Fact #164382

It says here that these young people have sold 28m albums. The obvious assumption, given the lacklustre tosh on this CD, is that all four of them have been working in a record shop 24 hours a day for a very long time, but apparently that's not the case. We're actually talking about 28m Cranberries' albums, bought quite deliberately by real people. Dolores O'Riordan still has an appealing voice, but the songs boast some of the least captivating lyrics ever devised. Lines like 'Suddenly something has happened to me, As I was having my cup of tea...' might have been quaintly forgiveable when British bands were trying to distinguish themselves from their American inspirations in 1966. Threatening a lost love with frequent tyre punctures and a touch of sunburn doesn't cut it either. Tragically, the band is no more inspired than Dolores, hacking out musical banalities that were cliches before any of them were, er, knee high to a grasshopper.
Johnny Black review in Hi Fi News July 1999