Eleven Seven Label GroupBad Wolves have released the video for their cover of The Cranberries‘ hit “Zombie.” The cover was originally supposed to feature Dolores O’Riordan, but sadly, she died the day she was scheduled to record her vocals.
The Bad Wolves video features a woman wearing the same all-gold outfit and bodypaint that O’Riordan wore in the original “Zombie” visual. She tries to reach out to frontman Tommy Vext, but the two are separated by a glass wall. Instead, she can only leave gold handprints on the glass.
In a statement, O’Riordan’s U.K. publicist, Lindsey Holmes, says that the late Irish musician thought Bad Wolves’ take on “Zombie” was “killer.”
Holmes adds that O’Riordan was “intrigued by the simple but effective couple of lyric changes that make the cover version as relevant to current world events as the original was to the events that inspired her to write the song in the early nineties.”
Those changes include swapping “guns” for “drones” and changing 1916 — the year of Ireland’s Easter Rebellion — to 2018.
“[O’Riordan’s] lyrics, confronting the collateral damage of political unrest, capture the same sentiment we wanted to express a quarter-century later,” says Vext. “That is a testament to the kind of enduring artist Dolores was, and will remain forever.”
Proceeds from Bad Wolves’ “Zombie” cover will be donated to O’Riordan’s three children.
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