The Cranberries - Analyse

2001

The Cranberries - Analyse (2001) Director: Keir McFarlane Era: Post-Britpop Alt-Rock Twilight (2001) - Late-era alternative rock transitioning from 1990s guitar-driven anthems toward polished early-2000s adult contemporary production, shadowed by the cultural disruption of 9/11. High curatorial value as a historically significant artifact documenting both the final commercial phase of The Cranberries' original run and the real-time cultural rupture caused by the September 11 attacks on music video distribution. The post-9/11 re-edit makes this video a rare primary source for archival study of media censorship and the entertainment industry's immediate response to the attacks. The warm, rooftop-performance aesthetic also serves as a clean visual record of early-2000s alt-rock production conventions. Context: Released 27 August 2001 as the lead single from The Cranberries' fifth studio album Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, 'Analyse' arrived at a fraught cultural moment. The original music video was distributed to major networks before the September 11 attacks and had to be urgently recalled and re-edited to remove imagery of a plane flying near skyscrapers, making it one of the most directly documented cases of 9/11 reshaping a music video's content. This forced revision contributed to the single's underperformance in Ireland and the UK, while the band retained strong Southern European appeal (top-10 in Italy, Portugal, and Spain). The video's warm, rooftop-performance aesthetic reflects the band's deliberate tonal shift toward acoustic optimism after a turbulent late-1990s period, with Dolores O'Riordan publicly citing personal growth and motherhood as inspirations for the album's sunnier outlook. Director notes: Directed the promotional video for 'Analyse' in 2001 for MCA Records. The original cut featured Dolores O'Riordan performing atop a building with a plane visible flying over two skyscrapers. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, all airplane imagery was digitally erased from the video. An edited version was redistributed to media outlets on 1 October 2001. The video was planned for a September 2001 release. The post-9/11 re-edit is a documented example of real-world events forcing retroactive censorship of a commercially released music video. The video is listed on IMDb (tt7019256) with a UK release date of September 2001.