"Zombie" has been covered by numerous artists; O'Riordan had planned to contribute vocals to a version by the American band Bad Wolves, which was released days after her death.
Because being Irish, it was quite hard, especially in the UK when there was so much tension.O'Riordan stated the song came to her "subconsciously" midway through the Cranberries' English tour in 1993,[11] writing the core chords on her acoustic guitar.
[10] Once O'Riordan was back in her hometown of Limerick and returned to her apartment after a night out,[12][10] she played those chords and started building a song around them, quickly "coming up with the chorus, which was catchy and anthemic",[13] and soon moving onto the verses.
Soon after "Zombie" was completed, the band brought it onto their set list, with Lawler noting that the song was played live for a whole year before being recorded, and audiences responded with enthusiasm.
[22] The song represented a radical departure from the sound based largely on jangly guitar and strings that the band showcased on debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?.
[12][23] Hogan stated that "Zombie" made the band realize "that you can actually be heavy and still have melody", marking a changing point in their composition style and live performances.
[19] By the time the single for "Zombie" was released on 19 September 1994,[26] as well as its parent album No Need to Argue the following month, with an accompanying music video for the song in heavy rotation on MTV, the Cranberries were catapulted to international stardom.
Writing for The Telegraph, Ed Power formulated his own hypothesis, saying that the word Zombie was "a commentary on how blindly cleaving to centuries old prejudices can reduce [one's] capacity for independent thought".
[46] Mikael Wood of Los Angeles Times described O'Riordan "pushing her voice to a jagged extreme to embody the pain", with a "desperate, yodeling vocal that conjures some ancient emotion".
[37] In a contemporary review, Hot Press hailed the song and its arrangements, saying that it was stylistically different from the band's previous works: "Staccato rhythms and subtle jerks and pauses in the music and the singing make this more than just business-as-usual for the Cranberries.
A slow, brooding Siouxsie-like buzzing guitar melody and dirge-like bass and drums counterpoint the elliptical and impassioned vocals of Dolores O'Riordan as she works her way through the internal psychic and external human tragedies of the Troubles [...] "Zombie" signals a growth in confidence".
[30] New York arts editor Graham Fuller partially echoed this view, saying "she was right, but that naivety serves a song that's an unfiltered reaction to a tragedy.
[22] Music critic Neil McCormick wrote that it was the Cranberries' "fiercest rock song... An accusatory lament, it grapples with the endless recriminations of the Irish Troubles, with a slow rolling bass line and thumping mid-tempo beat, finding tension between melodic delicacy and introspection in the verses with a keening, wailing chorus charged with distorted grungy guitars".
[53] Mark Morris from Select wrote in his review of the album, "The surprise is 'Zombie', a Sinéad-like tantrum of crunchy guitars and confused lyrics about guns and bombs.
"[55] Josh Jones of Open Culture, described the "Gen X heyday"'s song, as "O'Riordan's stadium-size hit ... and its beautifully pained laments and pointedly unsubtle yelps and wails—a stunning expression of mourning that reverberates still some 25 years later".
[62] Upon the song's release, David Stubbs from Melody Maker said, "'Zombie' doesn't make a born-again fan of me, with its lethargic, samey, grungy riff lurching predictably towards anthem status.
[61] Brannigan writes: "Schtum hailed from Derry, a city 224 miles away from Limerick by road, but one which may as well have been on a different planet to the rural village where Dolores O’Riordan was raised.
[37] Island Records declined the prospect of releasing "Zombie" as a single to US stores, stating they didn't want to run counter to the band's original ethos.
[88] To record video footage of murals, children and British Army soldiers on patrol, he had a false pretext, with a cover story about making a documentary about the peace-keeping efforts in Ireland.
[95] Writer Josh Jones commented that the video "offers a classic collection of 90s stylistic quirks, from Derek Jarman–inspired setpieces to the use of black and white and earnest political messaging".
Junkee music editor Jules LeFevre, wrote that the footage captured "O'Riordan's extraordinary voice" and considered the live performance as "straight-up sublime".
[101] On 14 February 1995, the band recorded a nine-song set including "Zombie", for MTV Unplugged, accompanied by Electra Strings,[102] at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City.
[29] The band released a stripped-down version of "Zombie", recorded for Something Else, an unplugged album that features acoustic renditions of songs from their catalog, accompanied by the Limerick-based Irish Chamber Orchestra.
[108] In March 2003, on the eve of the outbreak of the Iraq War, the British Government and the Independent Television Commission issued a statement saying ITC's Programme Code would temporarily remove from broadcast songs and music videos featuring "sensitive material", including "Zombie".
[109] In August 2006, CBS censored a performance of "Zombie" by Rock Star: Supernova contestant Dilana, as a result of the lyrics and deleted all mentions of tanks, bombs and guns.
[186] The band's singer Tommy Vext slightly altered the lyrics, inserting a reference to drones and replacing "since 1916" with "in 2018" to show that times haven't changed.
According to O'Riordan's agent, Lindsey Holmes, the primary purpose of her flight was for a studio mixing session on Monday and Tuesday with Martin "Youth" Glover for her side project's second album, and she was also due to meet with The Cranberries' record label BMG.
[192][193] On 15 January 2018, at 1:12 am GMT at her Mayfair hotel in London, O'Riordan left a voice message to Waite, where she expressed her thoughts, describing the cover as "awesome".
[24][204] In an interview, bassist Kyle Konkiel shared his thoughts on the new cover's sound: [Our version] is kind of a darker more melodic feel than the original, which had a lot of heavy guitars and that legendary bassline and more focus on the actual instruments than the lyrics themselves.The song's music video was directed by Wayne Isham.
The video ends with a quote by Vext, "Her lyrics, confronting the collateral damage of political unrest, capture the same sentiment we wanted to express a quarter-century later.