The most beautiful woman in Ireland?

Times Online, May 26th, 2007

While her siblings made babies, Andrea Corr made her debut solo album and a new thriller. At heart, though, the 'most beautiful woman in Ireland' really prefers the quiet life

Andrea Corr, slight as a sprite, looks warily at the newly presented bowl of penne arrabiata and wonders aloud quite why she ordered it. "I'm a very clumsy, messy eater. My parents made me wear a bib until I was 12," she confides, eyes moving from the rich red tomato sauce to the front of her own cardigan and back again. "The potential for making a fool of myself here is huge."

And for the first time in her public life, there will be no siblings to hide behind should a late lunch end up in her lap. After ten years of success as a member of the family folk-pop group, and during a hiatus in which her two sisters and one brother have all been off embracing parenthood, she has made a solo album. And not just a more-of-the-same, fiddle-dee-dee piece of Irish prettiness either.

"It's not just like the Corrs and that will probably give some people a jolt, and I'm aware they may be disappointed as a result," she says, craning her neck forward and so-carefully lifting a fork to her mouth. "But it's obvious really, isn't it? I'm just one of the band and it took the blending of four people to make that sound. I can't achieve it on my own, nor did I want to try. I wanted to push, challenge and be true to myself, and that's exactly what I have done. I'm really proud of it [the forthcoming Ten Feet High], so let's wait and see..." Will lovers of such winsome Corrs hits as What Can I Do? or So Young be ready to accept the group's lead vocalist in swaggering Molly Bloom-ish mode on the opening track Hello Boys ("See me walking down the avenue/ I look like a waitress/ But I don't serve anything you've ever tasted on a plate")? I'd like to think they will.

Corr's musical blossoming is overdue, after all. The youngest of the siblings, she joined the band straight from school in Dundalk. "It's as if I was kidnapped at the bus stop after classes were over for the day," she muses, tucking a napkin into her neckline. "Just grabbed by my satchel and whisked away." Brother Jim, guitarist and keyboard player, had persuaded his sisters to accompany him to auditions for bit parts in The Commitments, and it was the 1991 film's casting director who spotted their potential and urged its musical co-ordinator, John Hughes, to consider managing them.

But family folk groups do not normally set the charts alight. What made the Corrs an altogether more saleable proposition was Andrea's warm, appealing voice, she and her sisters' exceptional good looks and a willingness to blend their Celtic influences with a very radio-friendly kind of easy-listening pop. Canadian David Foster, instrumental in the launch of Celine Dion and latterly Michael Bublé, produced their debut CD, 1996's Forgiven Not Forgotten, which proved confirmation of their potential marketability. Eleven years on their worldwide album sales exceed 30 million. But while a thunderous dance remix of the Fleetwood Mac track Dreams in 1998 hinted at how the band's trademark violins-and-close-harmonies sound might be updated, more recent releases have merely repeated the mixture as before, to diminishing returns.

And it's Ten Feet High's tacit acknowledgement of that fact that makes it such a quirky pleasure. Overseen by best mate Bono, it has been produced by Nellee Hooper, celebrated for his work with Björk, Massive Attack and Gwen Stefani. So while Corr's voice remains as unsullied and lovely as ever, at times it finds itself set amid swingbeats and all manner of strange crashings and bangings. The resultant oddness is charming (and, at its best, triumphant) and really suits her. Finally, she sounds like she might be having fun.

"It was while the others were off having babies that our manager reminded me there'd been the offer of a solo deal on the table and that, in his words, 'It won't be there in five years' time'." She laughs here, reminding me of her age (33). "He's a realist, John. He knows I'm nearing my sell-by date, in this industry at least."

It was Bono who rang Hooper to ask if he'd listen to the songs that Corr had by now written. "So I had to go and play them on the piano to a man I'd never met but hugely admire and who comes from the Land of Cool, which I so obviously do not. Totally nerve-racking." About to go on holiday, Hooper said he'd take a CD of the raw material with him. Some days later Corr got an answerphone message. "It was Nellee somewhere on the Amalfi coast saying, 'I've been listening to your stuff and wanted to say we're going to make the most fantastic record together.' I was so thrilled I've kept the tape." And so began a project that looks like reactivating her fame, something she admits she has mixed feelings about.

Why, I ask? Did you think you'd become spoilt, a less nice person? Corr shakes her head, smiling. "No. We're very well brought up," she reminds me. "I'm not someone who makes themself feel more important by treating others badly. If anything, I became less sure of myself. I was much more confident as a teenager, more so even than I am today. All the attention made me very self-conscious, which is not a good way to feel.

"In fact, it's horrible. So I went more in on myself. Look back at posed photographs of us all and you'll see it again and again, me pulling my hair over my face, trying to absent myself from the situation, pretending I'm not really there." And in this respect, she says, the recent pause in the to-be-continued career of the Corrs has been a blessing.

