Blogging Without Wings

A Critical Dissection of Westlife's Musical Output

[bloggingwithoutwings]

Westlife - My Love (Watch on Youtube) To ease us into the meat and bones of Coast To Coast, it's another Cheiron Productions song, threaded with hints of previous Wezza hits: the acoustic guitar intro from "If I Let You Go", the jumping chorus melody from "Fool Again", lack of harmonies from, well, everything. Nothing is wasted, only reproduced!* The unsettling chord change at the end of the chorus ("again... my love") is also something I have come to associate with the Cherion singles: I always initially get caught out by the way the hook doesn't quite resolve or rhyme in the way I expect it to, but by the time the 3 minutes are up, it seems perfectly normal and even quite catchy. The weirdest bit also coincides with the song's title: these Swedish dudes know exactly what they're doing. Speaking of which, I discovered today that Ikea uses ABBA for their hold music. I would expect nothing less, though I would have picked "The Day Before You Came" instead of "Mamma Mia" for extra domesticity points. Back to the matter in hand. The boys bring their usual strengths to the party: Lead Westlife kicks off, Curtains McFadden does the 2nd verse, Mark does the middle 8 - and 5th Westlife gets a SPEAKING ROLE! We must hurry - Isengard is 3 days' march! Kian isn't happy about this. I cannot jump the distance, you'll have to toss me. A few seconds of appalling acting reveals that the Wezzas' flight has been cancelled and they have to get home via a combination of invisible train and CGI dimensional warp: Definitely more like SG-1 than the Matrix Efficiently mirroring the recycled song elements, in the shot below the video also mimics 1) the aerial fly-past shot from "Fool Again", 2) the tricep-strengthening arm action from "Flying Without Wings" 3) the cliff top/beach from whatever the 2nd single was. (Too lazy to check the top of the post which I wrote some months ago, soz). I can't tell who is responsible but I believe this might be our first sighting of proper Nu-Metal trousers upon the Westlife legs: 2001, everybody!** Is this a ballad? It's not really soppy enough, especially with the repeated football-chant chorus bludgeoning at the end, although in no sense could this be called a banger. The verses provide a bit more insight into the Wez motivation: a determined glee at being miserable, especially in the hands of Lead Westlife who seems to relish the chance to get his teeth into a clearly defined Emotional Trope: 'An empty street, An empty house / A hole inside my heart / I'm all alone, the rooms are getting smaller.' A dramatic opening but entirely forgotten by the 1st chorus - the thought of home comforts neutralising his inner Fillyjonk Who Secretly Loves Disasters. Bryan on the other hand can't sing this sort of stuff without a sarcastic grin: 'I try to read, I go to work / I'm laughing with my friends / But I can't stop to keep myself from thinking, oh, no.' He's blatantly cheating on you while he's 4000 miles away. Poor Kerry Katona. The themes of separation and homesickness are prime Mum-pop territory, whether One's Love is on the front lines in Afghanistan or working a double-shift at the TGI Fridays round the back of Harrow Warner Village Cinema - if you're stuck at home minding the kids then having 5 nice young men telling you how much they miss you might give you some comfort. Or the impetus to sack off the long distance relationship and shack up with Maureen from next-door. Whatever. My own wanderlust has waned as I have got older and my luggage has become heavier. Not for nothing did I ask for gift vouchers from my family this Xmas. But while I can empathise with 5th Westlife's travel frustrations I don't tend to get homesick, and never have. I remember heading off on Brownie Pack Holiday aged 7, and couldn't understand why several of the girls were in tears because they 'missed home'. It was only the first night! Didn't they find it an adventure, being away from parents and sleeping on a camp bed in an exciting, Winnie-The-Pooh-decorated church hall in Lewes? I found out later that it was only Laura who was upset about leaving her ill dog behind, and the others had twigged that crying would get them some extra hot chocolate. On a later Pack Holiday (this time in a drafty church hall in Winchester) I used this ruse myself as an excuse for why I was crying, to cover up that I felt bad about slagging off Faye behind her back for being a cow, when I should have said it to her face. This doesn't make me feel any more sympathetic towards Bryan. However I wonder if Kian's dog is alright. Oh dear. *I like only 3 Blur songs and that's one of them. **Fact-checking triumph: we're still only in 2000 after all! Ooof.

