“Most musicians meet other band members in school or college or a rehearsal room,” says Andrea Corr. “I met mine around the breakfast table and in the queue for the bathroom.”

The Corrs are Ireland’s first family of music, a multi-million selling sibling quartet who have conquered the world with a seamless blend of sleek pop rock, lush harmonies and Celtic folk trimmings. Comprising Andrea (lead vocals, piano, tin whistle), Sharon (violin, piano, vocals), Caroline (drums, piano, vocals) and Jim (guitar, keyboards, vocals), The Corrs have sold over 40 million albums since their debut Forgiven Not Forgotten in 1995, spawning a dozen classic hit singles. The Best of The Corrs has already notched up over five million sales and will be re-released on December 1st in a special version containing three brand new covers of Fleetwood Mac classics composed by the late great Christine McVie: Little Lies, Everywhere and Songbird.

The Corrs formed as a band in 1990 in the first roar of the Celtic tiger. They grew up in Dundalk, County Lough (in the Republic of Ireland, close to the border of Northern Ireland). Their parents, Gerry and Jean, sang semi-professionally as a duo, and all four children learned piano. Their aunt owned a pub, where they would join in sessions of traditional songs. Eldest sibling Jim (born 1964) was the first to forge a career as a professional musician. Jim persuaded his three younger sisters to accompany him to auditions for Alan Parker’s seminal Dublin music movie The Commitments. They all landed small parts and the film’s musical co-ordinator, John Hughes, was so impressed he asked to manage them. “We started when we were very young,” says Sharon (second eldest, born 1970). “Caroline and Andrea were still at school when we were making our first album. We left home as a family and went all over the world on an incredible journey.”

Their roles in the band came about naturally, according to Andrea (the youngest, born 1974). “I would sit in a chair and sing along with records and just become the person in the songs. It was never a question of who would be the lead singer? It was always me, and I’m so grateful, it’s the right job for me.” Jim led the band (by virtue of age and experience) only until his sisters had worked out the music business for themselves. “Which took about five minutes,” he comments. “Now there’s four people steering, so it can be a little wayward at times.” "We have different strengths that we will look to each other for," according to Caroline (born 1973). "Jim is the eldest but he is outnumbered by the rest of us."

They got their big break on a trip to New York in 1994, when they gatecrashed a Michael Jackson recording session at the Hit Factory to meet producer and arranger David Foster. “It was because of that day, when we just walked in and asked him to listen to our demos, that we were signed,” says Andrea. “He was amazing, and very generous, and gave Jim a co-production credit cos he recognised all the work we had already done.” Foster produced Runaway, their first single. “Runaway is always quite emotional to sing. Just because it was the beginning, the first song of ours we heard on the radio. Every time we play it, I kind of go back to being 21. I can picture Caroline playing it on the piano and me singing it in Jim’s bedroom in Dundalk. You have all those flashback moments while you’re on stage. And with everybody in the audience singing every word back, it never fails to be emotional to me.”

Their follow up 1997 album, Talk On Corners, was a slow growing success, debuting in the UK at number 7 and finally peaking at number one in June, 1998, it’s 35th week on the charts. Once established, The Corrs became a chart fixture. “We’ve benefited from working with the best producers in the world,” says Andrea, including Glenn Ballard (Alanis Morisette, Michael Jackson), Rick Nowels (Madonna, Stevie Nicks), Mitchell Froom (Crowded House, Paul McCartney), T Bone Burnett (Bob Dylan, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss) and Mutt Lange (Def Leppard, Celine Dion). Breathless - a single The Corrs wrote and recorded with Lange - gave them their first number one in 2000. “Breathless was just kind of an assault in a way, you could not escape it.” Accompanying album, In Blue, went straight to number one in 17 countries, and platinum in America.

There have been extraordinary highs in the Corrs career. Andrea singles out playing for Nelson Mandela four times, performing at his 86th birthday at his personal request. “That he was imprisoned and treated so inhumanely but came out loving mankind, it’s awe inspiring to me. To play for him was a privilege and was so warm, with the most beautiful smile. I remember playing The Joy Of Life, a traditional song, and he got up and danced to it. And then one night, we had the fortune to be with him and Peter Gabriel and Annie Lennox at his reserve in South Africa, sitting out under the stars, listening to him tell us stories. He was just such a beautiful human being.”

The Corrs also played for Queen Elizabeth II at her Jubilee in 2002. The Irish siblings were made honorary Member of the British Empire in 2005, in recognition of their considerable charity work, which began following the devastating tragedy of the Omagh bombing that killed 29 people and injured hundreds more in Northern Ireland in 1998. “We were so horrified,“ Andrea recalls. “I remember we were about to go on a morning TV show, and we just couldn’t do it, and they were very understanding. But we decided this just can’t go away and not be faced.” The Corrs helped organise a charity concert with U2, Sinead O’Connor, Van Morrison, Boyzone and Enya in support of victims, and have remained active in philanthropic endeavours ever since. They performed a spinetingling acoustic version of REM’s Everybody Hurts on an Irish Late Late Show TV special. “Bob Geldof was kind of raging, cause that’s Bob’s way, and there was one man in the audience, he’d lost his daughter, and he said ‘that’s the kind of vengeful chatter that has us here in the first place’,” Andrea recalls. “It was quite a moment. It really brought something home, that it was a privilege to be able to help in some way to shine a light on injustices. Because it continues, we see it in this moment, it’s so horrific and frightening, and then we get on stages to play, and there’s nothing but love in the room. You know, that is really who we are. And this is how we feel, for people of all races and colours and creeds. When you are playing music in a room, the love is such a contrast to what we see on the news. It’s really a blessing to able to go out and see love and share love.”

