Last Christmas Andrea Corr visited Dublin’s Our Lady’s Hospice in Harold’s Cross and sang a selection of her personal Christmas favourites. It was an incredibly moving experience that inspired her to record the songs this year.
The four beautiful, moving songs featured on ‘Andrea Corr Christmas Songs’ have a special place in her childhood. Christmas is always an emotional time, this year more than ever.
‘Next year all our troubles will be miles away,” she sings in ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ before adding “some day soon, we will all be together/until then we will have to muddle through somehow.” These words resonate deeply as we approach Christmas 2020.
Stream and download ‘Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas’ here.
Always bittersweet, the song has taken on a new meaning as we live through this global pandemic. The other featured songs are equally poignant: ‘O Holy Night’, ‘In The Bleak Mid-Winter’ and the original ‘Begin Again’ written by Andrea with more than a touch of the Corrs about it.
“These are songs that I grew up with, my father played ‘O Holy Night’ in our church every Christmas Eve when we were kids,” Andrea says. “We had been planning this record since my visit to the hospice last year—and then the world changed, and the lyrics took on a whole new and special meaning.”
So did her vocals which beautifully convey the heartfelt sentiment across all the tracks. It took a lot of endeavour to find a male voice choir who could all sing together in the same venue but this was eventually discovered in Perth, Australia with the lovely Giovanni Consort Choir. Anna Rice and John Hughes put the EP together with much tender loving care.
‘Andrea Corr Christmas Songs’ provides some comfort and joy in these rather difficult times. Enjoy!
