How The Cranberries became our deserved winners of The Icon Award at the ZYN Rolling Stone UK Awards 2025

Miley Cyrus. Yungblud. The Killers. Chappell Roan. Hayley Williams. Royel Otis. All of the above, alongside countless others, have covered songs by The Cranberries in recent years, marking the Limerick band’s resurgence as one of the coolest and most frequent reference points for a new generation of stars. It makes this the perfect time to present the band with The Icon Award, supported by Visit West Hollywood, at the  ZYN Rolling Stone UK Awards 2025.

Formed in 1989 by brothers Noel and Mike Hogan alongside Fergal Lawler under the name The Cranberry Saw Us, they renamed themselves The Cranberries a year later when they were joined on vocals by the inimitable Dolores O’Riordan. Over the decade that followed, the quartet became one of the most important and distinctive bands in the 90s alt-rock boom, known for their rabble-rousing live performances and O’Riordan’s vicious but beautiful pen. 

The breadth of O’Riordan’s songwriting is immediately apparent from the band’s biggest hits. Next to ‘Dreams’, a gorgeous and catchy ode to blinding love, sits ‘Zombie’, a towering and impassioned commentary on the violent history of Ireland. Watch any Ireland game at the 2023 Rugby World Cup and you’d have seen both the crowd and players turn the track into a zeitgeisty national anthem once again, belting it out in full stadiums after every game. In their discography, The Cranberries have songs equally powerful at soundtracking intimate moments alone and rallying cries alongside thousands of others. 

In the past year, it has been 1993 single ‘Linger’ that has been refreshed for the 2020s thanks to Australian duo Royel Otis, whose cover of the song on US radio currently sits at north of 30 million views on YouTube. Their performance of it at the ZYN Rolling Stone UKAwards alongside Noel Hogan was a gorgeous bridging of generations in tribute to O’Riordan, who tragically passed away in 2018. 

Across their career, The Cranberries have sold nearly 50 million albums worldwide and stood the test of time as one of the 1990s’ most treasured and influential bands. Without O’Riordan’s distinctive and unedited Irish twang, it’s hard to imagine festivals and radio airwaves in 2025 being swarmed with the equally thick Irish tones of CMAT and Fontaines D.C.’s Grian Chatten. Behind her, she leaves a legacy that will reverberate through this decade, the next and those beyond.