Post by DazedOblivion on Jun 29, 2007 12:33:22 GMT 1
A very interesting article on Andrea appeared at the Telegraph.co.uk yesterday (I can't get the link to work, so here it is):
I'm a good girl, honest
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 28/06/2007
'I am wholesome," insists Andrea Corr, giggling. "I can't help myself. I'm a good Irish girl. Don't you think I'm wholesome?" Right now, dressed in a strapless silky dress with a side split offering a glimpse of leg every time she shifts in her seat, it would be hard to agree.
The front woman and youngest member of the multi-million-selling Irish family band the Corrs was once voted the most beautiful woman in the world, and, launching a solo career at 33, her physical allure has certainly not faded.
Yet there is a curious balance of the exotic and ordinary in her unaffected poise, her looks almost at odds with her unpretentious, wide-eyed manner and girlish good humour. "I could never dream of being cool," she says.
"You play music with your brothers and sisters, people think you love to be close and cuddle all the time. I can't tell you how many photographers come along and say, 'Hey, can we just have you all having a pillow fight on the bed?' Do you think that happens to U2?"
With her married siblings raising families, the only single Corr released her solo debut, Ten Feet High, on Atlantic this week. Produced by Nellee Hooper, the man behind classics by Massive Attack and Björk, it is perhaps not what her fan base might have expected, ditching Celtic instrumentation and smooth arrangements for a bright, contemporary electro-pop sonic framework.
It opens with the resolutely unwholesome Hello Boys, a dirty, flirty synth-glam stomp in which Andrea casts herself as enthusiastic prostitute. "I love escaping into character," she says. "It's a chance to try on people that you wouldn't be brave or stupid enough to be in real life.
You don't have to take responsibility for depraved or debauched behaviour. But I'm still wholesome even if I write about people who aren't!"
In an attempt to establish exactly how wholesome she actually is, I venture a few direct questions. Is she prudish? "I am a little bit, yeah." Does she swear? "Yes, I do, but I'm not proud of it." Does she attend church?
"I go to churches to pray, but I don't go to mass." Does she take drugs? "Frigging hell!" she splutters, spitting out the food she was eating. "Jesus Christ, I'm choking on my egg here." I'll take that as a no.
Despite such avowed conventionality, there has always been a bit more to Andrea than meets the eye. Drafted into the Corrs by her siblings at 15, she established herself as principal lyricist, a sharp sense of poetic wordplay and an edgy, slightly melancholic aesthetic lending substance to the band's harmonic pop rock.
She flirted with a Goth image ("I might have gone overboard on the eyeshadow sometimes, but I was never Marilyn Manson") and her personal musical taste (barely reflected in the band) ran to Prince and Depeche Mode, making sense of the electronic stylings of her solo album.
The album's subject matter spans anti-war protest (Shame On You) and consumerist satire (Champagne From a Straw), but there is also a strong sense of romantic loss (Anybody There, Ten Feet High, 24 Hours and Stupidest Girl in the World, which opens with the line: "My life, just when it's going well, I smash it all to pieces").
She recently ended a four-year relationship with actor Shaun Evans, and is now dating stockbroker and billionaire heir Brett Desmond.
Describing herself as a serial monogamist, she declares an almost naïve faith in the ideals of love and marriage, insisting her life partner is out there somewhere, before joking: "My next record will be How Could I Be So Wrong? when I'm 47 and still single." She admits to using humour as a defence against self-examination. "The songs reveal things to me, but I run away."
Although known as a singer, she composes on piano and privately plays a small repertoire of pieces by Debussy and Chopin, which she describes as "a secret place I can go to, nothing to do with my career".
Performance, however, is her great love, and why she has gone on without her siblings. "I love [Federico García] Lorca, and in his plays he talks about something called duende. It is a kind of energetic instinct, where you lose yourself through music or poetry - it takes over you, and that can happen in gigs.
It is amazing - there's a rawness to it, a hunger, like your absolute essence is emerging, you will never feel more alive."
It is a passionate speech, but then, as if catching herself verging on the pretentious, she has to turn it into a joke: "Maybe you can find your duende on drugs. Have a few drinks, wind up on your ear. 'Oh look, there's my duende!' I wouldn't know. I'm far too wholesome."
