In the spring of 1996, Dolores O’Riordan accepted a public apology and more than $6,000 from The Daily Sport. An often explicit U.K. tabloid notorious for fabricating scandalous celebrity news, they previously ran a headline claiming The Cranberries singer had gone commando on stage at a show in Hamburg.
The Cranberries played Hamburg in July 1995 during their No Need To Argue World Tour. They’d been on the road since October 1994 and had multiple legs scheduled into August 1995. Seven months later, they embarked on the Free To Decide World Tour in late April 1996. That tour, however, would be cut short by September due to O’Riordan’s knee injury.
Hell hath no fury like Dolores O’Riordan scorned
But just weeks before The Cranberries were scheduled to go on tour, The Daily Sport issued its public apology. O’Riordan’s lawyer, John Kelly, told the High Court that the false headline was “untrue, offensive and distressing,” according to an April 1996 report from The Irish Times.
The tabloid was ordered to apologize and pay for O’Riordan’s legal fees. They were also ordered to donate to the Warchild charity on O’Riordan’s behalf. Sport Newspapers Ltd., which owned The Daily Sport, donated £5,000 ($6,775) to Warchild.
In 1999, Dolores O’Riordan spoke at length with Hot Press. Among other things, she touched on the critical reception of The Cranberries’ 1996 album To the Faithful Departed. That album, the band’s third, came out soon after the defamation settlement with The Daily Sport. Shortly after that, they went out on tour. But because of O’Riordan’s knee injury and the band’s generally poor mental health after several non-stop tours, a majority of the shows were canceled.
The Cranberries frontwoman once described celebrity as feeling ‘Like You’re In a Cage’
Despite the album’s No. 4 Billboard 200 spot, critics in the U.K. and Ireland weren’t as impressed. It was generally panned, with many critics finding O’Riordan’s usually sharp writing dulled and even nonsensical. When asked about the reception a few years later, she admitted that she hadn’t been at her best.
“You can’t write about normal things because you don’t have a normal life,” she said. “When you want to go from A to B, you have to have security around, and there are people screaming at you all the time, so basically you become a little bit weird and isolated and feel like you’re in a cage.”
The late singer continued, “Your only form of escape is the TV. You watch CNN and go, ‘Oh my God, that’s awful, I’m going to write a song about this.’ So you do become the sad old rock star, viewing the world from a hotel room.”
The post This 90s Rock Singer Once Forced a Newspaper To Donate to Charity as Apology for Scandalous Headline About Her appeared first on VICE.
