The meaning of the song Zombie — Cranberries

Aleks Burtsev
2 min readMar 6, 2021

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Now is the time to discuss the meaning of The Cranberries’ song “Zombie”. Zombie is considered the most recognizable song of the Irish rock band The Cranberries. Many people know her, even those who are not fans of the musical group. It is not necessary to delve into the text to understand that the composition was born out of some terrible tragedy. By the way, the lyrics of the song “Zombie” as well as other popular songs can be found on the website rumedia.su.

The meaning of the song Zombie — Cranberries

The meaning of the song Zombie Cranberries

The song Zombie describes the dire consequences of the armed conflict between Ireland and England. As a result of the explosion of a bomb planted by one of the parties to the conflict, civilians, including children, were killed. It was this tragic event that became the reason for writing the composition Zombie.

The centerpiece of the song is Zombie. Dolores O’riordan uses this word when talking about murderers and terrorists. The singer believes that these people, or rather nonhumans, are as brainless as Zombies, they are guided by abstract ideas and beliefs.

They cannot understand that innocent people are the first to suffer. They want to achieve justice, but they use barbaric methods for this. It is for this reason that the singer compares them to insensitive zombies — the living dead who unquestioningly carry out criminal orders.

The performer is trying to understand what is in the mind of such zombie killers, and she herself perfectly understands that they do not understand at all who their victims are. Repeatedly repeating the lines, which are dominated by such terrible words as “tanks”, “bombs” and “guns”, the singer unwittingly escalates the atmosphere of destruction and murder.

The video for the song looks especially impressive, in which real military videos were used — the shooting of the British military and moments from the daily life of local children. However, the musicians in the song and the video did not want to focus specifically on the Irish-English conflict, but rather to sanctify the problem of military conflicts in general.

A similar effect was achieved with shots of Dolores with children. The singer’s body is covered with gold paint, and the guys were painted silver. The overflow of gold and silver is a kind of symbol of abstract beauty — exactly what many would like to observe instead of destruction and murder.

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Aleks Burtsev
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