Actor Ed Helms, who plays the hilariously annoying Andy Bernard on NBC’s hit comedy “The Office,” explained in an interview for Creative Loafing how he ended up annoying the bejesus out of his co-workers by singing The Cranberries’ “Zombie” on the episode called “The Return” this season:

Some of the funniest moments happen when the characters sing, or try to sing. Are the songs decided in advance?

Mostly, but a few of them are improvised. There’s an episode when Andy’s singing at his desk, off in his own world and annoying Jim, and there was some song written in the script, but we thought, “There’s got to be a more annoying song than this one.” We talked for a while and ended up with the Cranberries’ “Zombie,” because it has that voice cracking on “In your he-ead.” Also, there was an earlier episode when Andy and Jim stay up late getting drunk in the Stamford office, and Andy was half-passed out on the floor singing songs from his a cappella group from college. We had one Indigo Girls song in the script, but Jim wanted to harmonize, so we did “Closer to Fine” instead.