Feature Friday: Linger – The Cranberries

This song is one of my earlier music memories. I recall visiting my (way) cooler older cousins for the summer and latching onto everything they did. It was all so much grander in the bigger metropolitan area that they lived in versus the dorky suburbs that I came from. I was in single-digit aged at the time, popping my head into each of their bedrooms in-between shadowing my aunt in the kitchen, careful to keep tabs on everything happening in the house.

One of my cousins was in her room lying on the bed in the dark, just the hallway light shining in. I didn’t even know she was in there, but I heard the long, sweeping violins that led into the song. I stuck around to hear the entire song before she hit rewind and played it again. I remember wondering how old I would have to be to have such important, bold feelings that I imagined the woman singing had. Would anything in my life ever warrant such pensiveness and introspection?

Of course, just like everyone who was around in the 90’s, I would hear this song a billion times as the years went on. I remember at one point I was in Las Vegas having a terrible time, fighting with the guy I was there with. We were barely speaking while hurrying up the walkway toward the front entrance of the Bellagio. I had the thought firmly in my head “I have to get away from this guy, and it’s going to be really hard to move on from him but I just have to.” Just then, the fountain show began timed to Linger. I didn’t let him see me crying, but I definitely was.

I imagined having this song as part of my wedding. It’s not a happy love song, per se, but it’s nothing if not gorgeous, nostalgic and meaningful to so many of us.

I was thrilled when the Cranberries released an updated acoustic version of Linger in 2017 as part of their album “Something Else.” It was somehow even more beautiful and heartfelt. They re-perfected something that I already regarded as perfect, and almost 25 years after it’s initial creation. I was elated.

But then, one day while I was working in catering, I was on my way back from a delivery in my Mercedes Benz work van on the 405 freeway in West LA. It was such a pretty day, and the weather was beginning to get hot. Traffic came to a stop and, between switching songs on the radio I checked Facebook. Immediately I gasped, swallowed hard, and clenched my eyes tight, feeling hot tears slip out of the corners. Dolores O’Riordan had died. I never got to see them perform. She had children. The Cranberries were such a fixture of 90’s music. I was crushed.

After some time, I was able to enjoy the song again, but now it has a different context for me. It’s even sadder. Still I adore hearing it in public spaces or in TV shows or films. It’s truly one of my favorite songs ever, and it deserves to resurface forever.