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The Corrs look beautiful, especially when they're angry, writes CAMERON
ADAMS, Herald Sun
IT'S tough being beautiful. Just ask freakishly attractive Irish family
band the Corrs.
They're sick of being seen as the pouty girls (and brother Jim) in
their glossy and glamorous video clips.
"To be honest, we're not really into the pouty Corrs sleek-sheen thing. We don't think we do it properly, anyway," Andrea Corr says.
"There's always an element that we're gypsies trying to be something we're not. And it's boring. We've got great lighting, our hair is shiny, the make-up looks good, it's sexy and people around the world will say, 'Oh they look beautiful'. So what?"
Andrea, who admittedly does look beautiful when she's mildly annoyed, continues with her tirade.
"If we get another video treatment that says 'and you will look beautiful . . .' I mean, so what? It's dumb. Great lighting, smoke, atmosphere . . . it's fantasy. It's good to have one or two clips like that, but we're really sick of it now. We want to show the real side to us.
"What's the point in projecting this smoky in-your-bedroom image when we're not like that."
At this point Hit offers an instant treatment for the next Corrs video: the girls will dress up as hobos, with no make-up or expensive frocks.
"Well, there's more chance we'd do that," Andrea says. "We're crying out for an innovative video idea, something other than, 'Let's have a nice shot of the sweet girls all singing at once, with a fan blowing our hair'. It's boring."
At this point Andrea's equally attractive sister Sharon pipes in.
"I often think about not being in the video at all. That's not us being lazy and not wanting to turn up, but it'd make people have to be much more creative.
"If they don't get three rather pleasing looking girls they stop, their level goes down. It's not a criticism of the people we've worked with, they've been amazing and we've chosen all the treatments we've used.
"But now we feel there has to be a change. We need to progress."
Enter Would You Be Happier, the new single taken from their new Best of the Corrs compilation.
The photogenic family filmed the video for the single in Sydney last month when they were flown out to take part in the Goodwill Games entertainment.
"It's quite a funny video, the emphasis is on humour," Andrea says.
"The song is about everybody's inadequacies. Like when you imagine yourself having an argument you're absolutely wonderful, but in reality you're not. It's a quirky song."
A greatest hits album is a perfect time to reflect on a band's career. The Corrs may have only had three studio albums, but they've spawned enough hits to already justify a best-of compilation.
"It's a decade of writing for us," Andrea says.
"We believe life goes in 10-year cycles. You look back and see what you've learned. Greatest hits albums aren't for the absolute fans; they already have it all.
"It's like when you like something at a restaurant, you don't want to get the whole menu. If you want the singles, that's what it's there for.
"And I think the two new songs on the album are a sign of the direction we're going in for the next album, the next cycle, which we believe is about to begin."
Sharon continues the theme of being Corr-n again, musically.
"I think we all feel it's a turning point in our lives.
"We've spent 10 or 11 years trying to achieve success, now we're at a point where you have to maintain it, but you also have to change.
"Not radically so people get upset, but you need to reassess your approach. It's great to muse over what we've done so far, and appreciate that, and then take it one step further.
"It's unnatural to stay stagnant, it's completely contrived to repeat the same process."
"We don't want to be contrived; that's a boring life," Andrea says. "I believe honesty transcends and people hear it and get it in the songs, and they relate to it."
There was a time when the Corr sisters' looks overshadowed their musical prowess. As they propped up lists of the most beautiful women in the world, the fact that the band all play instruments and write their own songs was ignored.
"Everybody knows around the world that we're musicians, that's why we're doing this," Andrea says.
"The stuff that's written about our looks is generally pretty flattering so that's fine, as long as the music is always involved.
"And so we always made sure to keep playing live, played acoustically, to show that this is why we're doing it. It's not about, 'Oh great, what a lovely dress'.
"That is not what stimulates us, or keeps us going around the world. It's all about music."
Sharon chips in: "We've never actually had an image. We do our own styling, completely. We dress how we like to see ourselves, I know what suits me. We've never had someone come in and say, 'You need to look like this'."
"I'd hate to be a pawn for somebody else," Andrea says. "As a musician you're expressing your personality, your identity. It's not about being a clothes horse or how your hair or make up looks. It's you."
Indeed, despite their millions of record sales (a million in Australia alone) and personal fortunes, the Corrs have a reputation for being low-maintenance stars.
They do what they're told and, in interviews, seem refreshingly candid and free of ego. They don't have the usual huge star entourages, either.
"We get very claustrophobic and we don't like a lot of people around us," Sharon says.
"None of us particularly like one person pulling at your trousers, one person pulling at your hair and one person playing with your eyelashes. That's not fun for us.
"That's the least enjoyable side, the visual side. It needs to be done, we accept that and understand that, but we'd rather be on stage, playing.
"You see people with massive entourages; we'll be at a show and a diva arrives and you see so many of her people standing around doing absolutely nothing.
"They've got ear pieces in backstage with other rock groups, and those groups don't care about the diva. It's a closed stage. A lot of the time it's hype and smoke and mirrors. If you go out with security guards you're saying, 'I'm rich, I'm famous'. You choose what road you want to go down."
"If you want all that," Andrea says, "then you can have it, you can wear the fur, that's fine. But in doing that you sacrifice a hell of a lot.
"We've been brought up in a very earthy way, we're from a small town in Ireland, we like the real things in life, like having dinner together. I like not putting make-up on and going down to the shops, getting drunk with friends, the normal side of life. If I wanted to have an entourage and security guards and provoke mania I couldn't have that life I want."
Andrea is also still flirting with the idea of a celluloid career.
"Andrew Lloyd Webber was interested in me for Phantom of the Opera, but I didn't want to do that. I was offered a modernised Dr Zhivago, but the script was quite sexual and it was more than I wanted to do!
"If it seems right and I can do it, but I'll try not and insult the masses by presuming I'll be great."
Would You Be Happier (Warner) out Monday. The Best of the Corrs out
October 8. The Corrs, Rod Laver Arena, October 16, 17.