So why were you holding her hand? Is that the way we stand?

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

17/07/94 : Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? - The Cranberries

Our second visit with The Cranberries this year and another one I owned (seven for the year) and I remember liking it, but I've not listened to it in years so it will be interesting to see what I think of it.

Yeah, it was nice to revisit this and interesting to do so after having listened to No Need To Argue because I originally listened to them the other way round and was surprised at how rough that was after the delicacy of this, their debut. However, doing it the other way round, I'm surprised at how robust their first offering is - yes, it sounds relatively delicate but there's definitely steel there too. "Linger" and "Dreams" are the ones everyone knows, but it's all pretty much up my street and I particularly like "I Still Do" and "Wanted". This is another one that's of its time without sounding dated - '94 has delivered strongly on that front.

We're at #10 in the chart this week on their twentieth week of an impressive 88 week, with it peaking at #1 in its sixteenth week - but things could have been very different because its first run was a solitary week back in March '93 with it doing absolutely nothing else until it came storming back almost exactly a year later - I assume "Linger" was responsible, but I'm sure Wikipedia will explain everything. The top five this week were The Rolling Stones (a new entry), The Prodigy, Wet Wet Wet, Ace Of Base and a Whitesnake best-of (surely that's not a very long album?) and the next highest new entry was an Eagles best-of (#8 - and this is one EIGHT best-ofs that they have charted over the years).

Wikipedia tells us this is their debut album and actually has remarkably little on it other than teling us it was the fifth album ever to get to #1 more than a year after its initial release. Checking their entry out, it tells us that "Linger", "Dreams" and the album were all released in '92 or '93 with minimal interest shown from anywhere and they were scraping by when they landed a slot supporting Suede on their US tour in mid '93. Which was all going quietly enough until MTV caught wind of their stuff and started featuring them heavily - at which point the tour promoters decided that Suede were now supporting The Cranberries (oooh, that's gotta sting!). So basically they broke the US first which made it easy to conquer this side of the Altlantic when they came back home.

Back to the album, it was produced by Stephen Street who wasn't someone I was overly aware of until recently when we met him on Viva Hate, Morrissey's debut album and then he was at the Sleeper gig I was at because he produced The It Girl - I wasn't aware that he also produced The Smiths' Strangeways, Here We Come, Parklife, No Need To Argue and Employment as well (amongst many others - he's got quite the CV). Critically, it was well received and commercially it took its time but it definitely got there in the end, getting to #1 in Ireland and although only #18 in the US, it sold five million copies over there.

Given there were so many copies out there, discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for £1.50 but if you want an original pressing (which has different artwork), it's going to set you back £250 - although I think I'd prefer the reissued cranberry vinyl version which is a mere £135. It was a pleasure to revisit both this and the follow-up this year - I really enjoyed catching up with them and plan to make sure it's not so long until the next time. 

10/07/94 - Bearable, but not actually any good
24/07/94 - Decent enough but didn't grab me