What can I do to make you love The Corrs? Let’s ‘runaway’ in “Dreams”…

Irish family quartet Jim (b.1964), Sharon (b.1970), Caroline (b.1973) and Andrea (b.1974) Corr formed a group in 1990 and played at their aunt’s pub, The McManus, and quickly lead to Jim, Caroline and Sharon landing parts in the 1991 film ‘The Commitments’. By the end of the decade, the four were global stars selling tens of millions of albums and singles and playing to sold out arenas from New York to Sydney. And yet it took a long time for the world to surrender to their charming, inoffensive harmonies and tunes. Their success was confined to their home country when they released their debut single, “Runaway”, in September 1995. The track was the first to be lifted from their debut album, “Forgiven Not Forgotten”, which followed soon after, as did the singles “The Right Time”, “Love To Love You” and the title track.

It was only when they supported Celine Dion on her 1996 world tour that people started to notice and the album began to climb the charts in many parts of mainland Europe, Australia and America. Building on this success, The Corrs completed work on their second album in early 1997 and achieved a number one with the single “Only When I Sleep” in Spain that year. The album, “Talk On Corners”, brought a further Spanish hit with “I Never Loved You Anyway”, but support elsewhere was weak. It wasn’t until 1998 that the band broke out with a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams“, which took them into the UK charts (No.6) and gave them a big hit across Europe. From hereon in, it was nothing but Platinum discs freefalling from the sky. A Tin Tin Out remix of an earlier single, “What Can I Do?” came next and gave them another top ten hit together with “So Young” and a remixed “Runaway” to complete a quartet of top ten hits in twelve months.

Album sales now caught fire with “Forgiven Not Forgotten” going Gold in America and 9 times Platinum in Australia alone. “Talk On Corners” took multiple Platinum discs from the world over, shifting fifteen million copies to date and becoming the fourth biggest selling album of the 1990’s in the UK alone. An unplugged album in 1999 brought a further chart hit with “Radio”, while the band put the finishing touches to their next album, “In Blue”. The lead single, “Breathless”, would take them to the top of the chart in the UK and Spain and make the top ten in a further fifteen countries while “In Blue” would top a million copies Stateside and a further nine million internationally. A Best of in 2001 would yield the chart hit “Would You Be Happier?” while the album itself shifted five million worldwide.

The group were back on top in 2004 with the single “Summer Sunshine” and their fourth album, “Borrowed Heaven”, which also featured the chart hits “Angel” and “Long Night”. The Corrs quickly followed this the following year with the album “Home” and the single “Heart Like A Wheel”, which returned the group to their Irish heritage and traditions and became a top ten hit in half a dozen countries. The Corrs took an ‘extended break’ soon after with all three sisters releasing solo albums, Caroline’s “Ten Feet High” coming in 2007, Sharon’s “Dream Of You” in 2010 and Andrea’s “Lifelines” in 2011. But after nine years of recording alone, the family reunited for new material. Released in November 2015, “White Light” was the band’s first new material together for ten years and featured the singles “Bring On The Night” and “I Do What I Like”. The album gave them a Gold certificate in the UK and a top ten hit in Ireland, Scotland and Hungary.

Two years later, The Corrs returned with their seventh studio album, “Jupiter Calling” and the singles “Son Of Solomon” and “SOS” (not to be confused with the initials!). The band played the Royal Albert Hall that Autumn in support of the album to sellout crowds. To date, this is their most recent work, although all four members, who were made MBE’s in 2005, continue to record separately. Caroline revisited “Dreams” in 2020 with a collective of Irish singers including Moya Brennan of Clannad and The Saturdays’ Una Healy under the group name of Irish Women In Harmony. Andrea released a Christmas collection of songs in December 2020, her first solo studio work for nine years, and updated this in 2022 with a stripped-back orchestral edition. The prospect of new Corrs music is not so far away either…indeed, The Corrs returned in 2023!

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Take a look at our other Where Are They Now? posts or find out more here.