Coming of age

Andrea Corr floats into the Four Seasons Hotel on a wave of positive energy. She’s in good form, bright and buzzing, and up for it. It’s hard to believe, observing her, that she’s more than 15 years in the game at this stage. She may not be quite as long in the tooth as Roy Keane and she’s certainly not carrying as many injuries – the knees look just fine – but she’s been around right though the Keane years, all the same. And, the way things are shaping up, she’ll outlast him as well, by some distance.
Fifteen years – it’s a hell of a long time. And yet, if they wanted to cast her as a teenager in an Irish vampire movie, it wouldn’t require too much blusher for her to pass muster more than convincingly. Andrea is forever young, you might say. But that’s only part of the truth about the lead singer with the second most successful group ever to emerge from Ireland, after U2.
It struck me forcibly, listening to Home, the latest album from The Corrs. The realisation took a while to sink in fully – but as the album unfolded, the conclusion became irresistible. The singing throughout the record is superb – but there is more to it than that. What we are listening to is also, unmistakably, the voice of a woman, with all of the sense of experience and emotional range that implies. Most pop music, and much what disports itself in the guise of rock too, operates off the assumption of permanent youth. But with Home, Andrrea Corr has confirmed that she has the capacity to go beyond that stereotype to a deeper place.
This is no ingenue reflecting on death and tragedy and the power of love to sink us to the very depths, in Anna McGarrigle’s peerless ‘Heart Like A Wheel’. The sultry starlet of the ‘90s has developed into an artist, capable of dealing with the big, thorny, adult themes. And you can tell it too from the way she carries herself, and looks you in the eye when she talks.
She arranges herself at a table in the room that’s been set aside for interviews to promote Home. There’s no attempt to fade into the background. She sits upright, ready to take the questions as they come. And she does.
“I suppose I’m more confident now than I was a few years ago,” she explains. “I was a confident teenager. But I lost it, as I think everybody does to an extent. I was very insecure intitially when the group started, and I can hear that listening to the early records now. My way of combating that would be to focus on exactly what I’m saying, to make sure I listen to it – and then, in that way, to actually become the person within the song, or become myself as I felt when I wrote it. But you have to work at developing the ability to do that.”
There was an extent to which Andrea retreated into herself. She had just finished school when The Corrs started, and she never had the chance to do the normal growing up that happens between the ages of 17 and 27. Being plunged into an artificial world of endless touring and videos and photo shoots and screaming fans imposes a particular kind of pressure.
“Yeah, that’s basically it,” she says. “You shouldn’t see yourself so much. A world without mirrors would probably be a nicer place, and I mean that in every way. On the road, or writing the songs for an album, you’ve got so much time to think about yourself. It’s in the nature of what you do – no wonder you’re in trouble. We should be looking outside ourselves. But you end up, in this business, talking a lot about yourself – and some people love that. But I’m not really that interested. I’m at my happiest when I’m away from all of that.”
On stage, there was an endearing, girlish quality to her presence – an almost faery-like sensibility that made no pretence at rock’n’roll insouciance. But listening to Home, an album largely of traditional Irish songs and tunes – with a few more recent choices thrown in for good measure – you sense that she has moved on, and into the next life-phase.
“I’ve done a hell of a lot of gigs and it’s singing live that teaches you how to get inside a song, much more than making albums. But it is funny, that you can hear the maturity in a voice. And it’s true, you can. I think it happens quite gradually.”
The peculiar strength of The Corrs is that the members of the band all come from the one family. On the plus side there is a support system there that is especially dependable. But Andrea has talked before about the fact that there was something unnatural in it too. The opportunity to definitively break free from the ties of family was never there. In a sense that made the death of her mother Jean all the harder for Andrea to deal with – though in the end, maybe the wrench of that gave her the resolve to be more fully herself.
“I know this sounds mad, but I had never really made the decision to do it,” she says about becoming the lead singer in a band. “But I think Mammy dying made me realise how much I did really want to do this. When she died, and in the aftermath, I knew I needed it, to be able to express myself. And I think maybe that was quite critical.
“I think also, as you get older, you get more comfortable in yourself. Everything in music is about revealing things that you might be ashamed of. Instead of writing a diary you write songs and they – and to an extent you – become public property. You are revealing the moments in your life that are meaningful to you, or that are hurtful, or that you’re slightly ashamed of, or you’re guilty about. Because that’s what we obsess about. It’s what feeds into the songs. So I think with age and experience, you get more comfortable in being true to yourself.”
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The idea for the album is in itself an expresion of the confidence The Corrs feel in themselves and their music. You might deduce that Home is a kind of indulgence, as the band play the songs that their mother gathered in her note books and that their father and Jim played along the way. It is a record that Jean Corr would have been proud of. But why now?
