The Cranberries

Since 1989 · Ireland

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Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? (1993)

Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? pairs Dolores O'Riordan's aching, yodel-inflected voice with guitar lines that chime rather than crunch, giving the whole record a delicacy that belies how quickly it caught on. "Dreams" opens the album on a rising, almost weightless melody, O'Riordan's voice climbing into its upper register exactly when the song needs the lift. The production stays uncluttered throughout, leaving her vocal performance nowhere to hide and nothing in the way. It's the record that turned a college-radio favourite into a genuine international breakthrough almost by word of mouth alone.

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The Cranberries

Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? · 1993

The Cranberries formed in Limerick, Ireland in the late 1980s, and found their defining voice when Dolores O'Riordan joined as singer and lyricist shortly before the band signed to Island Records. Her tremulous, yodel-inflected delivery, layered over jangling, melodic guitar lines, gave the band an emotional directness that set them apart from the shoegaze and dream-pop still dominating UK indie at the time.

Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, their 1993 debut, spread slowly through college radio and MTV before turning into a genuine commercial breakthrough. The band's biggest song, "Zombie," arrived the following year, addressing the Troubles directly and becoming their most recognized single worldwide, and they kept releasing albums steadily through the following two decades. O'Riordan died suddenly in 2018, midway through recording what became the band's final album, closing out a career that had made the Cranberries one of Ireland's most successful bands.