Take nothing for granted

Talk about bad hair days! Heading off to meet The Corrs to discuss their brand new album Borrowed Heaven, the cab booked to whisk me from HP HQ to our rendezvouz point got snarled in the black hole that is Dublin Friday traffic, and my stress levels began to soar.

Thanks to a better than average Samaritan, incredibly I got to The Factory early – only to find I was actually expected at The Merrion Hotel, a couple of miles away! After further adventures with a cab and the traffic, I finally arrived at the real intended destination complete with rivulets of sweat, menopausal flushes and genuflected apologies.
I briefly met Caroline and Sharon, who were on their way to RTE, where rehearsals for that night’s Late Late Show were imminent. Then, steam still coming out my ears, I joined up with Andrea and Jim, who accepted my tardiness with the graciousness that has made The Corrs honorary members of the Decent Folks Club.
The springboard for the interview was the release, last week, of Borrowed Heaven, The Corr’s fourth studio album – and their first since the massive selling In Blue catapulted the band to the No.1 spot all over the world. With its first single ‘Summer Sunshine’ stampeding up the charts even as we sat down to talk, and a European tour lined up, it was becoming clear that The Corrs were facing into a long, hot – and almost certainly hugely successful – summer…

Jackie Hayden: Do you ever get tired of the inevitable round of interviews, every time you bring out an album or announce a tour?
Andrea: Honestly, yes. It seems to defeat the purpose in a way, because as a musician you feel, ‘why don’t we just play and let the music speak for itself?’ But of course it’s necessary and sometimes you can end up having great discussions. But it’s not a part of the job that you particularly look forward to.
What are the naffest questions you’ve been asked – apart from “where did you first meet?”
Jim: Yeah, we’ve been asked that! People want to know how I feel being the only guy, do I feel I get less attention than the girls? Do I have problems getting to the bathroom, do the girls fight and so on. I suppose people are interested in these things anyway.
And do the girls fight?
Andrea: (laughing) No! But we get irritated with each other in some situations where we’re stuck together. Sometimes the sofa is too small for us all!
Borrowed Heaven was done in Dublin and Los Angeles. Did it all go smoothly?
Andrea: We wrote the songs in Dublin and we were writing from inspiration. If one of us had an idea for a song, we’d book the studio and produce it to a certain level. It was painless and very liberating – and it went very smoothly.
Do you have a set structure to the way you write your songs?
Jim: It can vary. Sometimes we might get the chords first, maybe on guitar or piano, and see what that inspires in terms of a melody line and lyrics. Some artists start with the lyrics, which can create a different type of song.
Andrea (to Jim): Actually, on this album there are two we did that way. For ‘Humdrum’ and ‘Baby Be Brave’ when you sent me the backing track, I looked into my notebook for lyrics I’d already written. But we take different approaches – and of course there are different combinations of songwriting partnerships within The Corrs.
Do you need a deadline to focus your attention?
Jim: We write pretty much all the time. We already had a lot of material for this album, because all of us were writing, so we actually had to shed quite a bit in the end.
You’ve had a break of two years since the campaign for In Blue ended. Did you feel that you needed to reassess yourselves in music terms?
Jim: We needed to take the time out, not only to reassess ourselves musically, but more importantly lifewise. We’d been living out of suitcases for years. We needed time for ourselves and to look at other interests. So it made sense to take a bit of time out. Sharon and Caroline got married, and Caroline had a wee baby and is having another. I pursued a lifelong dream and learned to fly a helicopter!
So there were no time pressures?
Andrea: No. In the past we worked absolutely back-to-back on each record, going straight from recording to touring and then back into the studio to write and record again. We’ve achieved a sufficient level of success at this point that we don’t need to keep that up – and I think it’s audible from the record itself. It wasn’t done with a clock ticking – it was about taking the time that was needed, and making the best album possible.
The song ‘Angel’ has religious undertones to it, and seems to link up with your mother’s death.
Andrea: There’s an obvious but unstated belief in the song that our mother’s in a better place now. ‘Angel’ is like having a conversation with her, asking her what it’s like there.
Is it comforting as an artist that you can deal with issues and experiences like that?
Andrea: I don’t know. But it’s great to get some kind of clarity about your feelings. It’s quite cathartic in a way that you can clear up the muddle of it all in your head. That’s why a lot of our songs turn into something uplifting because it is a release of sorts. And in that sense I think we are fortunate in being able to express those feelings and get it out.
So is it a form of therapy?
Andrea: I find that kind of indulgent, the idea of letting the world hear “my therapy” (laughing). It isn’t the essential purpose of the music. But I think that does happen too and it’s just one of the reasons why The Corrs’ music can sound celebratory. ‘Angel’ sounds very celebratory.
