But the colossal sales figures don't begin to tell even half the story. Because while their remarkable rise and rise is undoubtedly driven by the family group's uncanny ability to craft catchy, winning and wonderfully accessible pop music, there is another dimension to it, which is harder to pin down, but no less important, in the grand scheme of things.

There has been a tendency, in Ireland in particular, to dismiss The Corrs as lightweight. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact they only got to be where they are, right up there among the bare-knuckle boys, battling it out for the top spot, because there is a backbone of steel in the group - a willingness to lay themselves on the line, to work, to work some more, and then to work again, that distinguishes them from a lot of swaggering and self-important rock bands that think of themselves as hard men.

Nor, however, are they pop fodder - four suggestible kids, doing what they're told and being run ragged in the process. On the contrary, there is a level of thought, intelligence and adaptability within the Corrs' camp which has been essential to their growth and to their success. Some of this, without a doubt, derives from their manager John Hughes, a man of quite extraordinary vision and resilience, who has guided the band to their current status, winning all - or almost all, at any rate - of the key battles with the industry along the way.

And then there's the group themselves. For a band who have been astonishingly successful, we know very little about them as individuals - what they think and feel, and how, in the midst of their stunning achievements, they relate to the world. And because we do know so little, there has perhaps been an assumption that they have little to say - and besides, they probably aren't very good at saying it anyway. Talking to all four members, and to John Hughes, separately, this was something I wanted to explore.

What you do discover, getting any way close to The Corrs, is that they are unusually decent and straightforward people, genuinely nice and unaffected in the best possible meaning of both words. Beyond that, when there is the space and the opportunity to be reflective, it becomes evident that there are depths to these brothers and sisters that deserve to be more fully explored. It becomes evident, above all, that these are people with real heart.

But that is for you also to decide. Thus, I thought, on this occasion at least, it would be best to leave the grand theorising at the door, and to let the band speak for themselves. Ladies and gentlemen, will you please welcome - over the next eight pages of hotpress - Andrea, Caroline, Jim and Sharon, collectively known as The Corrs...

ANDREA

Niall Stokes: As a band you took more responsibility with In Blue - you have a greater level of input into the production and so on. Was that a strain when you were doing it?

Andrea Corr: Yes. I think every album has different strains and that probably was the particular strain. Yet ironically with that the greatest joy of it, too. The album started without us really knowing it. John said 'there's this movie looking for a song'. And I said 'me and Caroline wrote this song the other day' and I played it immediately on the piano to him. And he said 'let's go into the studio and record it'. That's how the album started. Production-wise we started by Caroline playing the piano, I'd sing into a little mike and we'd build around it. Then every time somebody wrote a song we'd go into the studio and do that same thing. There was great magic in that. And we'd great fun. It was very liberating - no quests for hits, that kind of ludicrous stuff that bands have to deal with these days. Ours was a haven without that. It was just music-making.

Presumably, it wasn't idyllic all the way?

It did get quite hairy when we had everything brought up to a level where we felt it was as good as we could get it. We listened and we got cold feet. Because producers exist for a reason. We got scared because we thought we might have written the best songs of our lives, yet they mightn't sound like the best songs of our lives because of us trying our hands at producing them. So at the end we got in Mitchell Froom and said 'We're doubting ourselves here. Will you come in and clean it and do some scrubbing here?'. So he did.

Is there rivalry between the different guys in the band in terms of getting songs on a record?

No. Of course, you love your song, but at the end of the day there's a sound to a record and it's almost like blind faith, because you just know if it fits with what makes a complete, great album that has every element you want in there. You'd know if your song wasn't as good or didn't fit.

Is there a song on In Blue that you're particularly proud of?

There's something very frightening to me about writing because it is purely an inspiration. Sometimes it's happening and only I realise halfway through the verse what I'm writing about. In that way it really is your gut coming out. It's the core of it. It's the absolute essence of your emotions. So I'm proud of 'No More Cry'. It's exactly what I felt after Mum's death. I'm proud of them all though. I'm proud of 'One Night'. I really love that. I think it's a beautiful song that myself and Caroline wrote. 'Hurt Before'. And 'Somebody For Someone' which we wrote as well. I know that even in the best of bands, people look back on lyrics they're embarrassed about. And I certainly have them. But on this album, I don't think I have. Words are such an inadequate form of expression - but along with music, they're magic. That's when it's almost like a scream. When the marriage of that happens it's really special. I really like 'All In A Day' as well. It is about adolescence.

