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The Corrs have been keeping it in the family for 10 slow-burning years,
and are now emerging as the ultimate cute-and-catchy pop band. Sibling
pop is an old music tradition, but what's it like in the thick of it? Sean
O'Hagan finds out.
Saturday July 22, 2000
'Would you marry a Catholic?'
'I'm married already.'
'But if you wasn't?'
'Possibly, because of my faith, I wouldn't.'
'Even if they was really fit?'
'I am friends with Roman Catholics but...'
'What if it was one of the Corrs?'
Silence.
Shakes his head in bemusement.
'Okay, what if it was all three of the Corrs?'
Ali G interviewing George Patten, chief executive, Grand Orange Lodge
of Ireland
All three Corr sisters sweep into the room together, a blur of flowing
fabrics, pale
skin and black tresses. Even this early in the morning, pre-styling,
pre-hair-and-make-up, they look unfeasibly fresh and fragrant, as if they
have just stepped out of an Organics shampoo advert. They are also small,
though not Kylie tiny, but small and well-turned-out. Just like the pop
music they make. In the studio where we are gathered for a photo-shoot,
they try on a succession of pants and tops, trading quips and one-liners,
as only sisters do. The Corrs, it seems, are having fun with their fame.
You cannot imagine their names attached to headlines concerning mysteriously
cancelled shows or dead-of-night admissions to the Priory. They are too
no-nonsense Irish, too grounded, too un-neurotic. Neither, though, are
they as squeaky-clean as their carefully modulated image might suggest.
They could "drink the Gallagher brothers under the table", I was told.
And their live shows, while never coming close to the Dionysian ideal,
do rock, after a fashion. Bono, of U2, recalls attending a performance
in Dublin last year: "They came out, plugged in, and it was Bam ! The volume!
I'd been to see Garbage the night before and, believe me, Garbage are a
loud band. I mean really loud. But the Corrs were louder."
The Corrs are shadowed by some more disturbing pop precedents: the
whole
twisted history of the family-that-plays-together, from the Partridge
Family to the Osmonds, from the Carpenters to the Jacksons and even the
Gallaghers. Here, we pop-watchers assume, lies dysfunction: dear dead Karen
Carpenter, poor weird Michael Jackson, not to mention the spiralling, very
public sibling rivalry that is the
ongoing Noel and Liam show. Then, of course, there's also the spectre
of the Irish musical family, that all-grinning, ll-singing lineage that
stretches back to the 60s (which, in Ireland, lest we forget, were never
even remotely "swinging") an the three brothers who called themselves the
Bachelors (what manner of latent, quintessentially Irish longings/denials
lay beneath that name), and, in the 80s, that gaggle of lip-glossed
glam-girls, the Nolan sisters. What dark well of familial secrets
lurks beneath that relentlessly happy-go-lucky, rinky-dinky, we-are-family
professionalism?
It's no use asking the Corrs, I fear. They don't seem to fit into either
camp. That said, there is an undeniable - there's no other word for it
- niceness about them and their music. It is not tiresomely-wholesome Dana
niceness, nor even smug Ronan-from-Boyzone niceness, both of which, you
suspect, conceal a heart of steel and an ambition that began as over-vaulting
and grew: Dana ran for president of Ireland, while Ronan recently admitted,
without irony, that he might one day do the same. It is, though, a peculiarly
Irish niceness. A professional niceness that is eager to please, unremittingly
polite, and practised with an unstated understanding that you are not just
letting yourself down if you misbehave, but also your town, your country
and, of course, your family.
These traditional values still hold fast in the new Ireland, much more
so than they do in Blairite, post-Thatcher Britain. Why else does the Eurovision
Song Contest remain such an obsession and a source of pride in Ireland
whereas everywhere else it has long since passed into post-ironic campness?
Though the Corrs are part of the new, confident, supposedly European
Ireland that grew up in tandem with U2's global ascendancy, they also straddle
the enduring, traditional Ireland. You could link their extraordinary global
success to the post-Riverdance marketing of a kind of faux-Irish pop heritage,
but their roots, musically at least, defy such a pat explanation.
