Oh God, Not This Song Again or: How A Chinese Movie Made Me Able To Listen To The Cranberries Again

It’s been so long, that I don’t remember what the number count was, but I’m sure it was in the thirties and at least the last ten of those were in the span of a month. That’s how many times I heard ‘Zombie’ on a single car radio. It wasn’t my radio though; it was at the time an old friends’ car. Drivers choice though can only go so far. I had vowed from that point on that I would never listen to ‘Zombie’ or any Cranberries songs ever again on my own free will. If it was in a movie, I’d mute or fast forward. If it was on the radio, I’d change it if I were driving and had headphones usually when I wasn’t. I’d say the headphones were for that occasion only, but I am nowhere near that prepared of a human, they just usually are part of my every day carry. Knowingly, I had gone about five years without hearing any of their music or any variation. Unknowingly, it was three.

Two years in, Chungking Express made its way into my top ten list of movies on the first viewing after seeing a video on the movies use of California Dreaming.

What really drew me in from that video though was the use of color grading in the movie, and I wanted more. It took some time to find a copy of the movie online, but I had instantly become a fan of Wong Kar-Wai’s work afterwards. Since then I’ve seen the film at least 20 times, albeit most of those were with it in the background. It’s one of those movies that’s good to watch with purpose as well as just in the background, similar to Hackers in that way. Two years after, I was watching the second half when a song comes on that I’m really curious about. It was good but I couldn’t understand enough to find the words, so it was up to Google to help. This led to two findings. First, the song was sung in the soundtrack by the same talented actress in the scene it’s in, Faye Wong. Second, and most importantly though, it wasn’t an original. The song was Dreams, and the original artists The Cranberries.

This was obviously a shocking revelation, as for two years of my supposed Cranberries-free existence I had been enjoying them by proxy. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t always hate The Cranberries, as it turns out in may later discovery after this I had found songs from when I was a kid that I had liked from car rides with an aunt that were actually their songs, but most of my acknowledgement had been ‘Zombie’, followed by ‘Zombie’, mixed in with a few Mindless Self Indulgence tracks followed by, you guessed it, ‘Zombie’. This had broken me free of that though, and being a confused 28-year-old boy once again I did what any sane person would do. I went to one of my best friends to regale the tale of the overplayed song and the newly found song in hopes of making sense of it all. Her solution? Go down the rabbit hole.

I’m still working my way down the rabbit hole that is their discography. The day after Dolores O’Riordan, frontwoman of the band, had died, Stereogum put out a great list of “The 10 Best Cranberries Songs“. If you’re in the situation that you think the band needs to be avoided because someone has overplayed a single song of theirs in your life, this list really may just change your mind on that. When I reflect on the situation, I think that a big regret has been that I let that one song really turn me off from their entire discography. There were two lessons I took away from it though that make the experience worth it.

1. If one or two songs turn you off, you shouldn’t totally write off a bands full discography because of that.
2. I really should have considered taking a hammer to that cars stereo system.