‘Zombie’ singer Dolores O’Riordan dies at 46

Agencies
January 16, 2018

Dublin, Jan 16: Irish singer-songwriter Dolores O’Riordan, frontwoman of the multi-million selling rock band The Cranberries, died suddenly in London on Monday, aged 46, her publicist said.

“Irish and international singer Dolores O’Riordan has died suddenly in London on Monday, family members are devastated,” Lindsey Holmes said in a statement.

“The lead singer...was in London for a short recording session,” she added. “No further details are available at this time.”

A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan police said officers are “dealing with a sudden death” after they were called to a hotel in Park Lane, in the centre of the British capital, at 0905 GMT this morning.

She did not confirm the identity of the person found.

“A woman in her mid-40s was pronounced dead at the scene,” the spokesperson said.

“At this early stage it is being treated as unexplained and enquiries continue,” she added.

Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar was among the first to pay tributes, calling O’Riordan “the voice of a generation”.

“For anyone who grew up in Ireland in the 1990s, the Cranberries were an iconic band, who captured all of the angst that came with your teenager years,” he said in a statement.

“Her voice and her contribution to music will be remembered far beyond her native county for many years to come.”

Family ‘very devastated’

The London Hilton on Park Lane confirmed “with deep regret” that an unnamed guest had “sadly passed away” at its hotel.

“Team members acted swiftly to alert the Metropolitan Police and we are co-operating fully with their investigation,” a spokesperson said.

The Cranberries achieved international success in the 1990s with their debut album “Everyone Else is Doing it, So Why Can’t We?”, which included the hit single “Linger”.

Follow-up album “No Need to Argue” went to number one in Australia, France and Germany, and number 6 in the United States.

The album also gave rise to politically-charged single “Zombie”, an angry response to the deadly Northern Ireland conflict, which hit number one across Europe. The band sold around 40 million records worldwide.

O’Riordan, from Friarstown in the Irish county of Limerick, will be buried in Ireland, according to the parish priest in her home town.

James Walton, priest at Ballybricken and Bohermore parish, told Britain’s Press Association her family “is very devastated and upset”.

“Her family are still waiting for more details to come from London about her death,” he said.

“The plan is for her to be buried here at home. When that will be will depend on when her body is released.”

‘Immense influence on rock’

The Cranberries, formed in 1989 but went on a hiatus in 2003.

O’Riordon told AFP in a 2012 interview that “we were stuck in a rut. We just needed a break”.

She headed to Canada, where she gave birth to her third child, but The Cranberries reformed in 2009 after getting together for a one-off show.

“At home I’m a housekeeper and a mum. The kids are, like, ‘What’s for dinner? Where are my clothes?’. On tour it’s, like: ‘room-service’,” she said of the comeback.

She hit the headlines in 2014 after pleading guilty to assaulting three police officers and a flight attendant during a flight from New York to Ireland, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly afterwards.

The band was forced to cancel 14 concerts last year due to “medical reasons associated with a back problem” for O’Riordan.

The singer’s last Facebook posting came shortly before Christmas.

“Hi All, Dolores here. Feeling good! I did my first bit of gigging in months at the weekend, performed a few songs at the Billboard annual staff holiday party in New York with the house band,” it read.

“Really enjoyed it! Happy Christmas to all our fans!! Xo”.

The band recently played in South America, with O’Riordan tweeting pictures of a show in Lima, Peru.

O’Riordan married Don Burton, former tour manager of Duran Duran, in 1994 but the couple, who had three children together, divorced in 2014.

British 1980s band Duran Duran posted on their official Twitter page that “we are crushed to hear the news about the passing of Dolores O’Riordan. Our thoughts go out to her family at this terrible time”.

The Cranberries released their final album “Something Else” last year.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
June 22,2020

New Delhi, Jun 22: Musician Madonna, who is a mother of six, wished herself on the occasion of Father's Day on Sunday by posting adorable pictures with her kids.

