Rocktober '90s Song #17: "Zombie" by The Cranberries (1994)

Our next Halloweek '90s Rocktober selection is "Zombie" by The Cranberries.  Though the song is mainly included because of its title, the song is not actually about the flesh-eating undead, but rather a real-life horror:  The Troubles.

Cranberries lead singer Dolores O'Riordan wrote the song in response to an IRA bombing in Warrington, England in March 1993 that left two children dead and 56 injured (and prompted retaliatory attacks on Catholics by the UDA).  O'Riordan was raised in a large Catholic family in Limerick, Ireland, and grew up in the midst of The Troubles (albeit a couple hundred miles from Northern Ireland).  The anger and despair about the constant fighting between the IRA and UDA (and Catholics and Protestants in general) comes out in the song, referencing the violence of the Ireland/Northern Ireland conflict, going back the Easter Rising in 1916 ("It's the same old thing / Since Nineteen Sixteen").