Listen to Previously Unreleased Cranberries Song, ‘Iosa’
The Cranberries have unveiled a previously unreleased track, “Iosa,” from the upcoming 25th anniversary edition of their debut album Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, which arrives on Oct. 19.
The four-disc box set includes the remastered original album, session outtakes, B-sides, early demos, their debut EP, other rarities and radio sessions.
“Iosa” was written by late frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan in tribute to her grandfather, and it’s thought to be the only song the band recorded entirely in the Gaelic language. The title translates as “Jesus” and the words are a prayer, asking Christ to never be far from the singer.
You can listen to the track below.
Guitarist Noel Hogan recently said the band would finish the album it had been working on at the time of O’Riordan’s death in January and then split up. “She was a lot more herself,” he said of the treatment the singer was receiving for mental health issues. “They had found the right cocktail of whatever it was she needed to be on. There wasn’t even a case of having to work around it. The hardest thing was her back [injury], because, playing live, she could not move as freely as she used to.”
Noting that the work O'Riordan had completed was lyrically “very strong,” Hogan noted that she "always said she found it hard to write songs when she was happy. She always said put a bit of misery in her life and it was easier. We will do this album and then that will be it. There is no need to continue.”