You and Me - The Cranberries

The Cranberries are my favorite band of the post-80s era. I’ve always been a big fan of Sinead O’Connor’s first couple of albums for encapsulating modern Irish life, worldview, and angst into truly original pop music ideas. The Cranberries seem to have taken this inspiration and expanded it through five consistently excellent albums between 1993 and 2001. Dolores O'Riordan’s swooping and soaring vocals certainly evoke Sinead’s (as well as Kate Bush around the edges, who of course is not Irish but had a very influential pop/traditional fusion sound, along with bands like Clannad , The Waterboys, and The Pogues). The songwriting and instrumentation range from sweet traditional sounds to novel modern rock. You and Me is a beautiful song with an unconventional tempo. The video in the link is the studio version synced to live footage from one of their European tours.