The Cranberries / No Need To Argue (30th Anniversary) [Super Deluxe Edition] / 1994
(They Long to Be) Close to You
dreamy, worshipful, faintly wistful
This is a cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David standard, best known from the Carpenters' 1970 version, recorded by The Cranberries as a bonus or b-side style track included in this reissue. Dolores O'Riordan's reading leans into the song's starry-eyed hyperbole, treating adoration as something almost cosmic rather than ironic or knowing.
idealized love infatuation celestial imagery devotion as spectacle
Who's speaking
A narrator addressing a beloved in second person, speaking as one voice among many admirers rather than a singular lover; the tone suggests sincerity rather than irony, though the hyperbole invites a knowing smile.
What happens
The song doesn't develop a plot so much as circle a single idea: the beloved is so magnetic that nature itself and everyone in town respond to their presence. It opens with wonder at birds and falling stars, moves into an origin myth about the person's birth, then confirms the premise with a crowd of other admirers, before dissolving into a wordless, repeated vocal hook that functions as a kind of swoon.
How it's built
Classic AABA-adjacent pop structure inherited from the original: two verses built on parallel questions, a bridge that shifts to narrative (the birth myth), a return to the central refrain, and then an extended outro of scatted syllables that essentially become the song's emotional payload, prioritizing feeling over further lyric content.
Section by section
Opening verses
The paired questions about birds and falling stars set up a rhetorical device where natural wonders are reframed as responses to the beloved's presence, establishing the song's central conceit before any specific scene or story is given.'
Bridge
“the angels got together”
The shift to the beloved's birth introduces a mock-mythological origin story, borrowing celestial materials like moon dust and starlight to suggest the person was designed rather than simply born -- a move that pushes the song from observation into fable.
Return of refrain
Bringing back the central comparison after the bridge widens the admiration from the narrator alone to a whole town, which reframes the song's romantic claim as communal consensus rather than private feeling.
Outro vocalise
The extended wordless repetition at the close functions almost as a release valve, letting the song's accumulated sentiment resolve into pure sound rather than further argument or narrative.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated comparison structure tying natural phenomena to the speaker's own longing reinforces the idea that admiration is universal, not just personal, by stacking parallel clauses.
- hyperbole
- Claims that birds appear and stars fall because of the beloved's presence push affection into myth-making exaggeration, signaling the song is more about the feeling of infatuation than literal description.
- creation myth / allegory
- The bridge invents a small mythology of angels assembling at the person's birth to explain their beauty, borrowing the register of folklore to elevate romantic admiration into something fated.
- vocalise
- The closing passage abandons lyrics for repeated open vowel sounds, using the voice as pure melodic texture to extend the song's emotional glow beyond what words can carry.
Reading it
Read straight, this is an earnest love song in which romantic devotion is so total it reorganizes the natural and social world around the beloved. An alternative reading, more plausible for a band like The Cranberries covering a famously saccharine standard, hears a layer of gentle self-awareness in the excess of the imagery -- the song knows its own hyperbole is absurd and finds warmth, not naivety, in performing that absurdity sincerely. Both readings are supported by the text; the recording itself (tone, arrangement) would likely settle which is intended, but based on lyrics alone the sincerity reading is the simpler fit.
Context
'(They Long to Be) Close to You' was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and became a signature hit for the Carpenters in 1970. The Cranberries' version included on the 30th anniversary reissue of No Need to Argue appears to be a cover recorded during that album era, likely as a bonus track or b-side rather than a band original; I don't have reliable details on when or why it was recorded, so that context should be treated as uncertain.
Listen for
- How O'Riordan's phrasing handles the song's wide melodic leaps compared to the Carpenters' smoother delivery
- Any shift in instrumentation that signals whether the band is playing the song straight or with ironic distance
- The way the extended outro is arranged -- whether it's lush and orchestral or stripped back, which would change the song's emotional weight
- Dynamic buildup from the restrained verses into the repeated refrain and vocalise outro
About The Cranberries
The Cranberries were an Irish rock band formed in Limerick in 1989. The band was composed of lead vocalist/guitarist Dolores O'Riordan, guitarist Noel Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler; O'Riordan replaced founding member Niall Quinn in 1990.
1989 - 2019 / Ireland
Full biography and catalogue