Chords for The Cranberries The Sad Story Behind 'Zombie'
Tempo:
117.625 bpm
Chords used:
F
Fm
C
Bbm
Db
Tuning:Standard Tuning (EADGBE)Capo:+0fret
Jam Along & Learn...
What's going on my fellow rock n' rollers.
icon to be
1994 grunge was in his last throes
Chains were on hiatus, Pearl Jam was [Bbm] growing more comfortable
[Bb] fighting with Ticketmaster and Punk rock was all of a [C] sudden becoming fashionable.
One band who got their start just [F] as rock music was changing was the Irish band the Cranberries
debut record 1993's Everybody
The album [Fm] featured several hit songs including Linger
icon to be
1994 grunge was in his last throes
Chains were on hiatus, Pearl Jam was [Bbm] growing more comfortable
[Bb] fighting with Ticketmaster and Punk rock was all of a [C] sudden becoming fashionable.
One band who got their start just [F] as rock music was changing was the Irish band the Cranberries
debut record 1993's Everybody
The album [Fm] featured several hit songs including Linger
100% ➙ 118BPM
F
Fm
C
Bbm
Db
F
Fm
C
What's going on my fellow rock n' rollers.
Don't [Db] forget to hit the bell notification icon to be
notified [F] every time i put out a new video on my channel.
By 1994 grunge was in his last throes
as Nirvana was [Fm] done, Alice in Chains were on hiatus, Pearl Jam was [Bbm] growing more comfortable
with success and [Bb] fighting with Ticketmaster and Punk rock was all of a [C] sudden becoming fashionable.
One band who got their start just [F] as rock music was changing was the Irish band the Cranberries
who [G] achieved international fame with their multi [F]-platinum debut record _ 1993's Everybody
Else Is Doing It So Why Can't [G] We.
The album [Fm] featured several hit songs including Linger
in Dreams, but in 1994 the [C] band would release the biggest [F] song of their career.
As they readied to
release their sophomore record 1994 is no need to argue.
In September of 1994 the band [Fm] dropped
the song Zombie, the first single from their new record.
This is the dark history of the song.
_ _ [Dm] _ _ Released in [D] September of 1994, Zombie was an anti [Em]-war anthem that took aim at the religious
[C] violence in Northern Ireland also known as the Troubles.
[Dm] It was a far cry from the music heard
on the band's debut record, but by this point in time the violence in Northern Ireland was relentless
and occurring [D] almost on a weekly basis.
Up until this point almost 3500 people had died and tens
of thousands were injured in more than [Cm] 30 years of conflict.
There would be one incident in particular
which inspired the [F] creation of the song [Cm] and that occurred on March 20, 1993.
Explosives [Eb] hidden
under a garbage can in the city of Warrington in North [F] Western England took [Fm] the lives of a
3 year old and a 12 year old boy and [C] injured dozens of others.
The two boys had gone shopping
to buy Mother's Day [F] cards at one of the town's [Eb] busiest shopping streets.
At the [Fm] same point in
time the Cranberries were on tour in the UK and frontwoman Dolores O'Riordan was on the band's
tour bus in London when she heard the news.
It was something that would stick with her for the
next [F] little while.
Almost 2 and a half decades after writing the song [Cm] O'Riordan would look back
on the track saying I remember at the time there was a lot of bombs going off in [Db] London and the
Troubles were pretty bad.
I remember being on tour and being in the UK at the time when the child
died and just being really sad about it [Fm] all.
These bombs were going off in random places and it could
have been anyone you know.
So I suppose that's why I was saying it's not me, that even though I'm
Irish it wasn't me.
I didn't do it.
Because being Irish it was quite [Db] hard especially in the UK when
there was so [C] much tension.
It's a [Fm] tough thing to sing about but when you're [F] young you don't think
twice about things you just grab it and do it.
As you get older you develop more fear and you get
more apprehensive.
When you're young you've got no fear she'd say.
[Fm] The song was originally written
by O [C]'Riordan on an acoustic guitar late one night [Bbm] by herself during the group's UK tour.
