A good-looking future for seductive singing siblings

If you haven't yet bought The Corrs' second album, Talk On Corners, put your money away

If you haven't yet bought The Corrs' second album, Talk On Corners, put your money away. The disc is currently being piped ad nauseam through the music system at your local McDonald's. The seductive siblings (and their brother) are the Big Mac and large fries of the popular music world.

Like the Big Mac, Andrea, Sharon, Caroline and, to a lesser extent Jim, look irresistibly tasty, mouth-watering even. (Big brother Jim should console himself with the fact that next to them, even the most handsome man would look plain.) Again, like their fastfood counterparts, their musical menu leaves more discerning appetites unsatisfied.

Fortunately for them, there are millions of us content to munch on a tuneful snack manufactured from more generous measures of style than substance. Faster than you could say foot-tapping saccharine pop, The Corrs were a worldwide music phenomenon - and an advertiser's sweetest dream.

This week, Dundalk's answer to the von Trapp family signed a deal with Pepsi for an estimated £1 million. They join The Spice Girls and more latterly Boyzone as ambassadors for Generation Next. We live, after all, in a time when an advertising contract with a soft drink company means you have really arrived.

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Headlining the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games at Kuala Lumpur, playing to a TV audience of 400 million, as they did this week, is another big deal. Their latest album has sold three million copies, going double platinum in the UK. All this for a quartet from decidedly unsexy Dundalk, Co Louth - cue a relatively smooth transition from, if not quite rags, then certainly to substantial riches.

Thirty-four years ago, James Steven Ignatius was born to Gerry and Jean Corr and the musically inclined couple encouraged their son on the piano.

As they came along, Sharon, Caroline and Andrea followed the path carved out by the Jacksons and Osmonds before them, variously learning the violin, keyboards and tin whistle.

They grew up listening to their parents' records, including that other well-known related duo, The Carpenters. Mr and Mrs Corr were always encouraging but never domineering.

"They passed on their love of music and taught us our instruments, but they never pressured us, not like tennis parents or Michael Jackson's daddy," Andrea has said.

Jim was the first to really go for it, touring as a backing musician for various acts and having a go in his own band, Chip, but it was when they got together that the combination of sweet melodies, fresh pop and extraordinary good looks suggested that stardom beckoned.

They met their manager John Hughes when he was musical adviser for Alan Parker's The Commitments. More friends in high places followed after Jean Kennedy Smith spotted them playing at their first professional gig at Whelan's in Dublin.

SHE invited them to Boston to play at a VIP function. The story of how during that trip, the band blagged their way in to the waiting room of Atlantic Records boss David Foster has been well documented. It took one listen (or should that be look?), before he signed them to the label on the spot.

By 1995 they had written an album, Forgiven Not Forgotten, bringing the newly trendy Celticness of Riverdance together with unashamedly romantic pop. Since then, number one records have followed all the way from Australia to Ireland. The UK proved harder to crack, but this year Talk on Corners crashed that particular barrier.

The quartet have not been without their critics, one of whom has said their biggest sin is putting forward an image of a multi-talented, family band while overloading their albums with session musicians. It was suggested that Caroline didn't play her instrument, the drums, on any of the tracks on Talk on Corners.

The band were vocally annoyed about this, with Andrea calling the journalist in question "a bad man", but that they can cut it live musically is not in doubt and has been acknowledged by even their most stringent critics. To their credit, they never make claims about being deep 'n' meaningful musos and, unlike other acts, don't talk in interviews about a message or wanting to change the world.

They are The Corrs without a rebel. They are exactly what it says on the packet and one of the most successful pop bands ever to come out of Ireland to boot. In their time, they have also made a lot of sub-editors very happy with headline ideas like "Cor! it's The Corrs".

The female members are all drop-dead gorgeous and regular attempts to draw them into deep discussion about their looks being wholly responsible for their success are futile. It's all about the music, they say.

Andrea, for her part, added another string to her bow by starring alongside Madonna in Evita. Sharon and Caroline are also legendary for making the most hardened rock journalist weak at the knees. Jim, meanwhile, is an average looking 34-year-old who looks decidedly out of place among this bevy of creamy-skinned beauties. While les girls don knee-high boots and chiffon frocks, he sometimes attempts the mean 'n' moody look in leather. He favours a quiff and sideburns, leading one to speculate that he models himself on clean-cut Brandon played by Jason Priestly on Beverley Hills 90210.

He might have swapped hairstyling tips with the actor when the band appeared on the glamorous Hollywood drama series, filling a slot in a local nite spot called The Peach Pit. In a place where image and money is everything - they have amassed an estimated £4 million fortune - The Corrs fitted right in. Big Mac and strawberry smoothie anyone?