Ida Corr
Tracks
In 2007 singer Ida Corr conquered dancefloors and charts all over the world with her single "Let Me Think About It", remixed by Fedde Le Grand. It became the most successful single of a Danish artist after Aqua and Infernal. Most people know her probably for this big hit. But how did it start with Ida's career?
Ida Corr was born to a Danish mother and a Gambian father in Aarhus, the second largest town of Denmark. She was raised in a home filled with music. Her father - a musician - jammed a lot with his friends. She started out drumming at six, formed her own band at nine, performing soul classics by James Brown and Aretha Franklin on the streets of Aarhus. At the age of eleven her band "Årgång 77" won the very first National Danish Radio Songcontest for Children.
From then on there was no other path for Ida Corr than the path of music. Over the next years she developed her singing talent and built up her career as a perfomer, by becoming one of the most popular backing vocals in Danish music.
On several occasions during that time Ida Corr was offered record deals from various A&R people, that thought her powerful voice and good looks would go well with a handful of coversongs. But they thought wrong, because Ida Corr didn't want to be just another short-term product - she wanted to be herself.
So she started to write songs of her own. In the summer of 2004 she released her debut single "U Make Me Wanna", which became an instant radiohit in Denmark, without anybody knowing anything about the artist, apart from the fact that this was a great track.
Ida finally decided to sign with Kick Music and joined up with the young talented producer MoTrack aka Christian von Staffeldt. Both wrote and produced her debut album "Streetdiva", hitting the Danish stores in April 2005.
"StreetDiva" showed what kind of artist Ida Corr was - a real Soul-woman, daring to experiment with music and genres. The foundation was soul, but mixed with elements from all kinds of music: R&B, Jazz, Hip Hop and even Rockmusic.
Following the release of "Streetdiva" there was more radio-hitsingles released, and Ida became one of the most-covered female artists in the printed press over the next year - with plenty of comprehensive interviews and several frontcovers showing the beautiful Miss Ida Corr. And very unexpectedly, fans started pulling posters with Ida down in order to take them home. Kick Music went to the press and urged people to stop doing that and instead offered to mail a brand new poster to everybody interested - more than 800 people responded to this offer and thus received a poster of Ida Corr a number 10 times higher than expected by Kick Music (Denmark is only 5 million people).
Massive touring followed, including festivals such as Roskilde- and Skanderborg Festival - performing with a 10 piece act, including hornsection, percussion and rappers a real soulband.
Ida has also been noticed by foreign companies. In 2005 she got her first single "U Make Me Wanna" signed to the legendary Tommy Boy label in New York. Rosie Lopez (the A&R of Tommy Boy) played the track to Mr. DJ (the producer of Outkast) who wanted to re-record the song with her and keeping an option for Big Boi to rap on it. Unfortunately the boys of Outkast ran in to time problems as the member were producing a new album and a movie at the same time, not leaving a spare moment to pursue the Ida Corr re-recording.
Only a year after the release of the debut album, Ida Corr and MoTrack went back to the studio to start working on her second album. Different to the production of the first album, this production was much more intense and concentrated on Ida and MoTrack, only calling in help from fellow musicians when absolutely needed - among those Al Agami and Burhan G, both famous in their own fields.
It was decided from the beginning to try and create music that found its place in between the warm Soulmusic and the colder electrosounds - Robosoul.
Over the next couple of months in the studio, Ida Corr came up with 12 new songs creative works, with a strong sense of detail and different from anything ever heard in Danish music before. Ida & MoTrack were still "playing with the music" but with the original idea of the outcome in the back of their heads, they still managed to keep the production strict and pure.
In August the result was finally ready. First single was decided to be "Lonely Girl" and was released in the beginning of September 2006, reaching a high rotation on National Radio.
On October 11th the new album "Robosoul" was released, and even though the press and TV never stopped following Ida after the release of her first album 18 months earlier, the media awaited the new album with great anticipation. Ida had become "a household name" in Denmark since the debut, and everybody wanted to know what she was doing.
Ida Corr's very first musicvideo was released in Denmark on the same day as the release of "Robosoul". Previously there hadn't been enough time to produce a musicvideo from the first album, but this time around it was a part of the major release plan. The song was of course "Lonely Girl". It was shot on a sunny but cold day in September at the beach of Copenhagen and the video includes several shots of Ida "standing" on the surface of the water as well as lying in it, while telling the sad story of the song.
Internationally, there has also been a huge interest in the Danish artist. This is a result of her collaboration with one of the world's best selling DJ's - Fedde Le Grand, who hit the dance charts with his club tracks "Put Your Hands Up For Detroit" and "The Creeps" (featuring Camille Jones).
The first collaboration with Fedde Le Grand was "Mirror 07-07-07", a song performed especially on the "Live Earth" event in the Netherlands on June 7th, 2007 at 7:07 am.
But it was the remix to the track "Let Me Think About It" from Ida's album "Robosoul", which became the smash hit for both artists. Throughout the summer and autumn the track conquered charts in Europe, Australasia and North America. The track reached number 2 on the UK Single Charts (only surpassed by the Sugababes) as well as being the most played number on UK Music TV and the national English radio channel BBC Radio 1. In 2008 the single gained a world record, rising to number 1 on the US Billboard Dance Charts, as an imported single and spending 40 weeks in the Top 10!
The video was filmed in London and directed by Marcus Adams and is according to Marcus a sexy mixture of Prince and Robert Palmer and a tribute to Prince as well.
In 2007 Ida joined a new project called "SugaRush Beat Company", which consisted of Jarrad 'Jaz' Rogers, Rahsaan Patterson and Ida Corr. Jaz is the producer in the band and has also produced for Lauryn Hill's and Britney Spears' albums. Rahsaan made a big impact on the urban scene in 1997. His single "Where You Are" became an hit in both UK and USA and let to 2 million sold records.
The band impressed Liza Minelli, when they performed live at the "Later with Jools Holland"-Show in London in early 2008. In September 2008 their debut album came out in the UK.
In 2008 Ida released hercompilation album "One" in Europe and the United States, which contains some of her best known tracks from her two previous albums
Since the worldwide success of "Let Me Think About It", Ida is constantly on the go, playing at exclusive clubs worldwide. More hits followed, like "Ride My Tempo", "What Goes Around Comes Around", "See You Later" featuring Bimbo Jones and the Danish #1-hit "Sjus" featuring Kato, Camille Jones and Johnson.
In 2013 Ida joins the Danish X Factor judging panel to search for new talents. More music both in Danish and English language is already in process.
