in love with my baby and my husband. I got to know my family. I learned
what it was to have fun again".
After that Dolores was ready to work again in show business. In 1999 the band released their 4th album Bury The Hatchet. They made a deal to work without stresses, shock, no depression and disappointment, only with optimism. The Cranberries has changed their style of music. "There are songs on this album that you could never write on tour. There's humour, there's happiness, there's sheer cheekiness. When you're on tour your living a certain life, and you feel that people are looking at you too much. It's not the greatest place to write songs. When you go home you're really relaxed, and you're just writing songs as a human being, and I think that people relate to them more". "Life is strange, but at the end of the day, when you're lying on your death bed, you look back and you think, 'Have I had a happy life?' Was it fun, and what have I to show?' It's fine having money but you can't take that with you. That's not what it's about. You can't take your materialism with you to the grave, but you can take beautiful memories and you can die with a big smile on your face". "When we came back together to start working, we said, 'We'll bury the hatchet on the past, between ourselves, between ourselves and the critics,' We wanted to learn from everything that had happened instead of dwelling on it". "We recorded at Metalworks when I was seven months pregnant. My voice sounded very different then. There were certain sounds, when I was very big, [that] I didn't think I could make, because I couldn't breathe right; but when I started to sing it felt so right. After I had the baby, I was going to re-do them, but I listened to it and knew I couldn't re-create it". Dolores dedicated herself to her husband Don, son Taylor and her stepson Donny. In the end of 2000 The Cranberries full of optimism began recording songs for the 5th album. Dolores's second pregnancy
once again inspired her. On January 27, 2001 Molly, the second child in Burtons' family was born.
Their new Wake Up And Smell The Coffee album was the most optimistic and "light". Even "cold" reviews of musical critics couldn't mar the cranberries' pleasure: Dolores stopped worrying what people were thinking about her, she just was enjoying every moment of her life, love her family. They named their fifth album "Wake Up and Smell the Coffee" because "that was I am feeling in current moment of my life, and it seems guys also do. That sounds killing, really! It posses songs which we just weren't able to create before. I think the more wrinkles you have the wiser you are". "There was a point in the last year or so when I finally saw the beauty I had been blind to for so long, These songs say 'don't stress worrying about tomorrow, next week, next year, when there's so much beauty around".
My life is more perfect now. I thought it would never happen, but lastly I achieved everything I wanted.
"It's a total cliche, but, you know, the kids really do change everything. I'd probably still be out there gigging in strange cities for a few extra meaningless zeros on a paycheque if it wasn't for them. They gave me a whole new focus, they affect everything I do from the way I write to the way I perform. I've come a long way from having CNN as my only buddy, haven't I?" "We've proven ourselves by now, so we're really relaxed and really enjoyed ourselves in the studio, totally going with the flow". It was the main motto of their work in 2002, in which The Cranberries released the collection of their best songs "Stars: The Best of 1992-2002". “We've completed a circle. It's been an incredible lesson in life but we feel like we're at the end of an era and at the beginning of a different kind of era. We started as teenagers than we went to America and we become very big, [only] a few Irish bands did it -- we did! Than we played around the world and we decided to take a break because we lost our own identity. And than we got together just for fun and we've got the fun back into the band that we've lost to become such a big and famous band. We captured that fun again and now we feel like beginning again just like we were teenagers”.
In 2003 after few summer gigs Dolores decided to start her solo career. "I want to do what I couldn't afford to myself for the last 10 years. Every time when I wanted to take a break I became pregnant or had anorexia. Now I have 2 children and I'm completely exhausted!" At first the was going to record sixth album but Dolores lost ionterest to it and boys agreed with her. Noel also started his solo project named as Mono Band. For all that time Dolores and Dolores were living in Canada. They came to Ireland for the few times. Dolores is writing songs for her solo album. On March, 2004 a woman who worked as a childminder for the Cranberries singer Dolores O'Riordan-Burton and her husband, Donald Burton, has brought High Court proceedings against the couple. Ms Joy Fahy, who previously also worked as a childminder for U2 drummer Larry Mullen, is suing the Burtons, who live at Riverfield Stud, Kilmallock, Co Limerick, claiming breach of contract and false imprisonment arising from her employment with the couple as childminder for their son from June 1999. But
Dolores and Don won the case.
In many articles of that time rumors were spread that The Cranberries were taking a break or broke up. At first their official site denied all rumors but on March, 2004 after the concert in San-Remo (March, 2004), where Dolores O’Riordan performed Ave Maria (Schubert version), which is one of the soundtracks to the Passion of the Christ Mel Gibson’s film, singer confirmed that cranberries will take a break in their career. Dolores said that after 13 years as the cranberries singer she would like to try herself in different new spheres of the music. She said about cranberries future: “I’m not very sure, you know, right now I’m kind to try different things…” And this means that it’s a new ‘’non-cranberries’’ period in Dolores life. On April, 2004 Dolores O'Riordan has recorded and contributed a song entitled "Angels Go to Heaven" to the Italian horror movie EvilEnko. The song was written by Dolores and Angelo
Badalamenti.
As a part of her solo career Dolores sang in a duet with Zucchero performing "Pure Love" (original
title of Zucchero song "Puro Amore") in Albert hole, London, then in Milan, Italy, and also in Festivalbar.
On 06 June, 2004 Dolores made a surprise appearance on Friday at Lisbon's Rock in Rio festival, after lending her support to Amnesty International in a conference for the organization, where she performed old cranberries songs "Linger" and "Zombie". June, 2004 Dolores collaborated with German Jam & Spoon and in result she recorded a "Mirror Lover", which is unusual for The Cranberries song, for Tripomatic Fairytales 3003 album of Jam & Spoon. On April 11, 2005 Dolores gives birth to a baby girl (her third child) Dakota Rain. October 19, 2005 a guest shared links for 2 new solo songs of Dolores's upcoming album: "Letting Go" and "In The Garden". As n The Garden appears to be song No.5, it's possible that it was taken from some 5-track demo. Major Italian newspapers Il Giornale and La Repubblica reported that Dolores would be alongside performers Riccardo Cocciante, Gigi D’Alessio, Claudio Baglioni, Dolcenera, Alex Britti, white Eyes Peas, Negramaro, Mango, Nicky Nicolai and Stefano Di Battista Quartet this year. This year's concert will take place on December 3,
2005 and will be broadcast on Italian TV network Canale 5 and on radio network RTL 102.5 at 9:00 PM on December 24.
In new Hot Press interview Dolores said her future solo album would be released in spring-summer, 2006 and that the forthcoming solo album is the most "dark and personal". She also confirmed that "white Widow," a song that she originally recorded in 2003, will finally see release on the album: "There’s a very intricate and eerie song on it, ‘The white Widow,’ which is about watching my husband’s mum die of cancer. There’s another one, ‘Letting Go,’ which leaked on to our site and made me realise how out of control this piracy thing’s got. Hot Press also teases that that they have details of her (new?) collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti, but for that, you'll have to pick up the next print issue of Hot Press. Badalamenti said last year that he wanted to work with her to create " another kind of Dolores O'Riordan".
