From rural Ireland to rock legend: The life of a generation-defining voice

“Dolores was a very small, fragile person, but very opinionated,” Kovac told Rolling Stone. “Her belief was that she was an international artist and she wanted to break the rest of the world, and ‘Zombie’ was part of that evolution. She felt the need to expand beyond ‘I love you, you love me’ and write about what was happening in Ireland at the time.”

In the summer of 1994, she married Don Burton, tour manager of Duran Duran.

The couple eventually moved to his native Canada and had three children. The singer often spoke about how motherhood became her top priority, saying that having kids transformed her life for the better.

“The kids were actually completely elemental in my healing process,” she told LIFE.

In the same interview, Dolores revealed that she had been molested for four years starting at age eight by someone she trusted.

“I was only a kid,” the rock star told the outlet.

“It gets hard as well when you have daughters because you get flashbacks when you’re with them and when you are watching them. You wonder, ‘How can anyone get satisfaction in any way, you know?’”

Career-wise, the Cranberries faced challenges in the late 1990s. Dolores’ relentless commitment on stage began to take a serious toll. By 1996, exhaustion forced the band to cut a tour short. “I had to fly to Ireland and take her to a doctor,” recalled former manager Allen Kovac.

“He said to her, ‘You’re not healthy enough to tour.’ My belief was you had to deal with those issues, but I don’t think she ever got through.”

While the Cranberries never again reached the commercial heights of their early years — their 2001 album Wake Up and Smell the Coffee peaked at No. 45 — their loyal fan base never disappeared. As the band’s sound grew edgier and more punk-influenced, she remained deeply relatable to listeners who saw their own struggles reflected in her music.

In 2011, she was devastated by the loss of her father, Terence, who died from cancer. “I felt him around me a lot for a while. I could feel him trying to protect me and communicate with me,” she told Billboard the following year.

At her father’s funeral, Dolores came face-to-face with the person who had abused her between the ages of 8 and 12.

He introduced himself and apologized for his past actions. Reflecting on the experience in 2013, she said, “I had nightmares for a year before my father’s death about meeting him. … I didn’t see him for years and years and then I saw him at my father’s funeral. I had blocked him out of my life”.

Another major blow followed in 2014, when her 20-year marriage to Don Burton ended. The split became public shortly after she was arrested and charged in connection with an incident on a flight. In the aftermath, her mother, Eileen, told the Irish Mirror that her daughter was under psychiatric care.

Reflecting on the episode, she later told the Sunday Independent: “Apparently my mother came into the cell. I don’t remember. I had created a tortoise effect. I tucked myself in, under the blanket. I was singing in the cell. I was praying. I was meditating because I was freezing,” while confirming her bipolar disorder diagnosis.