[C]
When O'Riordan took it into [F] rehearsals they played the song on electric guitar
with her remembering it was extremely busy and we were working all the time around the clock.
That song came to me when I was in Limerick and I wrote it initially on an acoustic guitar late
at night.
I remember being in my flat coming up with the chorus which was catchy and anthemic
so [Db] I took it into rehearsals and I [F] picked up the electric guitar then I kicked in the distortion
on the [Fm] chorus and I said to my drummer maybe you could beat the drums pretty hard.
Even though it
was written on acoustic it became a bit of a [Bb] rocker.
That was the most aggressive song we'd
Zombie was quite different to what we'd done before [C] she'd remember.
The band would record the song in Dublin [F] with producer Stephen Street.
We spent a fair deal of time getting the [G] guitars to sound like other [F] alternative music that was
popular at the time.
However O [Fm]'Riordan would push back against the assertion that the band was
capitalizing off the popularity of grunge music revealing It came organically because we were
using our live instruments, we were [F] plugging in a lot, and we started to mess around with feedback
and distortion.
When you're on tour you start to mess around a bit more with the live side of
things.
There were a lot of bands around that were part of the grunge thing and this wasn't grunge,
but the timing was good.
We couldn't have really fitted in with [Dm] grunge because we were just a
different type of band.
We were Irish [D] and from Limerick and we had a lot of our own ideas.
A
lot of the grunge bands were [C] very similar to each other she'd say.
The Cranberries former
[D] manager Alan Kovac revealed to Rolling Stone magazine that the group's label Island Records
urged them not to release the politically urgent song as a single.
The label [B] offered O'Riordan
$1 million to do work on a different song, but she ripped up the [Fm] check with Kovac remembering
Dolores was a very small, fragile person, but very [Bb] opinionated.
[Gm] Her belief was that [Cm] she was
an international artist and she wanted to break [Eb] the rest of the world and zombie was part of that
[F] evolution.
She felt the need [Fm] to expand beyond I love you, you love me and write about what was
happening in [C] Ireland at the time.
While the band was already famous from [F] their first album,
Zombie [Eb] catapulted them to a new level of [Fm] popularity.
Also helping the band make a lasting
mark was the music video in which footage of the conflict in Northern Ireland is spliced with
O'Riordan who is painted gold and in the company of silver [F] painted cherubs.
The band would turn
to Samuel Bair to direct [Cm] the video and he had a pretty impressive list of credits including working
on [Fm] Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit video and Blind Melon's video for No Rain.
Bair would fly
to Belfast shortly after the ceasefire to get footage of the area and those are real British
soldiers and local children you see in the video.
O'Riordan for her part would praise Bair saying
I actually thought the director was very brave.
When he got back he was pretty pumped and there
was a lot of adrenaline pumping through him.
He was telling me how tense it was and how he was
blown away by the whole thing.
He got [F] footage of the kids jumping from one building to another
and he got a lot of footage of the army.
He was [Fm] a very good director i should say.
[F] Upon [F] its release as the first single [Fm] from the band's sophomore record
[Bbm] Zombie would hit number [C] one in several countries on the [Bbm] rock charts and would be certified platinum
in Germany [C] and Australia.
At the [Db] MTV awards the band beat up both Michael [F] Jackson and TLC
to win the best song award, but that paled in comparison when the band got the opportunity
to perform the song live at [Fm] the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to honor those who brought a peaceful
solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
No Need to Argue would go on to sell almost 20
million copies based on the strength of the [F] single.
O'Riordan looked back on the success
of the song and the album saying I wouldn't change [Fm] anything about it because [F] it did so well.
It was [Fm] well written and it was well composed.
I think it did so well because it's [Bbm] hard to
categorize [C] it and I still like singing it.
The [Bbm] band would end up re-releasing the song with an
acoustic [C] version that was played alongside [F] the Irish Chamber Orchestra for the band's record
Something Else.
The song of course got another boost when modern rock band Bad Wolves
covered the song in early 2018.
O'Riordan was originally [Fm] supposed to sing on the cover,
[F] but she sadly passed away before she could contribute to [Fm] the song.
