Why The Cranberries Released a Song About John Lennon’s Murder
John Lennon‘s murder inspired several famous rock songs. For example, his murder is the subject of The Cranberries’ “I Just Shot John Lennon.” The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan explained why she decided to write a song with such a morbid subject matter.
Dolores O’Riordan didn’t like The Cranberries’ song about John Lennon’s murder and neither did critics
During a 1996 interview with Hot Press, The Cranberries’ Dolores O’Riordan discussed the band’s third album, To the Faithful Departed. “I kind of got consumed by things on the third album, and we just over-toured and over-worked and I got burned out,” she said. “We were thinking of splitting up and not making any more records because I, we, were all so sick of it.”
Some songs from the album received very negative reviews from critics, one of which was “I Just Shot John Lennon.” In retrospect, O’Riordan was not pleased with the song.
Dolores O’Riordan explained why The Cranberries wrote songs about awful things like murder
Subsequently, O’Riordan explained why she wrote “I Just Shot John Lennon” and other songs with unusual subject matters. “You can’t write about normal things because you don’t have a normal life,” she said. “When you want to go from A to B you have to have security around and there are people screaming at you all the time, so basically you become a little bit weird and isolated and feel like you’re in a cage.
“Your only form of escape is the TV,” she continued. “You watch CNN and go, ‘Oh my God, that’s awful, I’m going to write a song about this.’ So you do become the sad old rock star, viewing the world from a hotel room.”
How The Cranberries’ ‘I Just Shot John Lennon’ performed on the charts in the United States
“I Just Shot John Lennon” was never a single, so it did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100. The song’s parent album, To the Faithful Departed, was the band’s highest-charting album in the United States. The album reached No. 4 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on the chart for 51 weeks. While To the Faithful Departed charted higher than the band’s other records, their previous releases — Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? and No Need to Argue — both lasted longer on the chart.
A live version of “I Just Shot John Lennon” served as the B-side of The Cranberries’ single “Salvation.” The latter song hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart for four weeks. It stayed on the chart for 14 weeks altogether.
O’Riordan didn’t seem too pleased with “I Just Shot John Lennon” but the song proved John was inspiring rock songs even after his death.
