The Cranberries Singer Dolores O’Riordan Dies at 46

The lead singer of The Cranberries, Dolores O’Riordan, has died in a London hotel, The Journal reports. She was 46.

“Irish and international singer Dolores O’Riordan has died suddenly in London today. She was 46 years old,” her PR agency said Monday in a statement. “The lead singer with the Irish band The Cranberries, was in London for a short recording session. No further details are available at this time.”

“Family members are devastated to hear the breaking news and have requested privacy at this very difficult time,” the statement continued.

O’Riordan led The Cranberries to worldwide rock fame for 13 years before the band took a break in 2003. They reunited in 2009 and were best known as a successful rock act of the ’90s.

The Cranberries sold over 40 million records worldwide.

O’Riordan wrote “Zombie,” the band’s hit protest song that reached number 1 on the charts in Australia, Belgium, France, Denmark and Germany. It won Best Song at the 1995 MTV Europe Music Awards.

O’Riordan composed the band’s first major hit, “Linger,” which peaked at number 3 in the Republic of Ireland, number 8 in the U.S., and number 14 in the U.K.

O’Riordan often spoke of how her father’s love of yodeling had been incorporated into her work, and how eventually other artists including Sinead O’Connor copied the style.

“I just kept with my father all the time, just copying him and eventually I learned how to do it,” she said in 2017. “Then over the years there were artists like Sinéad O’Connor and Siouxsie from Siouxsie and the Banshees and even Peter Harvey was doing it. It was something that you could work into The Cranberries’ format because a lot of that was used in religious Irish music.”

O’Riordan also released two well-received solo albums in 2007 and 2009.

In 1994, O’Riordan married Don Burton, the former tour manager of Duran Duran. They had three children together, Taylor Baxter, 20, and Molly Leigh, 16, and Dakota Rain, 12. Burton and O’Riordan split in 2014 after 20 years together.

O’Riordan last posted a picture of herself with her cat on Twitter on January 4.

“Bye bye Gio. We’re off to Ireland,” she captioned the photo.

The Cranberries had recently playing South America, and she tweeted pictures of fans in Lima, Peru in December.