They did not grow up playing Irish traditional music in sessions and festivals:
they began life as a late-80s synthesiser-pop band, all four playing
keyboards over programmed beats. Their shared influences were Prince, the
Police, Nick Kershaw and, naturally, U2. You can, if you listen closely,
hear all of these influences in their shiny, bright pop, just as you will
look in vain for angst à la Sinead O'Connor or Pogues-type
pandemonium. The Corrs may incorporate elements of Irish traditionalism
into their set, but they do not play it with the conviction that attends
their own sleekly modern take on traditional pop, which is where their
strength and durability lies. Their antecedents are Abba and the Carpenters,
and even Blondie, not the angst merchants that I depend on to reflect and
assuage my dark confusions.
Not being a Corrs fan before meeting them, I listen to their entire
recorded output, the way I would normally listen to a new Radiohead or
Neil Young album. What I hear is crafted, somewhat airbrushed, melodic
pop, which at times subtly utilises elements of Irish traditional playing.
I am not fired up by their songs but I am surprised more than once
- mostly by the grain of Andrea Corr's voice, which was recently described
by their current producer, the wonderfully named Mutt Lange, "as the best
pop voice in the world right now". For me, it was more the undertow of
plaintive sadness that surfaces from time to time, like a kink in a beautifully
woven piece of fabric. Listen to how she phrases the line "no more waiting,
no more aching" on What Can I Do: that perfectly pitched pause before she
lights on and stretches the last two syllables into a suggestion of pure
regret. Then imagine what Burt Bacharach could do with a voice like that.
In the flesh, as on stage and in camera, Andrea looks the sultriest
Corr, even - especially - when, knees tucked under her chin, she starts
to suck her thumb, lost in some private reverie. She is the child of the
family, the one who began singing with the band when she was still at school,
the one whose flirtatious gaze has graced numerous magazine covers; she
is the one whom the tabloids seek out, linking her to a succession of ever
more unlikely young men, the most recent
being Robbie Williams - "Do you think it's physically possible," she
protests, "to go out with all those guys that the press have said?" Behind
the pout, though, there is a brain. Her favourite book is Dostoyevsky's
Crime And Punishment: "I'm just drawn to the insight into the psychology
of the mind, the conflicts about what's morally right. It's the head stuff
I like."
Sharon, 28, the eldest sister, is altogether more poised, elegant
even. You can't imagine her sucking her thumb. Sharon plays the violin,
is classically trained, and may succeed in making that unlikely pop instrument
as sexy as the guitar. She is "in a long-term relationship" and spends
a lot of time in her fiancé's home town, Belfast, where "the people
are lovely and you don't get hassled so much".
Caroline, the middle sister, has been described as the tomboy of the
group, perhaps because she is the drummer. Tomboy or not, she has that
practical, no-nonsense approach characteristic of those who make their
living hitting skins with sticks. She wolfs down three bacon sandwiches
before the photo-shoot. She seems bemused but unfazed by the turn her life
has taken: "For a long time, I had no idea what we were doing," she laughs.
"I was a teenager and it was all a bit of a laugh. Looking back, I still
can't believe the cheek of us."
Brother Jim seems more reserved than his sisters. In the words of a
recent pop magazine profile, he exudes "the stoical air of a guy used to
waiting his turn in the bathroom". He is, says Caroline, "the initiator",
the Corr who kick-started this whole adventure, who galvanised his sisters
into rehearsing long into the night while two of them were still at school
studying for the Irish equivalent of A-levels. Jim, you feel, is the most
ambitious member of the Corrs, the one who always saw the bigger picture.
"We haven't yet achieved the level of success we'd like in America," he
tells me later. "We may have to go there more often, maybe even live there.
In this game, you've got to be in people's faces."
Which is exactly where the Corrs - these three implausibly photogenic
girls-next-door and their unassuming but driven older brother - have been
since the global crossover success of their second album, 1997's Talk On
Corners. If you are not familiar with the Corrs already, believe me, you
soon will be. The new album, In Blue, their fourth in 10 years, will pitch
them even higher into the pop stratosphere. It will be ubiquitous - on
the radio, in wine bars, restaurants and shops, seeping into your head
like a soft drug.
