“Salvation” by The Cranberries

"Salvation" kicked off the Cranberries' third album, To the Faithful Departed, as its lead single on Island in April 1996, and it's the band at its most bullheaded: a stomping, punky blast with Bruce Fairbairn co-producing and horns barreling in, courtesy of Richie Buckley's tenor sax, Michael Buckley's baritone and Fairbairn himself on trumpet. Noel Hogan and Dolores O'Riordan wrote the music together, Mike Hogan and Fergal Lawler drive it hard, and O'Riordan wrote the words.

Those words go straight at drug abuse, which is why some critics found it preachy. O'Riordan pushed back, saying the real target was being controlled by any substance at all, something she knew firsthand and remembered as confusing and joyless. In the US it sat on top of the Modern Rock Tracks chart for four weeks, and Olivier Dahan shot the video in France.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.