Were you a bit of a wild one in your adolescence?

To be honest I was, but I was very lucky in my positioning in the family. Because their wildness was looked at, but when it came to me, my parents were jaded with antics from the family, so I got away with an awful lot. I did work at school, and I did very well. But I had a great time also. I think Mummy and Daddy knew that I would take care of business. I wasn't being a bad girl.

Only half bad!

Only being naughty.

What was the baddest thing you did at that stage in your life?

I can't say because those things are very personal. There is one but I had to make that mistake and I don't want to talk about it because the family will read it. But I drank long before I was supposed to. That was fun. But we've all been wild. Jim was very wild. We all had our moments. My hair was just wilder, I think. (laughs)

You went from school into the band. Do you ever regret that?

We started the band when we auditioned for The Commitments. I was 15 then. And then we started to write and record and we'd do that at night while I was at school. I could have gone to university, but when I got my Leaving Cert results because the band was what I was doing, there was nothing to celebrate other than 'you did very, very well'. But I never had that moving-out-of-home stage. I never had a life on my own. I moved with the band. It's only in the last year that I've lived on my own. It would always have been music or drama or English for me. But I do think I missed that college time, moving out of your home and everything like that. Having said that I am aware that I have had a lot more of a dramatic education in this very weird world we live in, than I would have had elsewhere.

Is the fact that it is weird hard to deal with?

Everybody gets used to the situation they're in. And I'm such a lucky person to be able to do this around the world, to sing to all these people who love our music, and to really feel it. Never to be dishonest in your music is a very gratifying thing. God knows why I got a chance to express my feelings. Everybody's got feelings. But I did and it's a very privileged situation to be in. But there's the other side - that I'm part of a family that are always together. I'm 26 and I'm still the baby.

That's an interesting and different thing about this group.

We often go 'Jesus, we're nuts aren't we? Is there something wrong with us? Is everybody else seeing the picture of this odd thing and we're not seeing it because we're engulfed in it?'. But our magic is us, together, as musicians and we've great strength together. We have strength to be able to deal with almost every situation. I found watching the Williams sisters playing tennis quite an insight into what we might look like.

Do you fight in a particular way?

I can be so defensive. All of us take our turns. We do fight. But we have great fun as well. We have learned through everything and particularly through the experience that happened last year, when our mother died, to really respect each other as individuals. We actually have a good time together now, but the first years were very hard. Forgiven Not Forgotten was released, all of a sudden we were constantly out on the road, doing promotions, soul-destroying tours, and, you know, we've always been pushing our own trolley. And we still are. It does not come easy to us. We get blessed with a package of, *Hey listen if David Foster produces your album it's goin' to be 'Yeees!',* but no, we push that flippin' trolley wherever we go, doing it our own way! All the plans that the record company'd come up with like 'put this package together, it's gonna be it' - it never works. So now we're in a brilliant situation, where they leave it to us, because that's what works best. And, that's a good thing really, because it is actually defying the manufacturing, marketing, saturation thing that's happening at the moment, especially in pop music.

What was the low point in promoting that first album?

The thing is, the low point in retrospect is actually the high point, because if we hadda made it in America with Forgiven Not Forgotten, I don't think we'd be together now. We wouldn't have been grown up enough - or I certainly wouldn't have been grown up enough - to deal with it. Mentally we wouldn't have felt worthy of it. And I think - you meet musicians, or people in show business who have an attitude, who are egotistical, in your face - an awful lot of it has to do with not feeling worthy. It happened too quickly, they didn't have to work enough for it, and so they don't feel they deserve it. And so they're going round everywhere going 'Fuck you! I deserve it', and 'I'm awesome' and inside they feel 'I'm not worthy'. So I think that we woulda lost it, you know.

In Ireland there was this myth that The Corrs were a manufactured group.

