Some covers are more equal than others. Good, Better, Best looks at three covers and decides who takes home the gold, the silver, and the bronze.
Countless fans of ‘90s music love “Zombie,” many without actually having listened to it. Sure they heard it–it was inescapable in 1994–and could sing along on the chorus, but few understood it as a protest song. They wondered more about Dolores O’Riordan’s ululating vocal style than about her lyrics, her intent. (We are all a bit zombie-like in our listening habits–we respond at gut level to a singer’s emotions, rhythms, textures; the semantic processing comes later if it comes at all.) But make no mistake, “Zombie” is not only a protest song, it’s one of the great ones.
The triggering event for the Irish singer/songwriter was the killing of two young English boys by Irish paramilitary forces. Thus the mournful opening. But in the lines that feel most raw and personal O’Riordan is not protesting the violence itself, but the fact that she is so powerless against it. “But you see, it’s not me, it’s not my family.” She’s saying, in essence, “I didn’t vote for this, no one I know supports it, and yet here we are, with a select few hate-minded people preaching mindless violence.” A few extremists. Zombies.
A decade before The Cranberries’ anthem, U2 released “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” their rousing remembrance of a massacre that took place one Sunday in Londonderry/Derry in 1972. The song’s sheer outrage makes it a more overt and less poetic precursor to “Zombie.”† Both songs invoke families, both deplore the long history of the strife (“it’s the same old theme since 1916” sings O’Riordan). Both the Cranberries and U2 had to offer clarifications to the media and to their fans (and haters) that they were not siding with nationalists or paramilitary groups. And here we see what happens when people do listen to the lyrics: they misconstrue them.
To match O’Riordan’s urgency, the Cranberries revamped their sound by adding crunchy guitar distortion. It just so happens that the grunge sound was peaking at the time, and the world couldn’t get enough of that crunch. Unlike “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” “Zombie” became a juggernaut hit. Its official video has over a billion views on Youtube, and the song is approaching two billion streams on Spotify. No cover will ever overshadow the original, but the song’s power always has and always will compel artists to reanimate it.
Let’s linger over three instances: Amanda Palmer and Jherek Bischoff’s cover is good. Bad Wolves, even better. Miley Cyrus is best.
† Speaking of precursors, rewind back a decade before U2: both John Lennon and Paul McCartney each separately released songs about “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland (in Lennon’s case, two songs). But the former Beatles were off target. Their songs were musically weak; as rallying cries they were impotent. Their hearts were in the right place but their songs were not cries from the heart, and not astute politically. It took younger, hungrier, more impassioned bands to strike the nerve and perhaps even move the political needle: Bono was 22 and The Edge 21 when they recorded “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” while O’Riordan was 23 when she wrote “Zombie.”
Amanda Palmer and Jherek Bischoff – Zombie (The Cranberries cover)
The cellos and violins work beautifully here to transpose “Zombie” to a unique sonic realm. They take us far from folk, grunge, or metal, and closer to the sacred minimalism of Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki (both of whom composed work in response to political violence). The orchestration is a pleasure in itself, but it also sets up an intriguing background for Amanda Palmer’s theatrical vocal approach. Against the sobering strings she runs the gamut from breathy broken vulnerability to soaring angry rawness, and back again to quietly broken. The original was no less dramatic, and yet somehow this cover explores the performative possibilities in “Zombie” that other covers miss.
Bad Wolves – Zombie (The Cranberries cover)
In 2018, just before the shocking death of Dolores O’Riordan, the L.A.-based Bad Wolves took the song in a metallic direction. This was not a huge stretch, since the original itself demonstrated how the song could go down softer paths or down louder angrier ones with the stomp of a pedal. Nor does it take particular brilliance to update the lyrics with 21st century notes, just the common sense to not overdo it. The band works that angle just fine with references to drones and to 2018 in place of 1916.
No wonder O’Riordan was down to contribute to the Bad Wolves version, and was even scheduled to work out her part on the day she died. The Bad Wolves released their version within days of her passing, and donated all proceeds from the single to O’Riordan’s children.
The rest of the band’s career has been vexed, and their Cranberries cover remains their most notable achievement.
Miley Cyrus – Zombie (The Cranberries cover)
The multi-sided Miley Cyrus has a bad-ass old-school rocker side she’s been asserting since 2020–old news to some, but the word still needs spreading. From classic rock era staples (mid-’70s Zeppelin, Floyd, and Aerosmith), to New Wave (Blondie) to ‘90s grunge/alternative (Hole, Mazzy Star, Pearl Jam), Cyrus has delivered the rock goods with consummate skill, total commitment, and a voice meant to sing exactly this sort of material. With guitarist and producer Andrew Watt blazing through a guitar solo that is equal to Cyrus’s all-out passion, I’m not sure there’s ever going to be a cover of “Zombie” that slays like this.
Watt, by the way, is everywhere lately, playing with and producing everyone that matters. Bridging generations and genres, he’s the Rick Rubin of the age–except he can actually play an instrument. Several. Some of them really, really, well.
The surviving Cranberries are on the record that this is their cover of choice, the one that Dolores O’Riordan would most admire.