“Over the years it’s kind of been there as an idea, to focus on the Celtic roots in our music,” Andrea explains. “Some of the material we chose was from a songbook of mammy’s and we knew that daddy would be thrilled for us to do it. But it was basically Caroline who ultimately pushed it. And you know it was really lovely and liberating – because we just did it ourselves.”
Certainly, in the making of Home, there was less pressure on the band than with any previous Corrs’ albums.
“When you’re writing something, there’s always lots of pressure: you’ve got to sell a lot of records and you’ve got to keep doing that. So, if you’re writing it, there’s always that demand for the elusive hit – you know what I mean, where they’re like ‘Write a hit! You don’t have a hit single yet. You have to write one’. But a hit’s not a hit until it’s a hit – it doesn’t exist until it happens. It’s all speculation. So that imposes the pressure. But for this record, there was none of that.
“So, it was really very enjoyable, the freedom of interpreting material, rather than having to write it. It was kind of exploratory as well – we knew the songs, but when you get closer to them, you learn so much. You see things in Irish music that you wouldn’t have thought were actually there.”
On the other hand, the traditionalists are very protective of Irish music, particularly regarding how it is re-interpreted in an electric context. Did that impose a different kind of pressure on the band?
“We didn’t worry about that and we never have, because if you worry about criticisms and people’s opinions that’s only going to inhibit you, and your ability to express yourself. You have to just do what you naturally feel. And with this, why do it if you’re not going to bring something to it as a group, or as a singer? Why not do something different? Our attitude was: let’s find out what comes out of this band playing these songs.”
What emerges, for one, is that The Corrs are fine and often under-rated musicians. The playing is exemplary throughout and the arrangements reflect a band at ease with themselves and the material.
“One thing you’ll notice on the record is that the piano sounds great,” Andrera says. “It’s something that Jim is brilliant at, working with Irish songs. I think this is the first time on a Corrs’ record that you can see what a great piano player he is. So most of the songs started around the piano and we took them on from there.”
There’s a great ceili house moment on one of the sets of tunes that is humorous and affectionate – but captures the essential ramshackle parlour spirit of the music.
“I love that too,” Andrea says. “And the drums are like deh-deh-deh-deh-dah-kisssh, I really like that. It’s the first time we’ve gone the whole way with something like that. We’ve always been aware of what ceili music is, and traditional Irish music is, obviously, and that’s been an influence on our music. But it was really nice to just do it as it is, because there’s such joy in ceili music.”
Just doing it is one thing. But is there anything that Andrea herself wanted to communicate, in making Home?
“I just feel that if people could also see what we discovered in doing these songs, that would be perfect. If they don’t, then OK. But to me, what I found, which is a beautiful thing, is the sexuality in Irish songs – which is much more intense than, say, in hip hop, when they’re wearing a bra and knickers in a video, you know? And this is something I hadn’t really understood before.
“When you think of ‘My Lagan Love’ – that is incredibly intense, and it brings you right back to the place where Ireland had that rawness, to a time when your desires weren’t fulfilled, basically to a time when there was no sex before marriage. So with ‘My Lagan Love’, he loves her so much and watches her – and the way I see it is this simple image of her that is just so erotic. That’s the beauty of Ireland to me: instead of hotpants and a belly-top or whatever, it’s got a Victorian dress on, with loads of layers and it’s just…that’s the beauty.”
What’s inescapable, however, is that the album is far more downbeat than fans of The Corrs will be used to. There’s no ‘Breathless’ on Home.
“Well, the songs have a melancholy aspect to them, so it’s the proper way they should be. But we really wanted to do those songs. Given the nature of the album, we had an endless supply of songs to choose from, and not all of them were melancholy – but these were the best, these were special. When you have the freedom to choose from so many songs, you’re going to go for the most emotional, and the most emotional generally have a melancholy aspect to them.
“In a way, I prefer singing songs that I haven’t written because it means I can just be a singer. And I do love singing. I enjoyed the fact that this was down to how we’d interpret what are great songs. I’ve not ever really been insecure about my singing. Not that I think I’m fantastic, but my focus on singing is that I’m telling a story. That’s the way I approach it. So I’m just a person telling a story, and I want to tell it as powerfully and as well as I can.”
There is little doubt that Andrea’s confidence in taking on different characters in song has been fortified by the work she has been doing, with increasing success, as an actress. Having made her debut in The Commitments, and featured as Juan Peron’s mistress in Evita, her celluloid career has accelerated over the past few years with a number of more substantial roles.
She starred in the John Irvin comedy The Boys and Girl From County Clare, on the set of which she met her current beau, actor Sean Evans, and as a psychologist in the short The Bridge. Her latest part is in The Thread, a film shot in India, the Isle of Man and London and directed by the director of Bhopal Express, Mahesh Mathai. Is it possible that acting might become the primary focus for her career over the next five years?