I'm a good girl, honest
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 28/06/2007
'I am wholesome," insists Andrea Corr, giggling. "I can't help myself. I'm a good Irish girl. Don't you think I'm wholesome?" Right now, dressed in a strapless silky dress with a side split offering a glimpse of leg every time she shifts in her seat, it would be hard to agree.
The front woman and youngest member of the multi-million-selling Irish family band the Corrs was once voted the most beautiful woman in the world, and, launching a solo career at 33, her physical allure has certainly not faded.
Yet there is a curious balance of the exotic and ordinary in her unaffected poise, her looks almost at odds with her unpretentious, wide-eyed manner and girlish good humour. "I could never dream of being cool," she says.
"You play music with your brothers and sisters, people think you love to be close and cuddle all the time. I can't tell you how many photographers come along and say, 'Hey, can we just have you all having a pillow fight on the bed?' Do you think that happens to U2?"
With her married siblings raising families, the only single Corr released her solo debut, Ten Feet High, on Atlantic this week. Produced by Nellee Hooper, the man behind classics by Massive Attack and Björk, it is perhaps not what her fan base might have expected, ditching Celtic instrumentation and smooth arrangements for a bright, contemporary electro-pop sonic framework.
It opens with the resolutely unwholesome Hello Boys, a dirty, flirty synth-glam stomp in which Andrea casts herself as enthusiastic prostitute. "I love escaping into character," she says. "It's a chance to try on people that you wouldn't be brave or stupid enough to be in real life.
You don't have to take responsibility for depraved or debauched behaviour. But I'm still wholesome even if I write about people who aren't!"
In an attempt to establish exactly how wholesome she actually is, I venture a few direct questions. Is she prudish? "I am a little bit, yeah." Does she swear? "Yes, I do, but I'm not proud of it." Does she attend church?
"I go to churches to pray, but I don't go to mass." Does she take drugs? "Frigging hell!" she splutters, spitting out the food she was eating. "Jesus Christ, I'm choking on my egg here." I'll take that as a no.
Despite such avowed conventionality, there has always been a bit more to Andrea than meets the eye. Drafted into the Corrs by her siblings at 15, she established herself as principal lyricist, a sharp sense of poetic wordplay and an edgy, slightly melancholic aesthetic lending substance to the band's harmonic pop rock.
She flirted with a Goth image ("I might have gone overboard on the eyeshadow sometimes, but I was never Marilyn Manson") and her personal musical taste (barely reflected in the band) ran to Prince and Depeche Mode, making sense of the electronic stylings of her solo album.
The album's subject matter spans anti-war protest (Shame On You) and consumerist satire (Champagne From a Straw), but there is also a strong sense of romantic loss (Anybody There, Ten Feet High, 24 Hours and Stupidest Girl in the World, which opens with the line: "My life, just when it's going well, I smash it all to pieces").
She recently ended a four-year relationship with actor Shaun Evans, and is now dating stockbroker and billionaire heir Brett Desmond.
Describing herself as a serial monogamist, she declares an almost naïve faith in the ideals of love and marriage, insisting her life partner is out there somewhere, before joking: "My next record will be How Could I Be So Wrong? when I'm 47 and still single." She admits to using humour as a defence against self-examination. "The songs reveal things to me, but I run away."
Although known as a singer, she composes on piano and privately plays a small repertoire of pieces by Debussy and Chopin, which she describes as "a secret place I can go to, nothing to do with my career".
Performance, however, is her great love, and why she has gone on without her siblings. "I love [Federico García] Lorca, and in his plays he talks about something called duende. It is a kind of energetic instinct, where you lose yourself through music or poetry - it takes over you, and that can happen in gigs.
It is amazing - there's a rawness to it, a hunger, like your absolute essence is emerging, you will never feel more alive."
It is a passionate speech, but then, as if catching herself verging on the pretentious, she has to turn it into a joke: "Maybe you can find your duende on drugs. Have a few drinks, wind up on your ear. 'Oh look, there's my duende!' I wouldn't know. I'm far too wholesome."
- 'Ten Feet High' (Atlantic) is out now.
