It’s a sad day for fans of Irish rock band The Cranberries, whose singer Dolores O’Riordan has died at the age of 46. CGTN, the US outlet of Chinese state television network CCTV, was quick to put out an obituary accompanied by a short track list of some of the band’s biggest hits.
The Cranberries indeed have a fierce following in China, thanks in large part to the influence O’Riordan’s voice had on Faye Wong, one of Chinese pop’s “Heavenly Queens” (天后, an honorific that means roughly the same thing as “diva”).
Wong’s Cantonese cover of Cranberries hit “Dreams” features prominently in Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai’s breakout film Chungking Express. It exposed The Cranberries’ work to a massive Chinese audience — you’d be hard-pressed to find a single karaoke joint in China today that doesn’t have “Dreams” or “Zombie” in the mix — and cemented Faye Wong’s status as a leading pop star of her generation.
RIP Dolores O’Riordan.