How do you manufacture a family? Does somebody get into the lab with some test tubes, and say 'I hope she plays the violin, and he plays the piano '? Everything that we do is honest. Everything I sing, and everything the band plays, is honest. It's us. It's not somebody else. It's not manufactured. What does it matter if people say that? Just listen to music.

At the same time, it must hurt.

I tell you it would hurt if it were true. If I knew deep down it was true, then I'd be going 'Mmmm', you know. And sometimes things hurt if they are said about the others in the band, or if it would affect our parents. And sometimes I get hurt for the fact that I know how much we've worked; I know how much Sharon and Caroline and Jim have worked, and I look at them, and I go - how dare some journalist say that about people who have worked so hard!?!

You were quoted somewhere as saying you'd give it all up for love.

That's complete crap. We fought that. We fought so many of them, you know. But that's not true. It's absolute pathetic. What would I be doing this for if that was the way I felt? God, what a pathetic character they sometimes portray.

There must be a point where you feel some kind of despair about the way in which the media operates.

It's the nature of it. There's been so much nonsense written about me that anybody with an ounce of intelligence would actually have deduced it's gotta be crap. But you know, I really don't mind. My friends get on the phone and they laugh, you know, and I get on with it. (laughs) A very, very funny thing happened, I was lying on my bed, and I have this skylight above my bed, and it was one of those special mornings, and all the windows were opened, and it was so beautiful, and I was just lying there, and the phone rings, and the answering machine was on, right. And it's my best friend, and she goes *Andrea, Andrea, pick up the phone!* And so I run downstairs and pick up the phone, and she says *Did you see The Sun?*, and I said, *Yes, it's so beautiful.* (laughs)

And the moral of that story is, once I know my friends and the people that care about me and love me know me - and once I know deep in my heart when I go to bed at night what type of person I am - then I'm OK with that.

So tell me about working with Mutt Lange? Were you intimidated?

Yes, well, you see, we'd met, and he really liked our music. And he suggested we might try and and write a song together. And so I went to Switzerland, and we wrote 'Breathless'. And I remember the night I got in, he is such a gentle, lovely, lovely man - but I just wanted to go to my room. Because, as I was telling you before, I don't know if I can write a song until it happens. And so I'm kinda feeling empty, going - what's going to happen here? Is it going to happen? Will I be remotely inspired by his chords, you know. I mightn't be! I don't know if I was as open as I probably should be - but then you've got to do what's natural to you.

How did the song come to you?

Well I had barely arrived when he started to play the chords, right. He's a serious worker and he wanted to get straight down to it! He was going 'you want to do this now?' And I was going 'Think!', you know. And I'm just petrified, I can't hear music, I'm wondering, does he expect me to start going (sings) *Yeah!*? I'm not that confident. I like to go away and write on my own, to be honest, rather than sit with a stranger, who is so confident. I felt very self-conscious and very shy. So he let me go to bed. *Maybe we'll start in the morning, OK?* And I went to bed thinking what am I doing here? Then the next day luckily, the sun came out, it was a lovely day, and we started again, and he hit the chords and he was humming melodies and stuff like that. Usually I let somebody do the chords and I would write the melody and lyrics, but he wrote the melody of 'Breathless'. Then I changed it around. It was just an odd way for me to work. I don't want to ruin people's feelings for songs, though. It sounds kinda contrived, but people write that way.

Tell me where you'll be in 10 years time?

I don't know. I'm a woman, so there is kinda of an obvious route. But it won't be obvious, I don't think anything's ever been obvious with me. But I'll probably have quite a different existence still. 'Cause I think this lifestyle has made me a little more bohemian than the average or what I would have been, if I hadda been just living in Dundalk. So I don't think I'll be able to be curtailed. I need somebody very liberated. Now I don't mean on a fidelity level, I completely believe in that. I suppose there's marriage and kids, but I'll still be doing something artistic. But I don't know. So many people end up on paths they never had an idea they'd be on, you know. In10 years time, I'll be 36 - I'll probably still be writing. I won't be performing, as in singing. Maybe I'll act, but only if I was good, because I despise the idea of singer-turned-actress I think it's an insult to people who learn it. At the same time I would like to scratch somebody else's feelings as well as my own. Getting up on stage takes so much out of me because I'm expressing me, right? Expressing somebody else's thoughts would be so liberating, like climbing into somebody else's body and going through their emotions. I would like to do that. But who knows?