The Corrs 2005 album, Home, was dedicated to their mother, and focussed on traditional Irish songs. “Irish music has a huge effect, all over the world, even in places where there’s not a morsel of Irish blood in the culture. It runs deep.”

The Corrs took a hiatus after Home, to concentrate on raising families of their own. By early 2015, they had quietly resumed writing sessions together when their father, Gerry, suddenly fell ill. They rushed to Ireland to be by his side when he died, aged 82. The first time the siblings performed in ten years was at their father’s funeral in their native Dundalk. “That was hard, but it was the right thing to do,” says Andrea.

They returned to action with huge global tours in a period that has seen them release two of their most mature albums, White Light (2015) and the T Bone Burnett produced Jupiter Calling (2017).

This year they have been touring South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Best of The Corrs is released on December 1st, in a 21-track limited edition gold vinyl format and expanded 2CD collection. “I love the journey of this record, its our life in music,” says Andrea. “I don’t know what the next chapter is, because we fly by the seat of our pants, but we trust in the music.”

Writer’s block is every artist’s worst nightmare. For Natalie Imbruglia, a creative dry spell that began almost a decade ago was nearly the end of her music career. "I got to a place where I just couldn’t write, so I went to LA for two years to study acting,” she says. After dipping a toe back in she realised that writing her own material again was going to involve breaking out of her comfort zone.

In summer 2018, she went to Nashville for ten days of intense writing sessions. “I threw myself in at the deep end. There were a lot of tears, and days where I felt, ‘I can't do this’. Then I had a turning point and wrote this song that I was incredibly proud of: When You Love Too Much. And it just flowed from there.”

The song, a country-inflected ballad about being emotionally vulnerable, was the first to be written for Imbruglia’s sixth studio album, Firebird. “Sometimes in life we just need a little reminder of who we are and what we're capable of,” she says of rediscovering her voice. “When you get back in touch with that feeling, you attract more of that. Then I was on a high.”

Creative floodgates now firmly open, the rest of Firebird came together over the next two years. The title track was written with Romeo Stodart of The Magic Numbers and, Imbruglia explains, it’s all about the juxtaposition of strength and fragility. “Finding a balance between those two things has been a lifelong journey for me. We often try and push down our vulnerabilities and put a tough face on it but, actually when you embrace that fragile side of yourself, that's where you find true strength.”

Maybe It’s Great - a summery, attitude-packed earworm - was co-written with The Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr and his longterm producer Gus Oberg at Byron Bay’s Rockinghorse Studios in early 2019. “We’ve been friends for a long time, but I was really nervous to work with him because I’m also a massive fan,” admits Imbruglia of Hammond Jr. “We had talked about working together in LA, but I was heading to Australia for Christmas so he was like, ‘Why don't I just come there?’ Rockinghorse is in the hinterland of Byron Bay, so you could not get a more magical setting for a writing session.”

Although the album was written in an array of international locations, it was almost entirely recorded in lockdown. Not that Imbruglia minded being confined to her Oxfordshire home. In October 2019, she announced the birth of her son and was quite happy to spend the first 18 months of his life hunkering down.

She describes her path to parenthood as “the best decision I ever made”, adding that she has wanted to be a mum for as long as she can remember. “It brings into clarity what matters, so you no longer sweat the small stuff,” she says. “Becoming a parent gets you in touch with love, in a very different way. Unconditional love. It’s given me a sense of peace, a sense of balance and perspective. It impacts your life in so many ways, and 100% in your creativity, so it’s definitely inspired a few songs. I won't say which ones because it's nice that each song can be what it needs to be for each person that hears it.”

Now Imbruglia feels truly ready for the challenges of parenthood. “I've lived such a big life and had so many experiences and travelled the world. All of the things that might have frustrated me if I was younger, or felt like they had trapped me, are things I welcome now. I’ve got more patience.”

Other lyrical collaborators on the album include KT Tunstall, with whom she wrote the rocky, self-assured Nothing Missing. “That song is a celebration of independence,” she says. “I spent years after my divorce trying to fix myself, or fill a void with the things that society expects: meet the guy and have the family. Obviously my path was a different one but, even before Max was born, I realised there was nothing missing, ever. It was a massive epiphany, and very empowering and it took a long time to realise that, actually, I was fine all along. I just needed to relax into that and be okay with it.”

It’s this sense of confidence and ease that makes Firebird the perfect soundtrack to this summer. One of Imbruglia’s favourite tracks on the album is the instantly hummable On My Way, written with regular collaborator Eg White, with whom she wrote 2005 hit Shiver from her third album Counting Down the Days. “On My Way is so effortless, I can imagine listening in the car with the window down,” she grins. And this joyful spirit captures the mood of a nation emerging from a difficult year.

Imbruglia talks frankly about difficult times in her life but, rather than break her, the peaks and troughs of her career have been galvanising, and helped her grow. “You come across people in the industry who've gone from strength to strength, and never had those struggles, and it can be quite damaging because you end up with a warped view of yourself. There's nothing like a sense of self when you’re on your way down,” she laughs. “To be able to use difficult times and make music out of it is the most satisfying feeling. It’s almost like therapy.”