August 3, 1996 Fame and Dolores O'Riordan clash daily for the control of her soul.

From total obscurity, O'Riordan and her band the Cranberries have become one of the most commercially successful pop acts in the world over the past three years.

And O'Riordan is well aware of the sinister temptations of instant wealth and celebrity.

She tackles the issue of drug dependency poignantly on the Cranberries' current hit single, Salvation.

"I've been through lots since I was 18. I'm 24 now; I was 17, actually, when I joined the band. And we've sold 24 million albums. There's no way that can't affect you and put you through heaven and hell.

"The temptation is always there to do drugs, to take the easy way out. But I realised that if I went there I would like it too much, so I didn't want to get into that whole chemical thing. So I suppose (in the song) I was kind of reflecting on myself, being that I found salvation at the time."

That salvation came in the form of Bono of U2. He went through similar struggles and shared his experiences with O'Riordan. With maturity, she has turned more and more to worldly affairs, rather than the teenage angst of the Cranberries' debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? Their second release, No Need To Argue, featured Zombie - a song that dealt with a child victim of an IRA bomb. And now its successor, To The Faithful Departed, turns to the current turmoil in the Balkans with War Child and Bosnia.

"I think creating an awareness is a good thing because it's so easy to block out the pain in the world. Creating an awareness, people might make certain contributions, not just materialistically, but in other ways, too, to those in need."

The Cranberries perform at the Coliseum, Wednesday. Cracker will open.

To The Faithful Departed also marks a shift in producers. Out went Stephen Street and in came the more aggressive Bruce Fairburn of Jon Bon Jovi fame.

"Our studio relationship with Stephen had gone stale. We weren't inspiring each other any more. It was dried out and, to us, quite predictable."

The youngest of a family of seven, O'Riordan grew up poor and Catholic in west Ireland. Her father had a ceilidh band and she picked up the tin whistle and bodhran (an Irish hand drum) at an early age, followed by the piano. These traditional instruments, she says, gave her a sense of rhythm.

In 1989, she joined brothers Noel and Mike Hogan and Feargal Lawlor in a band that became the Cranberries.

Within a year they had a record deal with Island Records. It took until 1993, however, before Island released the band's first single, Linger. While it sank without a trace in Europe, North America adored it.

"A lot of Europeans never got a chance to hear the song because of bad marketing. It didn't get much airplay. The album actually came out a year behind schedule. We had managerial problems and then we had recording problems. Then it was too close to Christmas; it would have gotten lost in the flood.

Then at Christmas all these new bands came out. P. J. Harvey was one and everyone was very excited about her and they kind of lost interest in the Cranberries at that stage."

Still, Linger flew up the American charts. And the Cranberries have never looked back.

O'Riordan has since married Canadian Don Burton, a former road manager with Duran, Duran. They live part-time in Toronto and Kerry, Ireland. She is, as she says, blissfully happy.

"You know how people really get into their fame and become really materialistic and can't deal with it and so they die.

"At the end of my days the important thing to me will be whether I give up the band and stop singing or keep singing until I literally die - the Tina Turner syndrome.

''The world is my oyster and, I suppose, I just want to keep my priorities straight - to be a really good writer and singer."