Along with pictures, the 'Crazy For You' singer penned down a beautiful caption, wishing herself and every parent a 'Happy Father's Day' for nurturing and guiding their children in the best way possible.

"Happy Fathers Day to Me and to every parent out there doing their best to Nurture, Guide, Inspire, and Teach! #Lola #Rocco #David #Mercyjames #Estere #Stella," the 61-year-old singer wrote in the caption.

Madonna is the biological mother to two of her six children and has adopted the rest four.

She had adopted her first child Davida Banda back in 2006 and then she adopted a boy in 2009. The last addition to her family were the twins she adopted from Malawi.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
February 12,2020

London, Feb 12: Oscar-winning British director Steve McQueen is returning to his art roots with a series of short films at London's Tate Modern art gallery, offering a sensory exploration of black identity.

McQueen, who became the first black director to win the best picture Academy Award in 2014 for "12 Years a Slave", is now based between London and Amsterdam and is focused on championing diversity in the film industry.

Visitors to his new exhibition will be greeted by "Static", a film of New York's Statue of Liberty, scrutinising the iconic symbol from every possible angle at very close range against a deafening backdrop of the helicopter from where the footage was filmed.

"What interests Steve is our view of the world, how humans are trying to represent Liberty," said Fiontan Moran, assistant curator of the exhibition.

"7th Nov, 2001" features a still shot of a body while McQueen's cousin Marcus tells of how he accidentally killed his brother, a particularly traumatic experience for the artist.

"Western Deep" is another visceral work, giving a sense through sights and sounds in an interactive installation of the experiences of miners in South Africa, following them to the bottom of the mine.

"Ashes", meanwhile, is a tribute to a young fisherman from Grenada, the island where McQueen's family originated.

The images of beauty and sweetness filmed from his boat are tragically reversed on the other side of the projection screen, which shows a grave commissioned by McQueen for the eponymous young fisherman, who was killed by drug traffickers.

African-American singer, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is honoured in "End Credits".

The film shows censored FBI documents detailing the agency's surveillance of Robeson, read by a voice-over artist, for five hours.

"He is... testing the limits of how people can be documented in an era of mass surveillance," said Moran.

In a similarly militant vein, the exhibition features the sculpture "Weight", which was first shown in the prison cell where the writer and playwright Oscar Wilde was imprisoned.

It depicts a golden mosquito net draped over a metal prison bed frame, addressing the theme of confinement and the power of the imagination to break free.

The show runs alongside an exhibition of McQueen's giant portraits of London school classes, many of which appeared on the streets of London last year.

"I remember my first school trip to Tate when I was an impressionable eight-year-old, which was really the moment I gained an understanding that anything is possible," said McQueen, adding it was "where in some ways my journey as an artist first began".

He recently told the Financial Times newspaper the difference between his art films and his feature films was that the former were poetry, the latter like a novel.

"Poetry is condensed, precise, fragmented," he said. "The novel is the yarn".

The exhibition opens on February 13 and runs until May 11.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
March 24,2020

Los Angeles, Mar 24: In a bizarre video shot from her rose petal filled bathtub, pop star Madonna has called the coronavirus pandemic "a great equaliser".

The music icon said the virus doesn't discriminate between rich and poor.

That's the thing about COVID-1. It doesn't care about how rich you are, how famous you are, how funny you are, how smart you are, where you live, how old you are, what amazing stories you can tell.

It's the great equaliser and what's terrible about it is what's great about it. What's terrible about it is that it's made us all equal in many ways, and what's wonderful about is, is that it's made us all equal in many ways, Madonna said in the video while having a milky bath in tub full of roses.

The 61-year-old singer, who had to cancel two of her concerts in Paris due to coronavirus outbreak, also referenced her 1995 song Human Nature in the video saying we are all going down together .

According to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker, the death toll from the virus globally has risen to 14,641 with 336,000 cases reported in 173 countries and territories.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.