[bloggingwithoutwings]

Mariah Carey & Westlife - Against All Odds (watch on Dailymotion)

MARIAH LAW time. (Apologies for the shit picture quality - literally no high-res videos of this song exist.)

"I'm only agreeing to this shoot if I can be on a yacht in Capri"

Full disclosure: to date I have not watched the Jeff Bridges 'Against All Odds' film, wherein the Phil Collins original is featured, but from the video it looks like a Top Gun-style action romance but with Mayan temples instead of fighter planes, i.e. it sounds amazing! I should write blurbs for the back of DVD boxes innit. Would probably leave out the bit where I say that the production values are comparable to Howards Way.

"I'll tell you where the treasure's buried, just don't push me overboard"

Technically the 'Against All Odds' above isn't really a Westlife single at all: Mariah recorded a solo version for Rainbow, and Westlife elbowed their way in for a spot on the UK single release. Blogging Without Wings' primary source Wikipedia says that the backing track was re-recorded (presumably to add the obligatory Disney sprinkles), but Mariah's remaining vocal parts are taken from her album mix. Not that'd you'd guess that from the chummy knees-up in Capri. Has any video except Band Aid ever featured genuine 'studio' footage from the time of recording? This one certainly doesn't.

Look at this entirely convincing recording studio gathering

I've no clue whose idea it was to team them up in the first place (I'm hoping it was Mark's) but it makes good business sense from both their labels' point of view: Westlife wanted to maintain their string of #1s and a duet would be a good way to stop 5-Man-Ballad Fatigue setting in. Mariah's team would have wanted to wring out the final drops from the turbulent teatowel that was the Rainbow album campaign. "Heartbreaker" did pretty well in the UK charts but Mariah hadn't had a #1 here since 1994's "Without You" -- another old-man-wailing cover. What a coincidence!

Musically however, the collaboration seems ill-judged: Mariah spent the late 90s and early 2000s veering away from torch-balladry and focusing on R&B, so hooking up with a risk-averse boyband almost seemed like a step backwards for her -- especially as Rainbow was full of hip-hop guests (Missy, Jay-Z, Mystikal, plus Mariah eating cereal in her pyjamas in front of a baffled Snoop Dogg*). Also, Mariah's strength is all about variation, exploring her range within a single song (or sometimes even a syllable). Westlife meanwhile are best at combining their well-matched voices together and becoming more than the sum of their parts, giving their output a consistent, strong and weirdly soothing quality.

While I enjoy Mariah's huge warble and the Wezzatron 5000's simple harmony-mush far more than Phil Collins' comb-and-paper buzzing, they just don't mix well and the uninspiring production does nothing to hold it together. Mariah's whispery lower range on the first verse feels like energy conservation rather than delicacy. When she lets rip at the end it's a sudden jump and it all gets a bit screamy.

Fair enough, I would also scream in this terrifying situation

What about the Wezzas? Should they have even bothered turning up to steal our firstborn children? Well, Mark does a much better job of his verse than Lead Westlife's wimpy intro. The backing for his part ramps up the drama with Cadbury-gorilla drums and orchestral stabs. While leaving Mariah to do the rest of the heavy lifting is probably a good idea for everyone, the remaining Wezzas are reduced to background ooohs and aahs, plus a brief and very jarring major-key coda, sprinkled with Disney bells just in case we'd forgotten about those. HOW COULD WE FORGET.

I am highly interested in how to recreate this knitting pattern

Even if they'd all actually been in the same room, there'd be no way that the boys could match Mariah vocally or blend their voices well with hers (or indeed, with anyone outside their tried-and-tested unit). So the result of this track was always going to be a patchwork quilt of uneven pieces at best. Unlike the excellent patterned bedspread up there.

Kian's already given it up as a bad job and sacked off home

So after the bombshell of preferring Westlife's "I Have A Dream" to the ABBA original, I think Phil is safe here. His sparse echoey piano and desperate building hree-hee-hees provide far more immediate impact, despite his lesser raw materials.

Never mind Westlife, you've still got another 20-odd singles left to make up for it!

