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It’s not their fault they’re beautiful
Phenomenally successful, the Corrs are often accused of being all
style and no substance. Not so, they tell
Sam Leith.
“It’s a pretty unnatural situation we’re in,” Sharon Corr reflects.
“Most families leave home. They don’t leave home together.”
Fewer yet leave home to become pop stars – “Pretty mad, living in hotels
and working 18-hour days together” – and those that do as often as no regret
it.
The Jackson Five produced Michael; the story of the Carpenters ended
in Karen’s death from anorexia; the Gallagher brothers can’t even be trusted
to share a hotel. And the Corrs…well, so far Sharon, Andrea, Caroline and
their elder brother Jim look like four perfectly sane, healthy, good-natured
millionaires with preternaturally bright eyes and clear complexions. Don’t
you just hate them?
When I meet them, they have good reason to be cheerful. They have just
come off stage after playing to 100,000 of the soggy, grinning faithful
at Party in the Park in London. And they have just learned that in Breathless,
the single from their new album, they have their first UK number one.
Still in stage gear – Andrea with a peculiar red doily on her head
– they seem disconcertingly tiny as they bunch at one end of a backstage
Portakabin. But it will come as a disappointment to their enemies to learn
that the girls close up are barely less pretty than they are on television.
And that – it seems – is the problem. For all their material success,
an understandable undertone of frustration enters when they talk about
they way they are perceived. Their radio-friendly sound and magazine-friendly
looks have been crucial to the scale of their popularity (their second
album, Talk on Corners, was Britain’s biggest-selling release of 1998,
and they have now sold a total of 16 million albums). But it’s precisely
those things that have led to their being called a marketing-led, manufactured
band.
“If people want to criticise our music, they will decide it’s a manufactured
thing, it’s a looks thing,” Sharon says with a shrug, “but really we’re
very secure in ourselves. We write and record all our own music. We wouldn’t
sell out Wembley arena six times if we weren’t able to perform.”
One record executive I spoke to before meeting them said: “The thing
about the Corrs is that they give their audience exactly what it wants,
and they’ve succeeded in doing that, brilliantly, again and again.”
Their new album, In Blue (EastWest) is out this week and a racing certainty
to go straight to number one. Fresh and breezy, it remains very recognisably
the Corrs, but with the Irish influences toned slightly down in favour
of a more transatlantic sound. On a couple of tracks – including Breathless,
with its chiming guitars – they collaborated with Mutt Lange, husband of
pop-country star Shania Twain. It’s different, but not that different.
And it will sell millions.
That doesn’t mean the record isn’t from the heart. Their mother, Jean
Corr, died during its recording, and it is dedicated to her. One song,
No More Cry, specifically addresses her death – and the surprise of the
song is how pacy, how uptempo it is.
“It was our mother’s birthday when we wrote it,” says Andrea. “You
can’t pretend that what happened didn’t happen, and I think the song is
us trying to rebel from the pain. It is very uptempo and it’s like ‘No
more. That’s enough. It’s very much to our father: to get him through it.
And it is natural – it was a very natural thing for it to happen. It’s
almost like screaming.”
Did they try screaming too?
“Oh yes. Screaming happens anyway,” says Andrea, smiling. “But it’s
not so musical on the ears. We had to try it another way…”
When Jean Corr died, her four children were losing a musical mentor
as well as a mother. The consistency of their sound is bred in the bone
– and when they talk about musical influences, it’s clear that the most
powerful have been Jean and Gerry Corr.
“The reason our sounds are very melodic is because of the stuff that
Mum and Dad listened to,” says Sharon.
“Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, the Carpenters, Simon and Garfunkel…that
was a very strong part of our upbringing.”
“We just write the songs that we naturally feel,” says Andrea. “We
don’t feel tied to a particular sound. Our musicality hasn’t changed very
much – but we like to progress.”
When asked the extent to which pressure from the record company determines
the way they progress, they palm the question aside.
“They have asked Jim to take his top off and wear shorter skirts.”
It’s practices routine – but given charm by the high, unforced laugh
with which Jim greets it.
Ten years ago, the Corrs were practising in an upstairs room at their
parents’ home in Dundalk, Co Louth: Jim, the eldest (now 31), playing the
guitar and keyboards; Sharon the violin; and Andrea who also writes most
of the lyrics, singing. Caroline originally played keyboards. Then they
decided that “girls sitting behind a keyboard just looked bad”; and so
she learned a few drum patterns from an old boyfriend and picked it up
as she went along.
“The first thing we did with the Corrs was a live TV show, and I was
playing drums,” says Caroline. “I don’t think
I was ever so nervous. The next thing, I was on the road.”
She used to have to wear riding gloves to protect her hands, and, even
now, offering an impressive row of calluses for inspection, remarks: “Hand
modelling is out of the window.”
They say that success has brought them closer as a family – and they
still behave with each other like siblings.
About halfway through the interview, I’m craning earnestly to listen
to a point Caroline is making, when a slurping noise from my right dissolves
the sisters in laughter.
Jim has his thumb in his mouth and is chomping theatrically on it.
Andrea blushes and covers her face. At 26, Andrea Corr is a global pop
superstar who regularly tops polls of sex symbols in glossy magazines.
But she’s still not above being embarrassed when her big brother catches
her sucking her thumb.
