Linger

October 6th, 2023

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Dolores O’Riordan grew up in Limerick, Ireland. She had a pretty dark childhood and was a shy teenager. She discovered music. It emboldened her. She joined a band that had back-to-back hit singles and became an international superstar who brought alternative rock to the forefront of American pop culture; you may have even worn Doc Martens in middle school and not realized she had something to do with that. Later in life, she’d be diagnosed bipolar; she struggled with mental health issues and died of drowning due to alcohol intoxication. She was, for better or worse, an iconic rock star through and through, and it would seem her life was much like the music she wrote and performed —painful and tragic, yet spirited and beautiful.

I first heard Linger by the Cranberries when I was seven. I wasn’t allowed to watch MTV, but that didn’t keep me from finding the treasure trove of cool known as “94.5 - The Edge” on my Casio alarm clock radio after bedtime (don’t worry, I was always careful to realign the dial to the parent-approved pop station in the morning, just in case mom was keeping tabs). I remember the song being easy to sing along to —the lyrics were simple enough for me to understand even back then— but it was the music and conviction behind the words that I really felt deep in my bones. The vocal was cutting and strong yet fragile and haunting. The guitars had a captivating glimmer and shine, and the orchestral melody was the perfect backdrop for all of it. It was my gateway to a genre that taught me how to feel and be moved by music. It was magical then, and it packs the same punch now —it’s a poignant and sorrowful expression of regret, and I thought it would be a great song to tackle for this series of covers. I wasn’t sure what cause I’d associate with it, but I was so excited about the song I was comfortable letting the mood of whatever we came up with steer us toward something worth raising awareness for. So we went into the studio, recorded this cover, and I sat on it for a few months. 

In that time two things happened.  First, after living with our recording for a while, it felt like we needed to add a female voice to give it some lift and help honor the original. I found Kate McGill on Spotify —our songs were a few tracks apart on the Acoustic Covers playlist —and we connected. She has that balance of frailty and strength that Ms. O’Riordan had, and I thought she would be a perfect fit. We worked out a deal through emails and instagram messages, and she recorded her part from her flat in the UK. The files were sent to my producer in Austin, and in a matter of a week, we had the finished product mixed, mastered and ready to go. It was the beginning of March, and we were starting to discuss a release date, but I still hadn’t decided on a cause that felt appropriate.  

Then, a few weeks later, on March 27th, 2023, three children and three adults were shot and killed in a school just ten miles from my house in Nashville. The shooter —who was being treated for a mental disorder— fired more than 150 rounds using two legally purchased assault weapons and a handgun. As a former teacher, a parent to two young boys, and a Nashvillian, this was tough to stomach. In the wake of it all, so many of us were left wondering —why do we keep letting this happen? I decided that morning that gun control would be our next cause, but I wanted to find an organization that had bipartisan support. My research led me to Giffords, and for the first year of the release, a portion of the streaming proceeds will go to assisting their mission of ending the gun lobby’s stranglehold on our political system. The original artwork by painter Fort Guerin will be auctioned for the cause as well.

There’s so much anger around this issue, it’s almost bizarre. Don’t we all want to protect the lives of young kids with big dreams —kids who stay up late at night listening to music, dreaming that one day they might write songs that people might hear on the airwaves? It’s so obvious. Common sense gun laws will help bring an end to the gun violence epidemic in our country, and Giffords is going to help make that happen.

Linger is a heartbreak song written by a teenage girl about the sadness and regret of her first kiss, but when attached to gun violence and the toll it continues to take on families across the country, the heartbreak laments an even greater tragedy. “I thought nothing could go wrong, but I was wrong” hits a little bit differently, as does the painstaking repetition of the question “do you have to let it linger?”

I’m not at the forefront of any crusade here, but somethings got to give. Perhaps we can take this song as a humble call to action. 

//B.A