August 25, 1996 Despite its emphasis on death, drugs, and destruction, The Cranberries' latest hit album, To The Faithful Departed, doesn't appear to be reflective of the current state of mind of the Irish group's feisty lead singer.

In fact, diminutive but tough-talking Dolores O'Riordan, on the phone recently from a cottage in nearby Peterboro, Ont., says life is pretty good.

"I realize that I'm not more special than anybody else," says O'Riordan, prior to the quartet's Thursday night show with Cracker at the Molson Amphitheatre. "I'm not a superhuman, I'm just a human and I've just been one of the lucky ones."

O'Riordan, after all, is only 24 years old and her band has already sold 23 million albums worldwide after just two releases -- 1993's Everybody Else Is Doing it, So Why Can't We? and 1994's No Need To Argue.

She's also $15,000 richer after winning a recent lawsuit against a British newspaper over a story she performed a concert without any underwear.

It kind of makes you wonder. What exactly brought about the sombre subject matter on Faithful, which was produced last winter in Dublin by Canada's own Bruce Fairbairn?

There's rants against heroin abuse in Salvation -- "To all those people doin' lines, don't do it, don't do it," goes the now familiar chorus -- reflections on abortion (Free To Decide), death (I Just Shot John Lennon) and war (Bosnia, Warchild).

"Death is a terrible thing and it maims everybody and it leaves scars and nobody ever forgets," says O'Riordan. "But it also can be a wonderful thing because it makes you realize how wonderful those people were. It makes you realize that people can go just like that. Never take anybody for granted that you love. Tell them now. Don't let it slip."

Now she is giggling.

"So you go through that phase when you go home to your mom, `I love you ma,' and your mother's like, `What are you on, darlin'? So I think I had that realization that life is so unpredictable and people can be taken so quickly and it was just like a smell-the-coffee moment in my life."

O'Riordan says last year's death of Denny Cordell, who signed The Cranberries in 1991, hit her the hardest, although the song she wrote about him, Cordell, is a B-side instead of on the album.

"He was like a dad to me in one way," says O'Riordan. "Since I was a kid, he was always going, `America's going to love you.' And I was 18 and I'd be looking at him going, `When am I going to America?' And America was this wonderful circus world in my head 'cause I'd never been there, totally unworldly and what not. And then all of a sudden he just died. He just got sick and one week later he was dead."

Meanwhile, Salvation has turned out to be prophetic given the number of heroin-related deaths and addictions in rock this year.

"It's a mad coincidence," says O'Riordan. "I've been reading about all these people turning into junkies. It's like I've gone through that mentality and that's why I wrote that song because I've gone through the whole `Drugs are great escapism, there's all these doors, you take any door you like.' And I'm afraid I don't want to take a door that I can't control. I don't want to take a life that takes control of me. And I certainly don't want to end up in a detox clinic or puking dead somewhere."

As for any criticism about I Just Shot John Lennon, which ends with the sound of gunshots, O'Riordan doesn't have time for it.

"Well what I always say is that opinions are like a--holes, everybody's got one and we're free to express them," she says. "If you don't like it, lump it. Get out of the kitchen, baby. It's kind of like, get over it. It's just a song. And it's a triumphant song. It's a song claiming a hero, worshipping, idolizing a man."

As for those gunshots: "Well, Bruce suggested that and I was like, `Yeah. Okay. That's what a gun sounds like.' Fine. Freaks some people out I suppose, but you'll have that."

Speaking of Fairbairn, O'Riordan says he fit in well in Dublin, even if his constitution was clearly Canadian.

"He loved it," she says. "He was a sucker for Ireland. We had him out with the Guiness, getting him trolleyed every night. `Come on drink the Guiness man.' He was like, `This stuff is so heavy. I'm so full.' He loved it. He just couldn't get over how much Irish people drink."

For the record, O'Riordan says she can put away 10 pints herself and still walk out of the bar.

And while she clearly sounded like she was in major relax mode at her cottage -- purchased by her and her Toronto-born husband Don Burton just after their wedding two years ago -- she was also convalescing after a knee injury from an old ski accident flared up during a performance in Australia.

The injury lead to the cancellation of nine shows in southeast Asia and O'Riordan says it was a difficult decision to make. Until she got "hundreds" of supportive letters from fans.

"I was glad I read those letters because I was a bit worried about what would people say. I think the biggest pressure is the whole -- you know how much it costs to go on tour and this whole insurance thing and all that stuff -- and you cancel tour dates and it's like, `Oh, my God, I'm killing somebody.' I had to go to see so many doctors and to get the old, `Okay, she's sick.' You feel like a race horse at times. It's like you're not allowed to get sick, but it happens."

And for O'Riordan it could have meant ending up on stage in crutches or, worse, in a wheelchair, "because you don't have the balls to stand up and say, `I'm out of here man. I need to go home. I know my body. I live in it. You don't.'"

Okay, Dolores, we get the picture. She may weigh only 93 pounds but it becomes obvious that O'Riordan speaks her mind regardless of the consequences.

She's more Sinead O'Connor than Enya in the personality department and wouldn't have it any other way.

"I feel I have to be true to myself and speak about things that maybe other people are too cowardly to speak of," says O'Riordan. "Maybe I could play it safe and do the typical old thing and please the critics. But it's kind of hard to please the critics because if you play it safe and write `I love you baby' songs you get your balls busted and if you do the outspoken thing, it's like, `Mind your own business, you're not a politician.' So either way, you'll always be criticized."

THE DOLORES O'RIORDAN FILE

ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEXES: "Women go through crap that men don't go through. I think we kind of smell the coffee faster than guys. But at the same time, I wouldn't put men down because where would we be without all the men? Without the old cuddles? I mean what would you do if there was no men? We'd kill each other."

ON THE TRAPPINGS OF SUCCESS: "We made loads of money, we're grand that way. I mean, what are you going to do with it all? Like put it in a cabinet? Buy loads of houses and cars and turn into a materialistic git? I don't think so."

ON ATTACKS BY THE BRITISH PRESS: "People who mouth about other people and put other people down are insecure and pissed off and bored and they need to get lives. But at the same time, they don't deserve the attention. So it's like I've got better things to do -- like wash my cash." PHOTO: RIPE FOR SUCCESS ... The Cranberries' (from left, Fergal Lawler, Mike Hogan, Dolores O'Riordan and Noel Hogan) first two albums sold 23 million copies worldwide.