In response the band
Bad Wolves mulled [F] releasing the cover, but went through with it and it topped the rock charts and
peaked at number [Fm] 18 on the top 40 charts.
[F] The band would donate $250,000 to O'Riordan's [Bbm] three children
and in [C] 2020 the Cranberries became the [Bbm] first Irish band to hit 1 billion views on [C] YouTube
with their song Zombie.
[Db] That does it for [F] today's video guys.
Thanks for watching.
Be sure to hit
the like button and subscribe.
If you guys have suggestions for future topics let me know in the
comments section below.
Take care. _
Don't [Db] forget to hit the bell notification icon to be
notified [F] every time i put out a new video on my channel.
By 1994 grunge was in his last throes
as Nirvana was [Fm] done, Alice in Chains were on hiatus, Pearl Jam was [Bbm] growing more comfortable
with success and [Bb] fighting with Ticketmaster and Punk rock was all of a [C] sudden becoming fashionable.
One band who got their start just [F] as rock music was changing was the Irish band the Cranberries
who [G] achieved international fame with their multi [F]-platinum debut record _ 1993's Everybody
Else Is Doing It So Why Can't [G] We.
The album [Fm] featured several hit songs including Linger
in Dreams, but in 1994 the [C] band would release the biggest [F] song of their career.
As they readied to
release their sophomore record 1994 is no need to argue.
In September of 1994 the band [Fm] dropped
the song Zombie, the first single from their new record.
This is the dark history of the song.
_ _ [Dm] _ _ Released in [D] September of 1994, Zombie was an anti [Em]-war anthem that took aim at the religious
[C] violence in Northern Ireland also known as the Troubles.
[Dm] It was a far cry from the music heard
on the band's debut record, but by this point in time the violence in Northern Ireland was relentless
and occurring [D] almost on a weekly basis.
Up until this point almost 3500 people had died and tens
of thousands were injured in more than [Cm] 30 years of conflict.
There would be one incident in particular
which inspired the [F] creation of the song [Cm] and that occurred on March 20, 1993.
Explosives [Eb] hidden
under a garbage can in the city of Warrington in North [F] Western England took [Fm] the lives of a
3 year old and a 12 year old boy and [C] injured dozens of others.
The two boys had gone shopping
to buy Mother's Day [F] cards at one of the town's [Eb] busiest shopping streets.
At the [Fm] same point in
time the Cranberries were on tour in the UK and frontwoman Dolores O'Riordan was on the band's
tour bus in London when she heard the news.
It was something that would stick with her for the
next [F] little while.
Almost 2 and a half decades after writing the song [Cm] O'Riordan would look back
on the track saying I remember at the time there was a lot of bombs going off in [Db] London and the
Troubles were pretty bad.
I remember being on tour and being in the UK at the time when the child
died and just being really sad about it [Fm] all.
These bombs were going off in random places and it could
have been anyone you know.
So I suppose that's why I was saying it's not me, that even though I'm
Irish it wasn't me.
I didn't do it.
Because being Irish it was quite [Db] hard especially in the UK when
there was so [C] much tension.
It's a [Fm] tough thing to sing about but when you're [F] young you don't think
twice about things you just grab it and do it.
As you get older you develop more fear and you get
more apprehensive.
When you're young you've got no fear she'd say.
[Fm] The song was originally written
by O [C]'Riordan on an acoustic guitar late one night [Bbm] by herself during the group's UK tour.
[C]
When O'Riordan took it into [F] rehearsals they played the song on electric guitar
with her remembering it was extremely busy and we were working all the time around the clock.
That song came to me when I was in Limerick and I wrote it initially on an acoustic guitar late
at night.
I remember being in my flat coming up with the chorus which was catchy and anthemic
so [Db] I took it into rehearsals and I [F] picked up the electric guitar then I kicked in the distortion
on the [Fm] chorus and I said to my drummer maybe you could beat the drums pretty hard.
Even though it
was written on acoustic it became a bit of a [Bb] rocker.
That was the most aggressive song we'd
Zombie was quite different to what we'd done before [C] she'd remember.