*Is there any other kind of Snoop Dogg lol etc

[bloggingwithoutwings]

Westlife - Fool Again (Watch on Youtube) Grumpy Other Half is doing his best to distract me from tackling this particular post by singing 'Can't believe that I have done a poo, and poo is all I know how to do, 'cos I am made of poo'. I have reminded him that this isn't a blog about Boyzone, to no avail. Indeed, I genuinely remember liking 'Fool Again' the first time I heard it! Which admittedly was probably around 2007, aka MumPop Year Zero, after I'd got over my initial Westlife prejudices. Let's see if it holds up. We're on location in Parts Foreign for this video, as signified by a man in a stripey top on a bicycle and a flag on a flagpole. Arriverderchi it's one on one Hmm. At first I thought this was Italy but the colour saturation is so bad that it might be Ireland or even France. I believe both Ireland and France both have plenty of bicycles, but then so does Dalston Junction. It's definitely not Dalston Junction. ANYWAY do not be afeared of these unfamiliar environs, for our friendly pan-flutes are present and correct (as is the Disney twinkly winkle) to greet the Wezzas after their long arduous journey. One of these hairstyles is not like the others But hang on, I only count four Loifes in that fake-looking car. Where's Lead Westlife? "Finally I've shaken off those LOSERS" Sorting out the verse, that's what. Lead Westlife's proven himself to be a safe pair of hands (once he gets them out of his pockets) so you can't blame him for taking charge. The clue is in the name. The others spend most of the verse driving slowly around in a circle trying to find him. "Are we actually here or is this an elaborate blue screen effect?" …Fiddlesticks Can't hide for long, Shane! Generic European City Square seems remarkably free of pigeons, homeless people, chuggers, pop-up kimchee hot dog vans, bored schoolchildren with large rucksacks and people handing out flyers for creepily cheap driving lessons. Errant boyband members are easily spotted. There he is! "Thank god you're here, we can't remember how the chorus goes" And what a chorus! The Wezzas' voices are right up high in the mix, doing what they do best: uniformly singing a catchy hook. It's also oddly phrased: the obvious thing to do would be to rhyme 'know' with 'tell me so', but instead there's no rhyme at all? That seems a really non-standard choice, and I kind of like the chorus all the better for it. Fuck is it MEXICO??? That is nowhere near Europe, is it? Wherever we are, it looks quite warm for those black jumpers. Mark's still got his bloody jacket on! Much like their previous singles, Mark a) gets the best melody line b) is the only one who seems to be matching his facial expression with the tone of the song. Brian in particular seems to find the romantic troubles hilarious. At least there's proportionally a bit more screentime here for 5th Westlife's fringe, which is battling for blonde-mop supremacy with Curtains McFadden and Lovely Kian who seems a bit down in the dumps. Unfortunately 5th Westlife has bigger problems to deal with: What is happening with that footwear The bridge slows things down and brings the boys together on the sofa to regroup. Lead Westlife looks as if he means business, making his lines more abrupt and determined, as if he is counting down with his closed fist in a game of rock-paper-KEYCHANGE. OH YES. We are now in Boyband On A Roof territory, pre-empting Take That by around 10 years. We're seeing signs of a BUDGET here people! Face the FRONT, Brian "Fool Again"'s chorus is still as great and as catchy as I remember, but only when all the boys sing it together in unison. Westlife really are more than a sum of their parts - when they break off into widdly layers (not even really harmonising), it dilutes the hook and highlights the individual weaknesses (i.e. Brian's honking, Mark getting carried away with his 'woooo's after his main bit is over). The production is dull to the point of invisibility, which does at least push the boys to the front of the mix where they belong. Overall verdict: Much better than "Whole Again" by Atomic Kitten.

[bloggingwithoutwings]