“I would hope to keep making music,” Andrea says. “It’s in my blood. But as I said to you before, I very much live for the moment. Today I’m happy, and I don’t know about five years – and I’m fine with that. Although I can’t imagine ever not wanting to make music, and not getting a kick out of it, so I can’t see it as ever being not a part of my life.
“But I don’t know really what will happen. I’ll have to do what I’m happy with. I’ve always wanted to act, even before the band. Obviously, the way we went about it as The Corrs, that was all-consuming, so I wasn’t able to pursue the acting. I don’t regret that, but now I am able to do it. I need it emotionally because I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t do it. I just have a strong gut feeling that I’m supposed to act. I know when I’m doing something that I’m in the right place. So that’s why I push myself to try and do both.
“There’s a balance to it. I like what music offers because I’m more in control of it. And because I have that, I find acting very liberating,” she adds. “In the band I have a lot more responsibility – everything I say and everything I write is scrutinized. Whereas with movies, my responsibility is just to tell the truth as the character I’m playing – so there’s a great freedom in acting, doing the role and then just letting it go.”
The Himalayas, where The Thread was filmed is a long way from the Cooley Mountains.
“It was just stunningly beautiful,” Andrea reflects. “So exotic – a different world completely. The weather changes every five minutes, and it creates a whole new theme in the same place. It’s quite eerie at times. Unbelieveable. And the people are beautiful and completely unthreatening. The boys are so affectionate – they go around holding hands, men hold hands and hug and things. The freedom of that is a lovely reflection on the society.
“But also, at that altitude you can barely breathe. There’s a very heavy fog, so if you’re walking up a hill, you really struggle. And then a man will walk by you, with a bed on his back, literally tied to his neck, walking up the hill. Meanwhile, you’re nearly collapsing on the side of the road, I mean they’re unbelieveable. And monkeys – there’s rabid monkeys all over the place there!”
And what do they get up to?
“They just walk around, acting like monkeys. And with babies hanging from their bellies, the whole lot. Apparently they steal. I was told that you’ve got to be careful, they’ll steal the hat straight off your head. You have to keep the windows closed because they’ll come in and literally steal your computer. They must be the most literate monkeys in the world up there!”
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In a sense, Andrea’s experiences only underline the fact that, after 15 years together, the four band members in The Corrs have moved into very different stages of their lives. Diverging lifestyles inevitably mean diverging expectations – so how do they cope with that as a group?
“That is difficult. I think we were lucky. We allowed music to be absolutely all-consuming. We didn’t have days-off and that’s the way our lives worked all those years. We followed the dream with complete single-mindedness. And it’s definitely a contributing factor to the success of it all. But you couldn’t do that forever, and fortunately you don’t actually need to.
“Caroline isn’t going to want to leave her children to tour – and I don’t want her to leave the children, because as a family, we do love each other. What we did in the past is kind of impossible now. So we’ll have to see what the future holds. But one thing is sure – that we’re still as committed to each other as ever. And that’s something that won’t change. Ever.”
The beauty and inherent exoticism of the Himalayas notwithstanding, Andrea felt a new surge of pride when she got back to Ireland.
“I just love it here. I haven’t been in Ireland in a while and I just realised that I miss it so much. It’s my favourite time of year in autumn, the smell, going back to school, the leaves changing colours. I went down to Dundalk last night and I was passing the Cooley Mountains and thinking ‘Nearly there!’. When we go away, in many ways we can see more clearly what we have here and it is wonderful.”
Not that everything is completely rosy in the garden.
“I feel quite protective of Ireland,” she says. “I think anybody who travels a lot gets more clingy to where they’re from than those that are based here all the time. But I hate when people come to Ireland, and try to see it as we see it – and they end up being ripped off. It is far too expensive here now – and I just don’t think that will do us any favours with tourists and visitors.”
On a more trivial note, she’s been the victim of minor cases of road rage!
“Everybody’s in such a bad mood driving! You can’t make a mistake – if you do you get it in the ear: ‘beeeeep!’. It’s like ‘Aw, come on! When did Dublin turn into New York? Please calm down!’ Everybody is just under a lot more pressure now, I guess. I’m driving a good few years, but I only got my test last year. But even when I had my learner plate, people would beep. You’d think they’d cut some slack for learner drivers – but they don’t.
“This is quite funny! I was driving along and I got into the wrong lane somehow, which can happen, so I then was kind of stuck in the middle. So I was nowhere and the traffic stopped along the Quays. And this guy beside me was kind of stuck as well and he was like ‘beeeep’ – he was really angry and I looked over and just shrugged my shoulders and smiled, which I don’t think he was expecting. Everybody’s used to probably getting the two fingers or whatever. But it worked. He calmed down.”
Left him breathless.b

The Corrs’ latest album, Home, is out now on Warner Records