Andrea, you also wrote the lyrics for ‘Borrowed Heaven’. It’s very gritty and down to earth with its emphasis on the transient nature of beauty – so is it the other side of the coin from ‘Angel’?
Andrea: Yeah. I would link them in that they express feelings that I hold strongly. ‘Borrowed Heaven’ is about the miracle of being alive – and the miracle of all the feelings that we have and can share with others, whether it’s pain or pleasure, or just that sense of the transience of life. To me that song is like a prayer – and it’s probably to do with the times we live in, when it seems ever more uncertain what tomorrow will bring. The first line in ‘Angel’ is “she lived like she knew nothing lasts”, and that links to “all beauty, all fade away” in ‘Borrowed Heaven’. We should embrace this moment – but also have an acceptance of death.
The lyrics of ‘Humdrum’ paint a fairly bleak picture of marriage, and you, Andrea, are the only female Corr unmarried. Explain yourself!
Andrea: (laughs) That’s why I can paint that picture! I’m not hurting anybody! It didn’t start out being as bleak as it is now. Initially it was just a chorus (“I wanna take you for granted”) and it was about, almost, wanting to have a merely mundane relationship. Because of the intense lives we lead, we don’t seem to get much time with each other – and there’s nearly no time for it to get domestic. Jim wrote the music for this track with no knowledge of the lyrics I’d jotted in my book, and it sounded so cheeky with those chord progressions that it inspired me to go a bit nasty with it! Not nasty really but... I almost got pictures, with the music, of ‘Pleasantville’, so lovely on the surface but it’s not when you look a bit more closely. When somebody asks you “will you marry me?” in a way they’re really asking you “will you allow me to take you for granted”. The song picks up on that. It’s extreme, but it’s tongue in cheek.
Is there a danger that people won’t get the joke?
Jim: Everybody takes what they can from every lyric. All songs have an ambiguity about them and that’s what makes songs special.
Is that a quality that you look for in songs?
Jim: I think it’s essential, so long as no one is taking entirely the wrong meaning out of a song!
Some might see a hint of disillusionment in ‘Humdrum’.
Andrea: Well, there is a bit of truth in it. I’ve often thought of marriage as leading to a state where two people, who were desperately in love, end up completely taking each other for granted. That’s a fact of life in a lot of marriages, and I’m just putting it in a funny way. I think it’s very obviously tongue-in-cheek, with that dramatic lead-up where it sounds as if it’s going to burst into another love song – but then the chorus goes “I wanna take you for granted”.
If you were given lyrics, which you didn’t really agree with, would you be able to sing them anyway on the basis that it’s just a song?
Andrea: You’re the singer, so you interpret the song, so yes – unless it was expressing some extreme view, like putting down people because of their race or something. But that’s not going to happen with us.
Do all of The Corrs think very similarly about things?
Jim: Yes, I think so. We’re very close in that sense.
Andrea: Yeah, pretty much, although with religion it can get pretty personal, you know? People’s personal faiths can differ. I’m not going to say that everybody believes that our mother’s in a better place. It would be presumptuous of me to say that on behalf of the others. I’ve been involved in interviews where one of the others might say that they don’t know what they believe – and that’s fair enough.
You went to the Golden Globe awards when one of the tracks on Borrowed Heaven, ‘Time Enough For Tears’, which is written by Bono, Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer, was nominated for an award because it appeared in the film In America. Is it disappointing being at something like that and not winning?
Andrea: It was disappointing because we felt the song deserved to win. But it was funny being there. Me and Gavin Friday, together in Hollywood, seemed the most incongruous thing in the world! But really I was disappointed for Jim Sheridan because his movie deserved more than it got – especially for a small, independent movie up against others with huge budgets. It also deserved to be nominated for an Oscar, but it wasn’t. But it was great to be there. Gavin is very, very funny, going on about being over-run by Hobbits and so on.
Are those Hollywood parties as madcap as we’re led to believe?
Andrea: In Los Angeles things are very controlled. They’re not madcap. It’s understandable that Colin Farrell has this name as an absolute renegade over there because anybody who lights up a cigarette in LA is, like, out of their mind, nuts, crazy, they should be arrested and so on. They’re definitely not madcap. They’re not wild. It’s a very controlled environment.
Is that frustrating, in that you have to behave according to their norms?
Andrea: Sometimes. But there has to be respect for other cultures. If you go to Japan, for example, you want to respect their etiquette. But it’s a privilege to be asked to these things in the first place, so it’d be silly to start complaining about it. At the same time, all award ceremonies attract clowns – that’s the nature of the entertainment industry.
