"You know the way they say success changes things," says the Cranberries' tiny, slender singer/songwriter Dolores O'Riordan. "That old saying, 'Success has made a failure of our home.' " She pauses, then adds firmly, "But that's only weak homes, I assume."
If anyone's relationships were to crack under the strain of sudden fame, hers would look to be prime candidates. Four years ago, Ms. O'Riordan, then a shy but stubborn 19-year-old, joined drummer Feargal Lawler and brothers Mike and Noel Hogan in a modest Limerick pop band with an awkward pun of a name, The Cranberry Saw Us.
Signed to Island records, its debut album, "Everybody Else Is Doing It . . . So Why Can't We?" was a fresh, evocative blend of Ms. O'Riordan's pure, acrobatic vocals and the band's melodic, Smiths-influenced guitar pop. But its initial tepid reception in Britain, combined with business and management complications the young group was ill-prepared to handle, appeared to prevent the Cranberries from ever having to deal with the complications of success.
But the subtle beauty of the song "Linger" took tenacious hold in the North American charts. By the time a second album, "No Need to Argue," was released in October of this year, its predecessor had sold more than 3 million copies worldwide.
With sales of "No Need to Argue" rapidly closing in on the first record, the Cranberries have joined the ranks of pop stardom, playing to ever-bigger audiences on this continent and, belatedly, back in Britain as well.
Even more surprising, it's evident that Ms, O'Riordan, once so reserved she sang with her back stubbornly to the audience and fretted endlessly over the Cranberries' fate at the hands of the fickle British music press, has blossomed into graceful, confident self-assurance.
Perhaps it's because the group's career path, she observes, "was like the experience of 10 years condensed into one." For the band, continually on tour -- much of it in North America -- for the best part of two years, it's been a staggering amount of hard work, she says.
"The irony is that people think it's glamorous, and there's a party every night. But if I partied two nights in a row, my voice would clap out!" she exclaims.
Displaying understandable pride in her note-perfect vocal pyrotechnics, she adds: "I actually sing, you know. Unlike a lot of females in bands from the UK who don't, really, when they play live."
Nor does the singer, who sustained a serious knee injury earlier this year in a skiing accident, approach showmanship with the cool disdain shown by many British acts.
Playing to an enthusiastic full house recently at the Saltair Pavilion in Salt Lake City, she works the audience with evident, and seemingly tireless, delight. Unafraid to greet her fans with a cherry "Hello, Salt Lake City!" or smile bravely when an over-excited teen-ager leaps onstage for a lovestruck embrace, she looks every bit as though she's been doing this her whole life.
Recently wedded, and pronouncing her marriage to former Duran Duran production manager Don Burton "wonderful, fantastic . . . the four happiest months of my life," Ms. O'Riordan says that the relationship has helped to give her the confidence she once lacked.
Before meeting Mr. Burton last year, she confessed, the band's growing fame "made it very difficult for me to go forward in relationships. I was stuck for about a year thinking: 'Auugh! I don't trust men!' It's very hard to get that idea out of your head. I'm grateful for where I am now."
Her new platinum-blond crop and elegant, womanly attire display no hint of the teen-age rebel who, she recalls with a laugh, wore baggy clothes and "used to hide behind my hair when I sang. . . . I thought everyone watching me was just standing there being critical!"
There's no hint of criticism in the responses Dolores O'Riordan and the Cranberries garner these days. Patiently signing autographs for young hotel staff en route to the venue, she smiles easily, accepting awkwardly blurted compliments with grace.
As for her family back home in Limerick, who O'Riordan says always considered their youngest daughter "a bit wild, a bit of a tearaway" and whose lives she once imagined would be shattered by her success, life is as happy as ever. The former teen-age rebel now "appreciates them even more. The nicest thing is that they're the ones who really care when it comes down to the crunch."
"No matter how successful you become," she adds, smiling fearlessly.
The Cranberries
With MC 900 Foot Jesus, Gigolo Aunts
L Where: Patriot Center, George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.
When: Tuesday, Dec. 13, 8 p.m.
Call: (410) 481-SEAT
Bits of berries
To hear excerpts from the Cranberries' album "No Need To Argue," call Sundial, The Sun's telephone information service, at (410) 783-1800. In Anne Arundel County, call 268-7736; in Harford County, 836-5028; in Carroll County, 848-0338. Using a touch-tone phone, punch in the four-digit code 6215 after you hear the greeting.