Storm Thorgerson’s image for the cover of The Cranberries' ‘Promises' single is one of a series of twenty prints, each in an edition of twenty known as the 2020 Series. Storm describes for us how this image came about . . .

"I found myself interested in the promises made by parents to children and by society to children, not by one adult to another, and how they are so often broken. especially the unspoken ones. Rather than represent this notion by a scene of domestic or parental negligence I thought of a teddy bear, the comforting toy that any child might cling to at times of stress and loneliness. However this teddy is no ordinary teddy; it is in fact a robot teddy which is probably Government issue, unbeknownst to even the parents. It becomes an instrument of social control, not only monitoring the baby’s development and reporting back, but also modifying behaviour, calming the baby when anxious, with either Government indoctrination or right wing lullabies.

"The teddy is itself the broken promise; one thing masquerading as another, casting a duplicitous shadow from an early age. Due to an accident at home the teddy has caught fire and revealed it’s double nature. All a bit much for a single you might think, but I thought it reflected the sinister side of the Cranberries for a change."