The impression that the general public get is that it’s all glamorous stuff.
Jim: I think you’ve been reading too many tabloids, Jackie! (laughs) In the absence of any verifiable juicy gossip, they’ll just make it up. When there’s a vacuum it’ll be filled, and that’s what tabloids do.
Andrea: Jackie, I’m being completely honest with you. I’ve never seen anything extreme or offensive at any LA parties. The most radical thing I’ve seen at them is somebody having a cigarette outside!
Jim: Of course if you read the biography about Motley Crue it’s unbelievable what those guys got up to. If I’d been in that band I wouldn’t be alive today! I’m glad I’m in a band with my three sisters! (laughs)
The Corrs are very rich, very famous, very successful – so why aren’t you all assholes!?!
Jim: I don’t know about that (laughs) – but our success was gradual. We weren’t suddenly launched into this world of fame, which I think can be hard for some people to handle. And we didn’t get into it to be famous but to be successful at what we do. We’re musicians first. I do think it’s very dangerous for people who just want fame for fame’s sake. That doesn’t interest us.
When Caroline has to opt out of parts of the tour on account of her pregnancy, will you find it disconcerting not having her there?
Andrea: Oh God, of course she’ll be missed, and she’ll miss it. But it’s quite exciting to do it this way. She’s been behind the drums constantly, so it’ll be good for her to step forward a bit. She’ll be doing percussion and more backing vocals, Jason Duffy will be on drums, and with his brother Keith on bass and Kieran on keyboards we’ll have a bigger set-up anyway. We’re excited about it.
There’s a long tradition of musical families in pop and rock. Do you relate to them at all?
Jim: I take my hat off to them because, apart from working at the music, selling your product and doing the business, you have to work at your own internal relationships. I have a lot of admiration for the likes of Clannad.
What about the Osbournes?
Andrea: (laughs) They seem pretty close to me. They might seem mad and it’s all camped up for TV, but I suspect they’re a pretty loving family.
Andrea, it’s been said that you can drink Bono under the table. Is that true?
Andrea: The thing is, Bono made some quote about us that we could drink the Gallaghers under the table. I don’t know whether we could or not, but the fact is that we’d be the last people who’d want to keep this old image of the Irish and drink going. The drunken Irish jokes have been going on a long time and we, as a band, would not want to perpetuate that image.
Jim: But there’s nothing we can do about it. We take a drink, we like a drink on occasions. But if we did it to excess we wouldn’t be able to function, to do the interviews, the gigs, television and so on. We love our work and we wouldn’t want drink to interfere with that in any way. But it’s only by being with us that you’d know what we’re really like.
So is it irritating that people may have wrong views about you?
Jim: No. Who cares?
Andrea: We don’t really care. Worse things could be said. People don’t really know us, but we know each other. The analysis can get extreme, but it goes with the territory.
When you’re in the limelight do you feel that you have to look at the tabloids every day to see what they’re saying about you?
Jim: (laughing) No, we wouldn’t have the time. Unless somebody tells us there’s something libelous, then we’ll move on that. But if it’s just hurtful we put up with it, and if people want to believe it, that’s their prerogative.
You’ve approving of the smoking ban. Are there other aspects of Irish society you’d like to see improved?
Jim: I suppose one of the most worrying development is the binge drinking. That needs to be curtailed.
By the band or by the public?
Andrea: (laughing) By me!
Jim: I’d also like to think that people would eat better. Imagine if organic food was sponsored by the government and made more freely available to people at cheaper prices. Obesity is rising here as well as in the UK. The fruit and vegetables we grow here are grown in an accelerated manner so they don’t have the proper nutrients. I’d like to see something done about that, and to promote organic food.
Ireland has done very badly in Eurovision for the last few years. If you were asked to write a song for Eurovision would you do it?
Andrea: I wouldn’t want to. No.
Jim: We just write for ourselves. We haven’t written for anybody else, although I wouldn’t rule out doing film scores, say.
Might you have individual musical ambitions that don’t fit with The Corrs so maybe further down the road you’ll take on individual projects?
Jim: We’re very aware that our strength is in the sum of the parts and we’re very comfortable with that. But you never know what the future holds.
Is there a magic ingredient that makes The Corrs such a successful musical unit?
Jim: For songs to touch people, I believe they have to offer glimpses of your own personal experiences.
Andrea: I hope that it’s the honesty in the songs we write that touches people.
The Corrs new album Borrowed Heaven is out now on Atlantic Records. Their European tour includes Irish stop-offs at the Belfast Odyssey (June 23), Killarney Summerfest (June 26), The Point, Dublin (June 28/29)