We even get a new introduction to the episodes, I love it !
First of all, I apologise for not having made time earlier to comment on it! I always follow the podcast diligently and had a lot on my plate so I kept thinking "I *have* to post about that", because I actually listened to it on its release day!
One hour and a half, what a treat and what a start to the season!
Oliver Leiber is a fascinating, generous and chill guest, also a very humble one. He says he doubted whether he truly delivered - boy, did he ever deliver BIG!! The fact he got emotional when you thanked him was touching, because how many people work in the shadows doin amazing stuff and never ever get the spotlight for their work? It is so great you put the spotlight on him, it is a recurring thing in the podcast too with other guests that never knew how much a lot of us appreciated their work thoroughly! I am so glad he could hear it from you.
Very pleased he took the time to speak with you! As always you are an exemplary host, your voice is super soothing and you know how to leave space for your guests to speak! Oliver truly as the right man at the right place t help make that album a success, he seems to have such an instinct for what will work well in a song, it sounds like he brought that unique dance/R'n'B vibe to the pop/folk sound of the Corrs, whereas David Foster is clearly more pop/rock. And I think it might have been instrumental in making the album such a big success, because it was such a good mix of influence that seemed to have been "the sound of the time", amplified in a collection of tracks in one album, TOC! To me, it truly is the epitome of 90s pop/rock.
TOC is one of my favourite Corrs album ever. I wasn't old enough to have listened to it when it came out, but I remember being in high school and picking up a TOC SE CD for about 25 € (a fortune for me!) and my mom being cool enough to buy it for me! It was fascinating to discover the songs, the band etc, I did not discover them through this album but it sure was something to listen to. I played that CD a lot and still have it, along with the original edition of TOC (without Dreams) that was reedited by the German branch of Atlantic Record (I think) and put on amazon a few years ago. It is one of the rare CDs I can play from start to finish without skipping any track. There are so many good songs and some the band has not played after the TOC tour - especially in the second half of the tour when the tracklist seemed to change a lot and push forward the most commercial tracks to the front.
One of my absolute favourite track from the band comes from that album and it is Love in The Milkyway. I'm forever sad it never made the cut even though the album is perfect as it is, and I almost screamed when you mentioned it lol, I was so happy you brought it up, Simon
I am equally happy some of these were revived in their recent tours, it was so cool!
A few things on this one:
- It is so fascinating to me to learn of the inspiration behind songs. Staring At The Sun is such a clear inspiration for OWIS, but I would never have guessed it spun from it in a way!! What a cool nugget of information to get! Funnier yet is the incense story - I had vaguely read about it somewhere but we finally have a visual of the actual thing which is so very nice! And a very unlikely inspiration :)
- The working titles/definitive titles is such a fun one to learn. It's a bit of a branding exercise in a way, Only When I sleep does not have the same ring to it than the other two options (won't spoil it) that it originally had!
- Oh my god Hopelessly Addicted very early demo O. M. G!!!!!!! Simon, thank you SO MUCH for sharing this! I loved listening to Andrea humming along as she came up with the song! I seriously love that song. It's so impressive to hear them work on that on the fly, figuring out lyrics, melodies and more technical stuff like a "getaway melody" for the pre-chorus I assume. It's so precious to have access to these snippets!
- Love in the Milkyway, what can I say? It's a song that have seriously fascinated me from the very first time I heard it. *That* performance in Madrid, 1997 or 1998 is so great, I love it, and that studio version is so very cool, the bass is amazing, everything in this song is special to me
I loved that you reminded him of that track ha, it's funny he had forgotten it a bit but everything came back to him as soon as he heard it!
- Oh, Dreams!!!! what a journey that song went through! It's funny because it is not the only song to have gone through lots of versions, it seems the Corrs do that a lot (I'm thinking of Stay on White Light or Radio on In Blue). It's so great to hear the original version they came up with for Dreams - I don't think I had ever heard the studio version of it before! (the one that is very close to the original, I mean). That inspiration for the remix version is so great to hear and discover. The dance vibe is exactly what we have on the next version of dreams, though I far prefer the one that was not remixed (but with the Corrs arrangement) that ended up on TOC (not the special edition - though I do like all the remixes on this one).
- That early version of So Young was amazing to hear! The v1 lyrics make a lot of sense when you know it is actually about the Corrs' parents. But the final lyrics truly take it home and land it! Oliver Leiber truly tweaked it in a way that made it a hit.
I am going to stop there because there is so much more to be said, too many cool tidbits we learn, thank you Simon, you truly offered us the best possible start on that new season!! Thank you so much :D
Yrisea