If you close your eyes you can almost smell the Eau de 2001. The world is reeling from the 9/11 attacks; the final episode of Glenroe airs; foot-and-mouth disease is rampant in Ireland; and it’s all soundtracked by a family band from Dundalk.
Twenty-two years later The Corrs’ Best Of, the multimillion-selling Christmas present of choice in 2001, is being given another run, this time with extra tracks and on gold vinyl. Revisiting these songs, drawn from the siblings’ first three albums (the less said about their most recent three the better), it’s not difficult to see how The Corrs conquered the world. Guilty pleasure or not, songs such as Only When I Sleep, Runaway and Forgiven, Not Forgotten remain impressive melodic compositions. The diddly-eye canter of I Never Loved You Anyway walked so Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl could run two decades later, while Breathless and Radio are breezy, sure-footed delights.
This expanded reissue also includes three more Fleetwood Mac covers to augment their previous take on Dreams. Little Lies, sung by Caroline and Andrea, is the pick of the bunch, although it diverges little from the original save for the addition of fiddle, while Everywhere and Songbird are serviceable tributes to Christine McVie. At worst this is a nostalgia trip to a perhaps more innocent time, at best a reminder that The Corrs sure knew their way around a pop song.
