The Cranberries - Just My Imagination Meaning

Just My Imagination Lyrics

There was a game we used to play
We would hit the town on Friday night
And stay in bed until Sunday
We used to be so free
We were living for the love we had and
Living not for reality

It was just my imagination [x3]

There was a time I...

1. DavidNoRi

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   Nov 21st 2023 !⃝

   When I listen to the song, I feel like it's talking about a girl who goes out every chance she gets with an unattainable man, maybe married. That's why she says: "it was the game we liked to play", she says it in plural, that time together locked in a hotel from Friday to Sunday, they were free and they loved each other because she felt it was something real but it was just her imagination. .
   Then she explains to you that it was the time when she believed in love and prayed that it would work, for her it was always like that and she put her cards on the table (not for him and that's why he leaves her) no one will tell her that she was unstable.
   In the end the man (married or not) was just playing with her and that's why she ends up saying: "it was the game I liked to play" (now in the singular) and she realizes that in the end that moment was as free as they were. to love each other, that hotel room was his entire reality because now she realizes that everything was always just in her imagination
2. anonymous

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   Feb 15th 2023 !⃝

   The way this song played out for Dolores in retrospect..
   she had her young fun single days..pre responsiblity..
   reality is moving on...getting hitched..kids..
   she kept the faith. faith changes, but she kept it..
   ..and it is not a secret...she puts her faith out there..
   ..never be said that I'd be unstable..yet the song is really about the moment..and when it was written..she was living the dream...young and adult..free...no longer imagining but living the fun life for a bit...
3. anonymous

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   Oct 26th 2021 !⃝

   I like to think this song is about a short and intense relationship that ended abruptly, but the singer keeps imagining that love and she still does the same things but without that person.
   
   Devin come back.
   
   C.
4. anonymous

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   Dec 6th 2019 !⃝

   The above comments provide a very good explanations to the meaning of this song. My parent’s world was centred around their love and their children. However, towards the end of my mother’s life, she questioned why to bring a child in a world of cruelty and be heartbroken by losing them in your life. Also, my mother would wonder what her life would have been, if she never had married and did not come to live in Canada. She was very happy with her marriage, life, and children; but just curious. Dolores O’Riordan was a deep thinker and a very caring person. Maybe Dolores O’Riordan was also questioning why to give birth to only have the child to experience a cruel world. Remember her childhood had a period of pain and trauma; which I believed haunted her. The quick and sudden rise to fame, also had an effect on this once shy girl. She may have questioned why such pain and cruelty was allowed to exist by God. She would not be the first person to question the reason for evil to exist and why man treats others so inhumanity. Dolores O’Riordan may have wondered what her life would be like, if she had not married and had no children out of curiosity: a much simpler life. Music was a outlet for Dolores O’Riordan to express her thoughts and feelings. Sadly, Dolores O’Riordan was struggling on many increasing fronts. I rather doubt Dolores O’Riordan would have given up her children without one raging hell of fight to death.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
5. anonymous

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   Apr 8th 2019 !⃝

   This is about a woman who is imagining she is married and has children and thinking of the consequences of her getting married and her preference of staying with her husband in bed during Sunday mornings. If she wanted to be free and without any care for her children, she should have discussed with her husband that they don't want to have kids.
   
   However, is having kids while being married a loss of freedom? It seems she has no love for her kids. She should have used protection every time she makes love with her husband. Kids are to be loved and they are a blessing.
   
   
   Spinster
6. Astro

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   Apr 6th 2019 !⃝

   As per Dolores O'Riordan herself at the introduction of the song from the 2010 concert in Paris, the song is about life before having children, then when having children, and concluding when the children have grown and gone.
   
   As she put it, having to go to the park instead of going to the bar. Freedom, the loss of Freedom, and regaining Freedom.
7. crutchead

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   Apr 2nd 2007 !⃝

   The song is generally about escapism, with shades of one who've lost faith in Christianity and all of hte born-again stuff -- reminds of that song byu the Christian group JARS OF CLAY's "5 Candles" song (also check THE OFFSPRING's "So Far Away", and Michael W. Smith's "Place In This World")), which rings quite surreal to a realists perspective about life, God, and the world in general - similar to the book of Ecclesiates found in the Bible itself and was acknowledged by Christ himself as found within one of the scriptures' gospel record passages.