As holidays go, Thanksgiving gets the short end of the wishbone. Its musical impact is generally limited to that damn Adam Sandler song. Yet, for anybody who survived the 1990s, one thought comes to mind when plating turkey's fruity companion: "Hey, remember The Cranberries?" We most certainly do. This year, enjoy your cranberry sauce with Cranberries jams. Here are the six best songs by everybody's favorite Irish light alternative rock band. Feel free to interject which Cranberries songs you are thankful for in the comments section. We'll start the ball rolling for you - "Zombie" didn't make the cut.
6. "Just My Imagination" from Bury The Hatchet (1999) By 1999, most folks had written off the Cranberries. Alt-rock radio developed a sharper edge and previous Cranberries hits like "Dreams" were delegated to adult-contemporary stations. As if to embrace its new market, the band released Bury The Hatchet's cut "Just My Imagination" as a single. The jangly tune is custom fit for the dentist's waiting room, complete with a hook effective enough to scrape the plaque from the most pecan-pie-encrusted molars.
5. "How" from Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? (1993) The Cranberries developed a strange relationship with heaviness. Some of its most popular, harder tracks like "Salvation" and "Zombie" reek of overcompensation. Truthfully, the band was more capable of rocking than it may have realized. "How", a latter-half standout from the Cranberries' debut plays the quiet/loud card like a nonexistent Pixies MTV Unplugged session. It settles into a moody verse with the occasional guitar outburst before Dolores O'Riordan restrains her anger on a power-waltz chorus as she sings "You said you never would leave me alone." "How" proves the band is capable of intensity without bathing its guitars in uncharacteristic fuzz.
4. "When You're Gone" from To The Faithful Departed (1996) To The Faithful Departed was a relative flop compared to the Cranberries' first two albums. It's tempting to compare it to Weezer's sleeper hit from the same year, Pinkerton, but the record plays more like Harvey Danger's sophomore album King James Version. Like HD's forgotten follow-up, Departed showed a pigeonholed band's stylistic diversity. "When You're Gone" could have drowned with the weight of its ambition -- there is, after all, not much demand for Irish doo-wop. Alas, the song rules and, like R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts", would be ideal slow dance material were it not such a downer.