Might you stick with the life, because it's addictive?

Maybe. But I think the life takes an awful lot out of women, moreso than it does with men. I know that it takes an awful lot out of me. And so I should probably be chilling out a bit more, as an individual, and doing different things at that stage, maybe just writing and recording albums. If there are still songs in us to sing, we more than likely will. And writing, and having them sung by other people. But it's so intense, so intense. I don't know. I've done this for 10 years. Another 10 years? I feel a little abnormal already, but another 10 years on? I don't know if I could do it.

What's the summit of your ambition then?

The summit of my ambition? I very much look to today, to be honest. And I certainly know now that I'm not immortal, so I might as well just live for today. Every day has something very special to offer, and in that way, life is so wonderful and magic. Once your heart is open, you'll go along the right path. You'll have opportunities that you fall into naturally because you didn't do them selfishly, you did it because it felt right. I really believe - I live for today.

A quick couple of other

I'd like to have babies, that's for sure. I really don't want to go through my life without fulfilling that potential. It's probably not the summit of my ambition, it's not a tabloid thing, *Andrea Wants To Have Babies!!* But as a woman, and given that we're more developed than other animals, that's one thing I have to fulfil. A woman's body is set in a way that's absolutely miraculous, and I have to find out about it. And then, the combination of the brain and the heart and the body is just - I've got to explore that. I've got to do that. At some stage.

How do you respond to being selected as the most beautiful woman in the world?

It's very flattering. It was nice when I heard about it because I felt so horrible that day. Because often you feel horrible, it's the most ridiculous thing. I don't see it myself that way, not at all, but I think it's very nice that it was said.

OK. Ridiculous last question. What do you cook for yourself, or if you're having people around for dinner?

I just got a new kitchen that's so beautiful. So I did loads of stuff, the week that I had off. I had dinner parties practically every night, like I had to christen the home with a roast chicken, try and do it like mammy did. And I cook sea bass really well. That'd be my favourite.

Give us the recipe.

The recipe! (laughs) I do the sea bass whole. I like to include the head and tail, I'm not squeamish at all, I just love it. It's probably not loving it in people's minds if I'm eating it but there you go! You put olive oil on the bottom of the dish. Put the whole sea bass in, just score it along, put more olive oil over it and season with salt ... pepper. It's really simple. For a change you can stuff some garlic or chillies inside the fish. Maybe put a whole bulb of garlic beside it. Cut the top off the garlic and pour olive oil on it and roast that. And then what do I do with that? I do these great roast potatoes, so they can be done at the same time - only they go in earlier. Potatoes, which are peeled, olive oil, salt ... pepper, thyme and loads of pepper, I love black pepper. Vegetables? I'd probably do fennel with the fish but I do this great stir-fry - my mother used to do this as well. So if I was doing the roast chicken, stir-fried cabbage with cumin is fantastic.

SHARON

Niall Stokes: People would make an assumption that since The Corrs have sold millions of records, you've already got it made. Does it feel like that to you?

Sharon Corr: Sometimes it's hard to relate to your own success, especially with the type of speed at which we move around the world. And generally we've left a place - we've done the promo, and when we hit No.1 we're already on to another territory that we're still trying to break. To be perfectly honest, we are an incredibly successful band. But we still would like to have more success. I mean, success for us is writing good albums and then being appreciated worldwide. I think we've always had quite high expectations.

What do you say to people who see what you're doing as a completely glamorous occupation?

It's not really something I would get into, because they're so far removed from it, if that's the way they see it. I think it's 99% hard work and 1% glamour. In some ways it's quite like the movie industry: the finished product looks very glamorous, but most of the time you're working very hard in quite uncomfortable conditions.

So given the level of effort that goes into it and the fact that you have to go out like an army, in a sense, to make the thing work, is it really worth the grief involved to you?

Definitely. There's no gain without pain and, for me, the reason I get so much satisfaction from what I do is because I have worked so hard. Had it come easy, I don't think I'd have felt worthy of it.

Was there a time along the way when you felt a sense of despair, that it wasn't going to fly and you'd just like to see the end of it?