Breathless, the first single from In Blue, has gone straight into the
charts at number one. All the classic components of a Corrs hit song are
present: a deceptively simple and catchy melody, a chorus that lodges itself
in the listener's brain, a polished production that nestles somewhere between
pure pop and soft rock, the whole overlaid with Andrea's sexy-angelic voice
and her sisters' crystal-clear, soaring harmonies. Breathless, like the
hit singles that preceded it, most notably So Young and What Can I Do,
is further evidence that the Corrs have hit on an aural signature, an immediately
identifiable sound that has just enough space for melodic innovation each
time it is unfurled anew.
To really understand the Corr's success you have to put them in their
context. In an increasingly infantile pop landscape ruled by manufactured
irritants - from Boyzone to Billie, from B*witched to Britney - the Corrs
are, almost alone, flying the flag for organic pop, that is, music composed,
recorded and performed on real instruments. In short, they play pop music
that sounds the way pop used to sound, before drum machines and samplers,
before the tidal wave of gormless boy bands and grinning girls groups,
before mindless techno remixes and insipid cover versions became all the
rage. "We did CD UK [an ITV Saturday-morning music showcase] the
other day," says Jim Corr, "and we were the only band with instruments.
Apart from us, there wasn't a guitar or a drum or a keyboard in sight.
It's sad, but the ability actually to play music has somehow taken second
place."
There is, then, something comfortably old-fashioned about the Corrs'
music, and that something is central to their success. At a time when the
most relentlessly targeted audience for pop music is 10- to 13-year-olds,
the Corrs possess a mass appeal that stretches way beyond established music-business
demographics. The audience who turned up to see them perform at this year's
Fleadh in London's Finsbury Park, that increasingly raggle-taggle representationof
Celtic, and Celtic-related, music, were remarkable in one way only: they
crossed all age boundaries. Sure, the group may attract an above-average
degree of slavering boys (and men), but, ultimately, a Corrs concert is
pop as family entertainment. "If you look at pop music right now, it's
like everyone's throwing a line into these small stretches of river - dance,
pop, rock, whatever," says Bono. "Then, a hundred yards up, there is this
huge stretch of riverside, and the Corrs have it all to themselves. They've
got the pop fans, but they've also pulled this huge audience of people
out there who have a heart, soul and ears, but who are not interested in
modern pop because they are older, or more discerning, or simply don't
get it. And, I have to say, there's something really refreshing about a
band who haven't the tiniest regard for street cred. They know what it
is, but they're just not interested."
It took a long while, however, for the Corrs' unique selling point
to dawn on the British music industry. When they arrived on these shores,
with their fiddles and bodhrans and poppy-rocky-Irish folky songs, at the
height of the Britpop
phenomenon in the mid-90s, they met with a litany of rejection.
"People were quite suspicious of us initially," says Caroline, "because
we simply didn't fit.We seemed to bubble under for ages in Britain."
Their manager, John Hughes, is less circumspect. "I went into the marketplace,
saying, 'I have this Irish family band who write their own stuff and play
it on whistles and fiddles and bodhrans, as well as guitars, drums and
keyboards', and the record company people looked at me with pity. It was
like, 'They're gorgeous, I'll give you that, but it stops there... By the
way, what the hell's a bodhran?'
British radio, too, all but ignored the group initially: the Corrs
did not make the Radio 1 playlist until they released a cover version of
Fleetwood Mac's soft-rock classic, Dreams, in 1997. "It was kind of frustrating,"
remembers Sharon, "because the inference was that we were too unfashionable
to be successful. We weren't Britpop or Girl Power, or whatever was in
vogue at the time, but that, ultimately, was our strength. We could see
it, but the radio programmers and the record companies couldn't. We just
stuck to our guns and made the music we believed in."