"When you're on TV a lot, you register on the collective psyche. With each week you're not on screen, you fade away. And what I've realised these past two years is that life is so much better when you're anonymous. I know it must sound strange saying that in this context, but what to do? I've made this record, I'm proud of it and want to support it. But neither I nor any of the others wanted to be a celebrity. I accept that it's part of having success but it inhibits you in going about your life, rather than making it better. Being out of the public eye is so much more beautiful, and I've been happier this last while as a direct result, for sure." So putting herself back in the spotlight... She nods, completing the sentence with, "...is not done lightly. At all."

Corr says she's always insisted on her right to an everyday life, even when the band's profile was at its highest. "How can you write about the world if you're not out there in it?" she asks. "I like cleaning my place, buying my food, going to the pub with friends. OK, you might get stared at the first few times you're seen in the supermarket after being Number One. But everyone gets used to it. I put my hair up, go without make-up, perhaps leave the house in my reading glasses. And by not looking how I might be expected to look, I've been as free as I possibly could be given that..."

This observation goes unfinished, with Corr reaching for her water and remarking instead, "Well, neither of us have got anything down our fronts yet." How might it have ended, were she less modest?

After all, in polls she has been declared the most beautiful woman in Ireland, and she is one of her country's young super-rich, her name linked at various times with Robbie Williams, American/Pop Idol mogul Simon Fuller and even Mick Jagger (said to have bombarded her with flowers and calls after inviting the Corrs to support the Rolling Stones on a US tour). Was there truth in any of these rumours? Our siren rolls her eyes, plays with her cutlery, inquires after my salad. But, I persist, there was a time when gossip columnists would have us believe that she was dallying with every second man she passed in the street. "Ah," she says slyly, "that'd be because I was."

That all three of her siblings should now be parents has, of course, caused the Irish media to speculate on when she might follow suit. "I'm very active as a godmother and an aunt, but motherhood for myself is just not where my life is right now."

There is a man in her life these days, apparently. Yes, it's a relatively new relationship and no, he is not involved in the music industry, and that is all she wants to say. She is much more voluble, however, on the subject of her friendship with Bono.

"It's incredible that he has such belief in me. Absolutely amazing. It means so much that he's been encouraging to the point of getting actively involved in the making of this album." Bono, Corr and flamboyant singer-songwriter Gavin Friday are at the centre of a group of high-profile Dublin creatives. "It's this little artistic group, fired up by the same things and trying to inspire and help the others to be better at what they do. It's a lovely environment in which to find yourself. Bono and Gavin push me constantly. And because I want to be worthy of them in every way, I drive myself harder too."

In Corr's case, that has meant also accepting the occasional film part. The only one of the siblings to get a speaking part (albeit tiny) in The Commitments, she also had a cameo in Evita. More recently, she has acted in the waiting-for-distribution Knife Edge [sic; Broken Thread is the correct title], a supernatural thriller with Linus Roache and Saffron Burrows.

Of this other string to her performing bow, she says, "Being a singer doesn't give you any breaks, you know. If anything, I think it makes directors more reluctant to cast you. The last thing I want when I walk into the room is to feel like everyone's going, 'Oh, so now, it's Andrea from the Corrs...' And believe me, you can see it in their eyes that they think they know you and what you can do."

Revealing this slightly chippy side to her personality makes me wonder if she mightn't feel her country suffers (as do England and Scotland) from Tall Poppy Syndrome. "All of Ireland is striving to be bigger than it is and is reaping the rewards," she responds. "It's an aspirational society. I've been fortunate. The media gave us a hand when we were starting out and it's only when you get better known that the relationship becomes conditional." As her friend Bono has discovered, I remark, thinking of the who-does-he-think-he-is? public response to some of his initiatives.

"Thank God he is who he thinks he is," is her retort. "The amazing work he does shines a light on our own inertia and we hit out as a result." Perhaps taking a leaf from his book, she made her own stand recently on the question of the lead-off single from her album. Her record company wanted something more cappucino-like, but she has forced them to accept an Americano.

Shame on You (her choice, and so insidiously beautiful that it deserves to be Number One for a month) is an anti-war song (but pro-soldiers and their families) which has no precedent in the Corrs back-catalogue. "24 Hours [their choice] is the lightest song on the album and not representative of the whole," she reasons. "Add violins and it would be the Corrs. Were the whole album like that, I'd be proud to go with it. But it's not, so I fought the suggestion."

Congratulations are in order for that, but also for finishing her penne without incident. Dessert perhaps? "Not even a coffee," Corr protests, reaching for her water. "Coffee makes me crazy." All the more reason to have one, I suggest, causing her, mid-sip, to spit involuntarily over my leg."Damn," she exclaims, laughing. "And I was doing so well."

(Alan Jackson)