Not really. There have been moments of despair without a doubt. I can remember in the very early days when we spent most of our time around the corner from our parents' house, in Jim's place, recording and writing songs and the girls were still at school and we'd be up till four in the morning singing backing vocals and it was quite stifling, because we were together all the time and we really needed to feel a sense of ourselves - and maybe have experienced more of the world as individuals - before we came together and did this. But although that was quite stifling, it wasn't the worst. I can remember a member of an enormous record company coming over to see us and it built up our hopes. He came over, had a look and said to John that he just didn't get it.

What company was that?

I wouldn't care to mention it to be honest because there was no bitterness or anything like that. But he was so good, he also passed on The Cranberries, put it that way! We spent so many hours, so many years working, to try and get a record deal and when somebody literally just doesn't hear it, that's quite frustrating. And I think sometimes there's been a little bit of despair at the end of a long haul of promotion and touring. But that's more to do with exhaustion than with how you truly think about the band.

There was a perception in Ireland that The Corrs had it easy, that it was just - you've got three gorgeous women, put some Irish music into the mix and it's automatically going to be a hit.

Well, that's just cynicism, you know. And there's plenty of it about. It also probably sells newspapers. But I don't really get involved in that because besides having played instruments all our lives, we've spent long hours writing our music, long hours travelling around the world to try and make something of our music, and of our career - and without that nobody would ever have heard of us. So it's quite useless saying that.

In a lot of ways, as the singer and as the youngest and as somebody who's naturally emotional, Andrea is the most vulnerable person in the group. As the big sister do you find yourself worrying about her?

I do, yes, definitely. I think even more so since our mum died because I was catapulted into adulthood overnight. Even though I've been of an age to be considered an adult for many years now, there's something that happens when your mum dies - you lose that ability to act like a child now and then. And I think for me, my first instinct was to pull everything together and make sure everybody was OK. Sometimes Andrea - she is emotional and vulnerable - but I think everybody in the band is, to be perfectly honest. Music is something where you truly expose yourself, especially when you write your own music. I suppose you see more of Andrea's vulnerability because she's actually singing the lyrics and I think perhaps for that reason people feel she's more vulnerable. But certainly as an older sister I am quite protective of her, yes, that's for sure.

And does that make your position in the band more difficult?

I think we've learned over the years to let our own personalities grow and give each other space to breathe. Andrea, Caroline and Jim are very strong individuals and we would get along absolutely fine on our own. And if I'm down, Andrea would look after me. We all have bad days on different days. So she would help me and I would help her at different times.

Obviously it's been very tough for everyone since your mother died. That must make your current campaign that much more difficult in a lot of ways.

I'm the eternal optimist. I seek the silver lining out of every situation or I talk myself into it - one or the other. And I think in some ways it has made me much stronger, but in some ways it has also made me much more vulnerable. So if I do have a lot of work on, I have a tendency to become much more emotional in situations. I find myself much more vulnerable on a daily basis and I find myself having a tendency to be a little bit down. Especially around this time of year because it was yesterday that Mum went to Newcastle for her assessment and it was one week later that she died. So if somebody says to me 'you've got to go to America on Monday', I go 'oh my God, oh my God', and it's not really America that's getting to me, it's Mum. It's the pressure of going and working, but it's also the pressure of just being more vulnerable.

Most people have no concept of the impact grief can have until they're plunged into it.

I think that's the most difficult thing about it. I don't think you really have any preparation. For quite a few months before Mum died, I found myself crying myself to sleep every night. It was almost like I knew. But there's something in yourself that seeks to preserve yourself and you don't admit it. And even the doctors were saying it wasn't going to happen - but something in me knew. The finality of it, that's the most frustrating thing. I find that it hits you in the most uncanny situations. When you ask me about it, so straight and so directly I can cope with it. But there can be other moments when I hear a song I was watching a film last night, Andrea Boccelli and Sarah Brightman, Time To Say Goodbye. My mother played that about 25 times in a row one night in the house because she loved it so much. And it's moments like that that really get me. And what I find particularly difficult is - I'm always surrounded by a lot of people, so you generally have to stifle your tears and hide your feelings and try and find a corner where you can be alone, you know.

