Andrea Corr has been the talk on corners for almost a decade. Her talent and beauty have made her a global star. But beneath the pop sheen lurks a beguiling woman. The Corr’s singer opens up to Barry Egan. – Sunday Independent, Life, 12 October 2003.

Love, Pain and the whole damn thing.

Andrea Jane Corr can remember the first time she ever heard singing. It was also the first time her mother Jean sang on stage.

“The funny thing is, she was pregnant with me,” says Andrea. “She was wearing a big mammy outfit. I was in there just listening.”

Sipping Ballygowan on a plush sofa in the Four Seasons hotel in Dublin, the kohl-eyed singer takes an educated guess that it was probably something by the Carpenters, the Eagles or Abba that her mother sang to her in the womb.

Jean and Gerry Corr were musicians themselves, imbuing their four children with a natural love of music. Their upbringing in Dundalk also instilled Andrea and her siblings with a strength of character that sustained them through the darker moments of their career. The Corrs — Andrea, Caroline, Sharon and brother Jim — have now sold over 40 million albums since their 1995 debut, but it wasn’t an overnight success. For years before they secured a record deal, the Corrs were met with indifference by the music business. Nobody wanted to know them, let alone give them a contract.

All of their manager John Hughes’s energies seemed to go into making these young kids believe that they could go all the way with their music — difficult when his phone calls to record execs were not being returned. “But I never felt it wasn’t going to work. I think John’s a man with a vocation.”

Long before public taste and the Corrs’ good looks synchronised with the triumph of Talk on Corners in 1998, life was miserable for the band.

“Because I was the youngest, I probably felt cushioned,” says Andrea now. “I didn’t go through the whole process of deciding that this is really what I wanted to do. I didn’t go: ‘I want to be singer in this band!’

“I suppose I became that, and it was the right thing. If I saw anybody doing now what we did I would go to them: ‘Oh Jesus!’ I would be worried for them. If I had kids and they were going out to do it I would be very worried.”

When she looks back now, she says she sometimes can’t believe it herself. The self-belief, she says, was almost idiotic: “‘What made you think that you could sell all these albums around the world and become highly successful?’ But we did,” she says with pride.

“Even when it was going good we had a number of experiences along the way: record companies pretending they were interested, building up our hopes, and then not calling. You’ve got to have self-belief, and we very much had that. John Hughes was very optimistic and driven, and the knock-backs made it more of a challenge — and they still go on. It will never be comfortable, and that is good.”

How does she feel now that people know her face everywhere she goes?

“I went through adolescence with this. I was 15 when I started. I did my whole metamorphosis in front of cameras?’

The unwelcome klieg lights of paparazzi attention have formed a part of her life for years. In that time she has been linked —ridiculously rather than romantically —with everyone from ex-Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller to Huey from the Fun Lovin’ Criminals to Robbie Williams. When Andrea duetted with Mick Jagger on Wild Horses at the Rolling Stones’ recent Dublin concert, certain redtops excelled themselves.