The band would record the song in Dublin [F] with producer Stephen Street.
We spent a fair deal of time getting the [G] guitars to sound like other [F] alternative music that was
popular at the time.
However O [Fm]'Riordan would push back against the assertion that the band was
capitalizing off the popularity of grunge music revealing It came organically because we were
using our live instruments, we were [F] plugging in a lot, and we started to mess around with feedback
and distortion.
When you're on tour you start to mess around a bit more with the live side of
things.
There were a lot of bands around that were part of the grunge thing and this wasn't grunge,
but the timing was good.
We couldn't have really fitted in with [Dm] grunge because we were just a
different type of band.
We were Irish [D] and from Limerick and we had a lot of our own ideas.
A
lot of the grunge bands were [C] very similar to each other she'd say.
The Cranberries former
[D] manager Alan Kovac revealed to Rolling Stone magazine that the group's label Island Records
urged them not to release the politically urgent song as a single.
The label [B] offered O'Riordan
$1 million to do work on a different song, but she ripped up the [Fm] check with Kovac remembering
Dolores was a very small, fragile person, but very [Bb] opinionated.
[Gm] Her belief was that [Cm] she was
an international artist and she wanted to break [Eb] the rest of the world and zombie was part of that
[F] evolution.
She felt the need [Fm] to expand beyond I love you, you love me and write about what was
happening in [C] Ireland at the time.
While the band was already famous from [F] their first album,
Zombie [Eb] catapulted them to a new level of [Fm] popularity.
Also helping the band make a lasting
mark was the music video in which footage of the conflict in Northern Ireland is spliced with
O'Riordan who is painted gold and in the company of silver [F] painted cherubs.
The band would turn
to Samuel Bair to direct [Cm] the video and he had a pretty impressive list of credits including working
on [Fm] Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit video and Blind Melon's video for No Rain.
Bair would fly
to Belfast shortly after the ceasefire to get footage of the area and those are real British
soldiers and local children you see in the video.
O'Riordan for her part would praise Bair saying
I actually thought the director was very brave.
When he got back he was pretty pumped and there
was a lot of adrenaline pumping through him.
He was telling me how tense it was and how he was
blown away by the whole thing.
He got [F] footage of the kids jumping from one building to another
and he got a lot of footage of the army.
He was [Fm] a very good director i should say.
[F] Upon [F] its release as the first single [Fm] from the band's sophomore record
[Bbm] Zombie would hit number [C] one in several countries on the [Bbm] rock charts and would be certified platinum
in Germany [C] and Australia.
At the [Db] MTV awards the band beat up both Michael [F] Jackson and TLC
to win the best song award, but that paled in comparison when the band got the opportunity
to perform the song live at [Fm] the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to honor those who brought a peaceful
solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
No Need to Argue would go on to sell almost 20
million copies based on the strength of the [F] single.
O'Riordan looked back on the success
of the song and the album saying I wouldn't change [Fm] anything about it because [F] it did so well.
It was [Fm] well written and it was well composed.
I think it did so well because it's [Bbm] hard to
categorize [C] it and I still like singing it.
The [Bbm] band would end up re-releasing the song with an
acoustic [C] version that was played alongside [F] the Irish Chamber Orchestra for the band's record
Something Else.
The song of course got another boost when modern rock band Bad Wolves
covered the song in early 2018.
O'Riordan was originally [Fm] supposed to sing on the cover,
[F] but she sadly passed away before she could contribute to [Fm] the song.
In response the band
Bad Wolves mulled [F] releasing the cover, but went through with it and it topped the rock charts and
peaked at number [Fm] 18 on the top 40 charts.
[F] The band would donate $250,000 to O'Riordan's [Bbm] three children
and in [C] 2020 the Cranberries became the [Bbm] first Irish band to hit 1 billion views on [C] YouTube
with their song Zombie.
[Db] That does it for [F] today's video guys.
Thanks for watching.
Be sure to hit
the like button and subscribe.
If you guys have suggestions for future topics let me know in the
comments section below.
Take care. _