It was a US label that snapped up the Corrs initially, after John Hughes
took the most audacious gamble of his life. On a trip to New York in 1994,
he marched the fledgling Corrs unannounced into an uptown recording studio
where David Foster, the most commercially successful producer in pop, was
working on Michael Jackson's HIStory album. Intrigued by their cheek as
much as anything, Foster granted the group an audition there and then:
they played an acoustic set in hisoffice, and, on his recommendation, were
signed to Atlantic Records within days.
Jason Frome, the A&R man who actually signed them, recalls, "When
they walked into my New York office, I was immediately taken by their beauty,
their obvious grace and style. They played me a cassette with Love To Love
You and Closer on it, then they told me they played all the instruments
themselves and wrote the songs. Man, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven."
Within months, Foster was producing the Corrs' first album, Forgiven
Not Forgotten, which has sold nearly four million copies. The follow-up,
Talk On Corners, in 1997, has just passed the seven million mark. "In a
way," says Hughes in his downbeat way, "you make your own luck. Then you
work your ass off selling your music door to door, country to country."
Which iswhat the Corrs have been doing ever since. Their touring itinerary
has been relentless, the marketing of their music and image unwavering.
Recently, they have looked noticeably more stylish, a cool and sexy designer
look replacing the floaty, silky wispiness of before. In their new ad campaign,
they look utterly now . All this, you think, is geared towards a subtle
but crucial shift in their image. The new look, like the new music, is
slightly edgier, imperceptibly tougher, though they still seem slightly
uncomfortable with the promotion process.
"Nobody should ever be seen this much, and no one should have to hear
themselves this much," says 26-year-old Andrea. "It's unnatural." She has
been famous since she was 16 and seems to be the Corr who is most uneasy
with the unwavering gaze of the media and the star-struck public. "It tampers
with your self-perception," she says, rummaging in her make-up bag. "You
become like a caricature of yourself. I sometimes feel like the image of
me is taking over, that the real me is only glimpsed... Then again, all
this" - she nods towards the lights and cameras, the rail of designer clothes
- "is our reality now. Our virtual reality, anyway."
Reality for the Corrs is now as far as is possible from the small-town
life they once led in Dundalk, County Louth. The only constant is pop music,
which has been a presence in their lives from as far back as they can remember.
"Mammy and Daddy were total pop fans," recalls Andrea fondly. "The radio
was on in the house all the time. I would have to sit by the tape recorder
while Mammy was making the dinner, and as soon as she heard a song she
needed to learn, I'd have to leap up and press the record button. That
was my job. It was like pop music united us all."
Gerry Corr, whose day job was a wages supervisor in a local bank, and
his wife, Jean, played the pubs and hotels of County Louth and beyond in
the 70s and 80s, as a duo called Sound Affair. They specialised in pop
covers and that weird hybrid known as Country & Irish. Gerry played
Farfisa organ, Jean sang; sometimes, Jim sat in on their sets with his
guitar. Back then, Dundalk was a small Irish town with a big, bad reputation.
Just 11 miles from the border with Northern Ireland and close to the "bandit
country" of south Armagh, it became a haven for IRA fugitives on the run
from the Troubles in the north.
A soft-spoken, guarded and quietly humorous man, Gerry is catching
up with his offspring before they depart on a global touring and promotional
schedule that stretches ahead for six months, culminating in six Christmas
shows at Wembley Arena. He regales me with tales of his own gigging days,
when, as he diplomatically puts it, "You had to gauge your audience's temperament
in a way that you wouldn't have to do elsewhere. "I remember playing
pubs where we'd have to throw in Four Green Fields or even The Boys Of
The Old Brigade. You simply had to do it. Once, we played a traditional
Irish song called Faine Gael An Lae [Bright Ring Of Day], and suddenly
I was looking out at all these fellas standing to attention in the
pub. It had been adopted, unbeknownst to us, as some sort of IRA anthem.
Other times, it would just be drunks getting messy, but there's a few
places you could visit today and I could show you the skidmarks we made
when we were leaving."
The Corr children were encouraged to play music almost as a matter
of course. "I never remember any parental pressure," says Andrea.
