Zombie
The Cranberries
How to study this song
Learning “Zombie” means 27 entries at A2- — 10 English words, 3 adjectives and 14 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. Work through the glossary first: head, child and violence are the words you will lean on most. This one leans on its verbs: 14 distinct forms against 3 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| head | cabeza | testa | tête | cabeça | hoofd | Kopf |
| child | niño | bambino | enfant | criança | kind | Kind |
| violence | violencia | violenza | violence | violência | geweld | Gewalt |
| silence | silencio | silenzio | silence | silêncio |
What this song teaches you
Level · A2-
- Vocabulary words
- 10
- Adjectives
- 3
- Word combos
- 11
- Expressions
- 7
- Verb forms
- 14
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
«Zombie» is a protest song by The Cranberries, the rock band from Limerick, Ireland, formed by Dolores O'Riordan, the brothers Noel and Mike Hogan, and Fergal Lawler. It was released as a single on 19 September 1994 by Island Records, as the first single from the band's second studio album, «No Need to Argue», which followed on 3 October 1994. The song lasts just over five minutes. According to Wikipedia, it was written by O'Riordan alone, produced by Stephen Street, and recorded in 1994 at The Manor Studio near Oxford and at Townhouse Studios in London.
The song was born from a real tragedy. On 20 March 1993, two bombs planted by the Provisional IRA in litter bins exploded on a busy shopping street in Warrington, a town in the north-west of England. Johnathan Ball, who was three years old, died at the scene, and Tim Parry, who was twelve, died in hospital a few days later. Dozens of other people were injured. The band was touring England at the time, and O'Riordan, then in her early twenties, was deeply affected by the news and by the images of the grieving families.
She started the song on an acoustic guitar during that tour and finished it at home in Limerick. Wikipedia notes that its working title was «In Your Head», and that the group played it live for about a year before recording it. In interviews in 1994 and 1995 she explained that she could not accept children losing their lives because of political violence, and she insisted that the song did not name any organisation or take a side: for her it was a human song about the pain caused by war.
The title is the key image. A zombie is a body that keeps moving without a mind of its own, and the song uses that figure to describe the way violence repeats itself from one generation to the next, as if people were acting without thinking. The lyrics speak of a child taken away, of a mother's grief and of the silence that follows each attack, and they point out that the same conflict keeps coming back. The year that appears in the second verse is commonly understood as a reference to 1916, the year of the Easter Rising in Dublin, which suggests how old the roots of the conflict are.
Musically, «Zombie» marked a strong change for the band. Their first album, «Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?» (1993), had made them famous with soft, dreamy songs such as «Linger» and «Dreams». Here the guitars are heavy and distorted, the drums hit hard, and O'Riordan's voice moves from a quiet, almost spoken tone to powerful cries. Her characteristic breaks in the voice give the chorus its unforgettable sound. Wikipedia describes the style as alternative rock and grunge, close to the sound of American bands of the early nineties.