It's official: never before have so many people worked hard to… make it last. The world is in the grip of a sort of fever for the Cranberries and in particular for the 1993 piece Linger. The dream pop ballad, an ode to obsessive desire, is everywhere. He benefited from a notable needle drop when in Love Story accompanies the scene where JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette wake up together the next morning for the first time. How come this 90s ballad is back after years of Zombie And Dreams Were they much more famous? Why does Dolores O'Riordan's romance still speak to us today? And why, oh why, “do we have to let it lingerrrr?”.
The linger-action goes further Love Story. There's a new Latin remix with Mexican pop singer Bratty singing in Spanish until her voice blends with O'Riordan's. Fetty Wap just released his first post-prison album, Zavierand contains a remake of Linger titled Fool for You in which he sings “You've got me wrapped around your finger” over a trap-R&B beat. When Sombr performed in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day he brought the surviving members of the Cranberries on stage to make their own Linger unleashing a chorus from the audience. And last week Olivia Rodrigo chose her for the karaoke she did to celebrate the release of Drop Dead. We're up to our necks in it.
On the 90s revival scale where 10 is Iris and 1 is, say, Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand, Linger that's a nice 9. Last year she memorably appeared in Summer in your eyes and Yungblud did it again too. The song is having its moment or, to put it in early 90s terms, Linger “is such a thing now”.
It is the first song written by the Cranberries capable of speaking to both the post-grunge alterna-teens and the mothers of Lilith Fair. It made them global stars, which is rare for gods geek who never tried to change their small-town sound that seemed rustic even by Irish standards. On the first album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? they followed in 1994 No Need to Argue And To the Faithful Departed of 1996, which closed the golden period. They continued on and off until O'Riordan's tragic death in early 2018, aged just 46.
They were four very shy boys from humble origins who grew up near Limerick (my cousin Fiona went to high school with them). I heard Linger for the first time on the radio in the car, at Easter 1993. I was shocked to hear such a strong Irish accent on American radio. No singer had ever addressed Americans with an accent like that, not even Bono had come close. What the hell was that stuff?
All in Linger it was a mystery: Dolores' melancholic voice, the languid beauty of the guitar, the Celtic melancholy, the introduction on which the band lingers for almost a minute. You could tell that the four were obsessed with The Smiths, The Cure and REM, but they had their own melodic streak (the producer was The Smiths' Stephen Street). You could also tell that the singer was a country girl, there was nothing Dublin about her voice and the way she sang phrases like “fool for you” or how she stretched out “finger” in a seven-syllable tragedy. It was the story of a disappointment in love experienced at 17 years old. “He asked me to dance, he was adorable,” she told al Guardian. “Up until that moment I had always thought that sticking your tongue in someone's mouth was disgusting, but when he gave me my first real kiss, yes, I really had to let it linger (“have to let it linger” in the original, quote from the song, ndt).
Indie music lovers complained about how much The Cranberries sounded like The Sundays, but Linger it was superior to any Sundays song, end of story. Rolling Stone featured them as “New Faces” in the same issue as Shaggy, Counting Crows and Gin Blossoms. They were precious commodities of the 90s, a band that could potentially be liked by almost everyone. The Dolores who sang Linger it was one butts up whose mother still chose the clothes and was even more rustic than her companions. So, for their first photo shoot, guitarist Noel Hogan gave her a pair of Doc Martens. «They were too big, but I put them on anyway. Suddenly, I looked like one indie girl».
Linger came out around the same time as Fade into You by Mazzy Star and held a similar allure as they were both hypnotic love laments performed by photogenic bands and enigmatic singers. Magazines loved putting the two bands on their covers, even though they were incapable of giving interviews. Journalists extolled the Cranberries' “endearing innocence,” a polite way of saying that none of them could hold a conversation. Their first profile on Rolling Stone quoted O'Riordan as saying things like “mumble mumble my mother mumble” or “mumble mumble fired mumble management”. Nobody cared. Indeed, in an era of talkative rock stars it was something new.
For a long time, the song was overshadowed by more popular pieces like Dreams. That was the Cran-jam that was heard the most on soundtracks. Dreams has appeared everywhere, from Karate Kid 4 to There's mail for you And My So-Called Lifefrom Gossip Girl to Ted Lasso And Wednesday. Zombie was an even bigger hit and remains their most streamed song though Linger is in second place and catching up. They have many other gems in their repertoire like Ode to My Family, Away, Sunday, Liars, Twenty Onebut when artists want to sound like the Cranberries, they usually choose Linger. A fan like Taylor Swift wrote Beautiful Eyesa strangely forgotten homage to the Cranberries. Swifties have created mash-ups of Linger with Ivy, August and of course Mirrorballwhich in itself already sounds a bit like Linger.
If Sinead O'Connor, who had started the decade strong with Nothing Compares 2 Udissipated public favor with the disaster of Am I Not Your Girl?fans could warm to Dolores and the unmistakable warmth of her voice. It was authentic. The Cran-gang became a constant presence in '90s pop culture. “I can't find my Cranberries CD,” says Alicia Silverstone's high school friend in panic Girls in Beverly Hills. “I have to run to the yard before someone steals it from me.”
The Lingerssance began in early 2023 with the “letting it linger” meme. After inclusion in Love Storyreached number two on the Top TV Songs chart Billboardimmediately behind another song from the same episode: Fade into Yourightly so (for some reason the bands' surviving members aren't touring as Mazzberry Star, a shout-out to their restraint). The song's brightest TV moment so far was contained in Communityin the 2010 season two premiere, in the scene where Abed plans a surprise wedding for Jeff and Britta (“He has a ring on his finger! And Abed hired an Irish singer!”). She appeared poignantly in the final episode of Derry GirlsWhere Dreams he was a recurring presence. Adam Sandler hummed it in the movie Change your life with one click of 2006, as the soundtrack to his first kiss with Kate Beckinsale. But these were exceptions: Dreams And Zombie they were the bangers that had built the Cranberries' reputation as a constant presence on soundtracks.
Among their hits, Linger it's the one from which the most vulnerability emerges and perhaps that's why it speaks to us more today than other songs. The sound is powerful because it seems fragile, the opposite of the energy of Dreams or Zombie. Listen Linger it means letting yourself be carried away by desire without trying to oppose it. There's a sense of surrender in the way the song eroticizes passivity, the relinquishment of control, of letting your feelings affect you even as they tear you apart. Perhaps in the 2020s people feel ready to do so amidst the emotional chaos everywhere. As the album title says, everybody else is doing it, why can't we?
The Cranberries have just released a new video with an apt title Scenes from Linger: The Unreleased Scenefeaturing a couple of minutes of close-up shots of Dolores O'Riordan that didn't make it into the original video. It accompanies yet another deluxe reissue of the debut album, which will be released on May 22 and includes Bratty's version. But it's impossible to say where the never-ending story of this song will end. Long may it continue, long may it linger.
From Rolling Stone US.