"We all just drifted into it in different ways." Initially, Jim and Sharon
were the most serious, the former attending the Irish Academy of Music,
the latter playing violin with the Junior Irish Youth Orchestra. At home,
though, they played pop: "It's funny," says Andrea, "but we all kind of
liked the same stuff - anything with a strong melody, really. For me, Prince
was it! I didn't really understand a lot of his lyrics at the time, until
Daddy confiscated the Lovesexy album, the one where he's naked on the front."
By the late 80s, Jim Corr was a jobbing musician, playing in a local
band called Cry ("sort of Echo & The Bunnymen meets the Police") doing
session work for various Irish acts, and thinking that he might be better
off pursuing a career in electronics. "For a while, myself and Sharon played
the pubs, just like Mammy and Daddy did. We'd cover Mary Black songs and
Horslips tunes, and I got this idea that we could make melodic pop that
brought in elements of Irish traditional music. It seemed quite natural,
really."
Until then, the fledgling Corrs had been a bedroom synth-pop band,
playing "real early-80s stuff", with titles such as Dance To The Beat.
Even then, they were focused, driven. "It's funny," says Caroline, "but
we always had this naive belief that we were going to make it. It was sort
of unspoken, but it was there from the start. We worked and worked until
we had this funny confidence. I mean, think about it, we sat down and wrote
everything ourselves, never covered other people's stuff. We just thought
if we were good enough to make it at all, we could make it on our own terms."
It was Jim who suggested that the group should audition for the role
of the band in Alan Parker's film of Roddy Doyle's book, The Commitments,
back in 1990. They didn't get the job, but in the audience was John Hughes,
who was employed as musical co-ordinator for the film. "I just saw something
that night in their performance, something intangible but incredibly strong,
that made me want to manage them."
It is obvious that in John Hughes, a former professional musician,
the Corrs have met their perfect mentor. "We had all the usual parental
reservations about the music business," says Gerry Corr. "In fact, Jean
would have preferred Andrea to go to university. But as soon as John got
involved, we knew they were in safe hands." And so it has been ever since.
Today, the group dynamic seems to have fused effortlessly with the
family dynamic. At one time, things were more tempestuous. "Right now,
I don't feel I have to be a member of the Corrs every day of my life,"
says Sharon, " but early on it was difficult to get that space. The family
thing was frustrating. I think we all felt that to varying degrees. It
was like we all had to be motivated in one direction - I mean, we still
are - but then it was without any real allowance for individual personalities
or conflicting opinions. Plus, there were the usual family rows." How bad
did it get? "Oh, it was bad, all right. Mad rows. All the time. See, the
one frustrating thing about a family, any family, is that you
can often get pigeon-holed at an early age - people look at you the way
you were when you were an adolescent brat, for instance. You get stereotyped,
and the stereotype tends to stick."
So what was your stereotype? "I suppose I was thought of as being dogmatic
and really very opinionated. I mean, as an adolescent, I really was. I
thought I knew it all. So, I got a hard time for that for ages. It doesn't
happen any more. We get on pretty well now, considering." Interestingly,
despite the familial tensions, the group has never come close to splitting.
To waste their talent, says Sharon, without irony, "would be like blasphemy".
Last October, the Corrs' virtual-reality world was shattered with a
cruel suddenness. Their mother was admitted to hospital with a suspected
lung infection. She died a week later, aged 57. "I was emotionally wrecked
after making the album," says Andrea. "The way it was in my head was that
we started an album, then our mother died, then we finished the album and
our mother's still dead... that's hard... I mean, I don't think we could
have done it any other way. She wanted us to keep going, to keep getting
better. We have to celebrate that in our music."
Did Andrea have any regrets about not going to university, I wondered,
thinking how different her life would have been had she done so: how she
would never have had to grapple with a loss of the self, except theoretically;
how she could have gone blissfully through another calmer, slower life,
never having to face down the constant dazzling reflection of her other,
increasingly unreal, celebrity self. She thinks about her answer for all
of a split second, then, grinning, but only half joking, says, "I was going
to study drama, something in the humanities, but sure I've learned more
about drama and more about humanity in the Corrs than I ever could have
anywhere else." Then, she puts on her make-up, walks into the glare of
the photographer's lights, and merges effortlessly with her image.