Do you feel now that In Blue is that much stronger because it was recorded in an emotional context?

That's something I can only speculate on. For myself, I don't know if I'd have written certain songs the way I did if Mum hadn't died. So, definitely, the lyrical content is about her and to do with grief - 'No More Cry' in particular. So, I suppose, yes, the record did change because of that experience.

Pop music often doesn't deal with deeper emotional truths. So you could see this record as the record where The Corrs' maturity is established.

Well, yeah, you could, but (hesitates) I'm quite allergic to that type of sentiment, that pop music is without any sort of depth. Just because it's not Leonard Cohen doesn't mean that within the lyrics or the music there isn't a very strong sentiment or a very strong feeling. I think also that in situations of grief or trouble or depression, sometimes the best release is to write something uplifting. As I said earlier, I do tend to try and seek the good or the positive. And I know that in whatever songs I wrote after Mum died, it was about losing my childhood overnight, but in The Corrs it's about the gift of somebody loving me and how that helps me through it. So it's about both. I don't think you necessarily need to be completely down, in order to express your true emotions. I think life is full of paradoxes and I think happiness and sadness can't exist without each other. During Mum's illness there were moments of intense humour - even she was joking all the time. And after she died there were moments of very black humour. But that's life!

How do you evaluate the importance of the contribution of John Hughes to the group?

Fundamental. He's the fifth Corr and he certainly brought enthusiasm and bred hope in us all from the beginning. I think he's a man with a vocation. He's going to get very embarrassed if he reads this, but I think he's a very, very good man and a very caring man and I think we've been very lucky with him. Because he not only sought to promote us careerwise, but he also sought to promote us as people, learning-wise and growing-up-wise. He basically had a bunch of kids on his hands, and he really nurtured our individuality and nurtured our belief in ourselves and our good points. And I think he brought our capabilities and our possibilities to the forefront. I do think he nurtured what was good in us and I don't mean just on a musical level, I mean on a human level.

There's a very strong element with The Corrs, that people see there's three gorgeous women up there. Is there pressure on you to look beautiful all the time?

Admittedly it is a pressure. I can't remember the last time I had a walk in daylight because I'm in venues all the time and hotels, and we're arriving in at 5 in the morning and sleeping till 12 and then going for a soundcheck. So I got up this morning and said 'OK, I'm going out for a walk. I need some sunlight'. So I don't want to put on any make-up, I put on a pair of shades and I walk out of the hotel and there's this guy following me up the street with a camera. And when that happens there is a pressure I suppose to look a certain way, to have make-up on and to be dressed up. But I don't want to let it get in on me. Because it's not important. If we didn't play and write music you would never know how we look.

Do you ever feel that you want to be a slob, you don't want to have to think about any of this stuff?

It's not really in my nature to be like that. My mother never went out the door without lipstick on. She always did herself up every day. It was like a self-respect. She always wanted to look well and it was just her way of doing things. And we got that from her. You'd rarely see me out in a track suit. But it's possible!

We have a great picture of you on stage playing the violin, where you're bent half backwards. Do you work on flexibility, or do some kind of training to be able to do that?

(laughs) Oh God, oh my God. Little do you know, Niall. I do not work out whatsoever. The only work-out I get is running from hotel to hotel, and from airport to airport. It is quite good exercise! Yes, I do seem to be quite flexible but I think it's just because of how fast my life is. I always was quite supple, but the only thing I do is walk and work hard. I chastise myself for it actually, because I'm getting older and I think I might need to start doing some sort of exercise.

You don't seem to have a problem staying slim.

I eat very healthily, although I always believe you should enjoy a little bit of everything. I eat all types of meat, a little bit of chocolate, a little bit of junk food here and there - but generally very, very healthily. Also, I think it's the pace of life. I think I've got a lot of energy naturally. If I get overstressed I've a tendency to lose weight, so it's something I have to watch.

Is it extra-hard to maintain relationships being on the road and especially being away for so long?

Yes, it is very difficult and you do see so many relationships split up. I'm in a relationship now for almost six years. It's fantastic. It's actually better than it was. But it has been very trying on him. I think it's harder for a woman involved in the music industry. It's still quite chauvinist I suppose in that way: women put up with men being on t