The Alternative Number Ones: The Cranberries’ “Zombie”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

"Inna yah hayyyyy-yad! Inna yah hayyyyy-ayuh-yad! Zahhhhm-bay! Zahhhhm-bay! Ay-ih! Ay-ih! Ay-ih!" Once somebody started screeching it, everyone else had to join in. That was the unwritten rule. For what felt like an endless stretch of time -- really probably just a few months in 1994 -- that chorus played on a constant loop inna everybody's hayyyyy-yads. We couldn't escape it. Maybe we didn't want to escape it. Nobody could sing that chorus properly, of course. It's an impossible song to sing, and we were all kids. But something about the sheer impossibility, the feverish-yodel thing that Dolores O'Riordan pulled off so memorably, invited every dumb fucking teenager on the face of the earth to attempt it anyway. Most of us couldn't relate to the sentiment of "Zombie." Most of us probably had no idea what it was even about. But a chorus like that has the power to stampede all over its context. In practice, the Cranberries' "Zombie" became a song about itself.

"Zombie" was supposed to be a protest song, and I'm sure plenty of people received it that way. The Cranberries didn't exactly keep this fact a secret. The "Zombie" lyrics are a bit vague and poetic, but they're specific enough that anyone even slightly familiar with the Troubles in the North of Ireland could recognize the references. The video made those references even plainer, permanently affixing its images of British soldiers in Belfast to the chorus that we wouldn't stop singing. But to suburban American kids who heard "Zombie" one zillion times, the Troubles were remote and theoretical -- sad, upsetting things happening an ocean away, presented to us as images of car-bomb debris on the nightly news. The "Zombie" chorus, on the other hand, was not remote or theoretical. It was all around us, all the time.