Dolores O'Riordan, Lead Singer Of The Cranberries, Dies At 46

LONDON, ENGLAND — Dolores O'Riordan, who fronted the Cranberries as it soared to the top of the music charts in the 1990s with such hits as "Dreams" and "Linger," died Sunday at a hotel in London. She was 46.

The band confirmed her death in a brief statement on its Facebook page: "Irish and international singer Dolores O’Riordan has died suddenly in London today. She was 46 years old. The lead singer with the Irish band The Cranberries was in London for a short recording session. No further details are available at this time. Family members are devastated to hear the breaking news and have requested privacy at this very difficult time."

A Metropolitan Police statement said they could not provide a cause of death.

“At this early stage the death is being treated as unexplained,” the statement said.

The Cranberries were formed in Limerick in 1989 as the Cranberry Saw Us, taking its new name when O'Riordan became lead singer, in 1990.

She was only 18 when she joined the band but in short order would become widely recognized as one of the most important voices of her generation. In 1993, the Cranberries had multi-platinum success with the album "Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?" It spawned the singles "Dreams" and "Linger," and the band followed up with 1994's No Need to Argue, another worldwide bestseller that featured the hit lead single "Zombie."

The group's success spread from the shores of Ireland around the world.

Along with the brothers Noel Hogan on guitar and Mike Hogan on bass, Fergal Lawler on drums and O'Riordan's at the microphone, the Cranberries were described by Rolling Stone in 1995 as "Ireland's biggest musical export since U2."

The band's rise in popularity coincided with the increased mainstreaming of alternative rock, broadly defined by guitar-driven songs with drumming that tends to supplement, rather than accompany, emotionally soulful songs that draw from the tuneful characteristic of pop music.

"In the band, her voice — high and breathy, but far more determined than fragile — rode atop a rich wash of electric guitars," Christine Hauser wrote in The New York Times. "Her unmistakable Irish accent and the Celtic inflections of her melodies gave her singing a plaintive individuality and a flinty core."

O'Riordan's voice conveyed delicacy but also determination and, more so over time, frustration and fading hope. While "Dreams" and "Linger" were painful confessions of love lost and yearned for, the latter "Zombie," written in response to an IRA attack that killed two young boys, was commentary about the broader world, the lyrics and O'Riordan's voice delivering a message of anger, exasperation and diminishing hope.

"Zombie" was a hit in the United States and reached No. 1 on the charts in Australia, Belgium, France, Denmark and Germany. "To the Faithful Departed," the band's album released in 1996, produced two more hits, "Salvation" and "When You're Gone." After that success, though, as their music grew more political, the Cranberries lost much of the pop audience it had attracted with an emotional, rather than intellectual, appeal.

Having sold more than 40 million records, the Cranberries split up in 2003 and re-formed in 2009.

The group canceled tour dates last year and again over the summer after O’Riordan was instructed by her doctors to stop working temporarily for medical reasons associated with a back problem, The Irish Times reported.

Ireland President Michael D. Higgins paid tribute to the late singer for adding Limerick to the list of important musical cities and what that did for the county.

“I recall with fondness the late Limerick TD Jim Kemmy’s introduction of her and The Cranberries to me, and the pride he and so many others took in their successes," he said according to the Times. To all those who follow and support Irish music, Irish musicians and the performing arts, her death will be a big loss.”

Kinks guitarist Dave Davies remembered O'Riordan on Twitter, posting a picture of them together.

He wrote: “I’m really shocked that #DoloresORiordan has passed so suddenly. I was talking to her a couple of weeks before Christmas. She seemed happy and well – we even spoke of maybe writing some songs together – unbelievable God bless her.”

The priest at O'Riordan's Ballybricken & Bohermore Catholic Parish in Limerick, Father James Walton, confirmed her funeral will take place in her home county.

O'Riordan had posted on social media last month that she was "feeling good."

Aside from her physical problems, O'Riordan spoke in an interview last year about the struggles with her mental health, laid bare by her arrest in a 2014 air-rage incident on an Aer Lingus flight from New York to Shannon. She was charged with assaulting a flight attendant and three police officers who met the plane at the airport.

At trial it was disclosed she had been suffering from a “severe mental illness” and her attorney told the court the incident was caused by a psychological collapse that left her with no memory of what had happened on the plane. She was ordered to pay a fine but the judge declined to convict her. She later spent three weeks at a psychiatric hospital and was diagnosed as bipolar.

In the interview last year with the Soul Sisters podcast, she explained that her mental health issues increasingly worsened by the intensity of her struggle to overcome the death of her father, who died in 2011.

“I felt something coming from him into my hand and into my body," O'Riordan said on the podcast. "I felt like a bit of his spirituality coming into me, and then I felt like he was inside me for a while. His spirit was in my spirit that we were caught up. It took me two years to let go.”

She had been preoccupied, even obsessed, with death since she was a teenager, O'Riordan said, and she remained so.

“I used to go to graveyards and hang out there," she said in the interview. "I know I have to die. You have to die. We all have to die.

"'When?' is the question. How long do we have here?”

Absolutely shocked to hear about the passing of Dolores O'Riordan! @The_Cranberries gave us our first big support when we toured with them around France years ago! Thoughts are with her family and friends
— Kodaline (@Kodaline) January 15, 2018

Photo credit: Franco Origlia/Getty Images