Songbird Sharon Corr has never felt more free, although she’s happy to take the past with her, she tells Andrew Youngson
“I do go on a bit, don’t I,” said Sharon Corr, before letting out a glorious peel of laughter.
We had been talking for a while about her solo career away from her role as backing vocalist and violin player of the Irish pop-rock band The Corrs.
Not at all, I replied. It was lovely to hear how clearly excited she was about this new stage of her musical career.
“I love what I do, you see, so it’s hard to get me to shut up about it,” she sighed.
Talking has never been a problem, the second-eldest Corrs sibling told me, so standing front and centre onstage hasn’t been too scary a transition. She penned many of the hits for The Corrs and, before that, had been writing her own songs since the age of six. And now, as she has just launched her second album, and embarked on a UK tour for it, in many ways it’s business as usual for the singer-songwriter.
“So I didn’t wake up one day and say: ‘now I’m going to be a solo artist’,” she explained of how her first album, Dream of You, came about.
“When The Corrs stopped working, the one thing I decided to do was not let my writing get rusty. Within a month of coming off the road, I was pregnant with my first child, but I was also writing at the piano, and obviously had a lot more time on my hands to do it. Before I knew it, I had all these songs that I needed to record.”
If her first album was about transition, Sharon’s second one, Same Sun, is about being completely herself. A collection of stripped-back melodies, the album showcases Sharon’s abilities as singer and songwriter in as honest a format as possible. There are very few harmonies – a signature of The Corrs she was keen to step away from to avoid comparisons – and only short passages of violin. This has all been purposely crafted, particularly to stand in opposition to the overly produced and layered pop music of the day.
“The reason is because I can play it and sing it and I don’t need all this super-production around it to make it sound better,” she said.
“The reason I’m making that point – and it’s not an arrogant point – is that this is something we musicians and songwriters are supposed to be able to do. We’re supposed to be able to get up on stage and sing our songs, and sing them beautifully without Auto-Tune and a giant production covering up bad songwriting.
“There are great artists out there who are not getting the success or admiration that they deserve because they’re being prepackaged by suits and Auto-Tuned. For me, this is almost a reaction to that.”
As a wife and mother of two, a lot of the 44-year-old’s music still relates to family. But with her siblings all preoccupied with even younger families – Andrea, for example, is “up to her eyes in nappies”, having just had her second child – it’s Sharon who is keeping the musical end up for the family.
So how does it feel to be free of The Corrs, I asked perhaps a little bluntly.
“I never like to say ‘free of’, because there’s always a suggestion that it was negative in the past. I take the past with me. I’m very proud of what we achieved together. I loved working with my family, even when we were fighting like crazy,” she said.
“So I don’t feel like I’ve broken free. Just that I’ve moved on and grown as a person. It would be very hard for me to go back now, because when you work with other people you adjust to each other. You have to shave bits of your personality off to fit in, and now I have to stick all of those bad bits back on and celebrate them. I often describe it as wearing braces for years, but wanting your crooked teeth back. I’m happy with my crooked teeth and all the madness of me and what that does musically to me.”
She admits that her first album and tour went slightly under the radar because some people needed time to adjust to the fact she was no longer singing backing vocals and playing violin. But that transition period is pretty much done.
She describes her solo career as a “great journey of discovery” which “truly represents me”, whereas what she achieved with Andrea, Caroline and Jim in The Corrs represented “the four of us”.
So, I asked, with a bit more tact, how does it feel to be front and centre?
There was a slight pause, followed by an almost guilty grumble.
“Delicious,” she admitted, before letting out another glorious laugh.
“I absolutely love it. I have a pretty strong personality, so front and centre suits me. It’s hopefully not obnoxious. But I do have a strong opinion of who I am and I love being out front. I’m a bit of a show off. But I also think it allows you to inhabit the song utterly and completely when you’re out there by yourself.”
Sharon Corr will perform at the Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, next Monday, September 15. Tickets are available from www.aberdeenperformingarts.com or by calling 01224 641122. Her second album, Same Sun, was released on Monday, September 8.