Westlife - Seasons In The Sun The long hiatus between posts has been solely due to the fact that whenever I looked at the next song in the queue and remembered it was "Seasons In The Sun", I suddenly had Many Other Important Duties that required immediate attention. We had joy. We had fun. We had seasons in the sun. Doesn't it just sound like a nursery rhyme? One. Syll. A. Ble. Per. Note. Presumably there was an intent of melancholy and regret in the original, written from the perspective of a dying man. Apparently in the French version the dude is sarcastically saying cheerio to his wife, who had been cheating on him. This totally makes sense as a "ha-ha fuck you, everyone thinks I'm singing a simple happy song but ACTUALLY you and I know the TRUTH". But there's no such subtlety in the English lyrics to offset the schmaltz. That chord progression is straight out of Learn To Play Keyboard Book 1: C, F, G, C a pattern so familiar to me that I even managed to work that out in my head without looking it up. It's the most basic thing you can do on the piano. Even bloody "Jingle Bells" has a seventh in it. In short, Westlife will have to pull out something special to make this enjoyable for me. Let's see what they can come up with. Surprise! It's the Titanic-style Irish flute and the Disney tinkling that we've come to know and 'love' as signifiers of Impending Westlife. Black and white + hosepipe rain = Srs bsns Kian and Curtains McFadden start us off, giving the impression that rather than shuffling off this mortal coil they're just heading off to university, safe in the knowledge that they and their schoolchums will be reunited in the Wetherspoons on Christmas Eve, sharing made-up anecdotes about all the h0tt girls they've definitely actually shagged while they've been away. Curtains almost seems to be using it as a chat up line. "Guess what, I only have 24 hours left to live. Wanna fuck?" A very quick chorus follows, with a hand gesture rating of 2.5 out of 5. If only they'd realised they could use BOTH hands Lead Westlife then takes the reins in a fetching black polo neck ("I was the black polo necked sheep of the family"). Very French! All he needs is a beret and a pipe to complete the look. Thinking about it, I think the director missed a trick with this video. Where are the autumn leaves/snowmen/daffodils/deckchairs? You could have at least had the boys in four different coloured outfits. I suppose the budget went on the fairy lights for other half of the double-A side. Anyway, I have to admit it: Lead Westlife's hint of remorse at "too much wine and too much song" is quite convincing and well sung. Mark, on the other hand, looks like he's Concentrating Very Hard on not fucking up the line. You can just about see the jutter as he desperately tries to wring out some emotion that's just not there. As well as a key change (take one drink!), our next chorus has a synth line very reminiscent of incidental music from Holly-Valance-era Neighbours (someone has just discovered an engagement ring in a desk drawer and wrongly assumes it's for them). Meanwhile, most of the 'Loife are being rotated on an unseen lazy susan. This constant whirling movement combined with the key change gives a new 'descent into madness' spin ('spin'! Geddit?) on the deathbed theme. Will Westlife will write you out of their will unless you listen to the remainder of the song? Hand gesture rating: 4 out of 5. Mark letting the side down at the back there FINALLY 5th Westlife gets more than one line to himself. It's only taken, what, five singles? He truly is the Posh Spice of the group. Heard in isolation, his voice is neutral, clear and quite pleasant. However something tells me he's not 100% committed to sparkle motion: Taking the hobbits to Isengard Dont worry, 5th Westlife. Eventually you will go into the west and remain Galadriel, but before then there's ANOTHER key change. The Irish flute is twiddling for dear life, the strings are emoting as much as they can, but what about those all important hand gestures? Putting the 'F' into 'Fun' Oh dear. So in conclusion, even the boys realise this is still a terrible song and no amount of confirming/denying can save it. In context though, I think Lead Westlife's decent performance nudges it above Nirvana's half-assed attempt (and I like Nirvana a great deal). But it's nowhere near as good as its fellow Christmas #1 "I Have A Dream".

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[bloggingwithoutwings]

2011: Westlife announce split 2011: Habitat goes into adminstration COINCIDENCE??? (The bar seems to have only Guinness on the taps but they are drinking sparkling wine??? Maybe some Black Velvets are in order...)

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Westlife - I Have A Dream

Westlife's first cover version single! ABBA songs are notoriously hard to sing, so let's see how the Wezzas get on.

Aimed squarely (and successfully) at the Christmas #1 slot, the arrangement is dripping with sleigh bells and pixie tinkling (in the pattern set out from Day 1).

The structure is very similar to ABBA's original in terms of verse/chorus/extra nyahw-nyahw noises/sappy kids' choir coming in, but amazingly Westlife actually employ more a bit more variety in their backing than ABBA's gentle but languid protest. After a barrelling intro, Lead Westlife hogs pretty much all of a (slightly) subdued first verse, stamping out his ground. Frida is slow and stately, a social worker giving sincere advice but maintaining an emotional distance. Lead Westlife's conviction and power implies his particular dream is more that of a cackling Bond villain than a tree-hugging hippy.

Thankfully the other four are there to temper his plans for world domination. By verse 2 they're all giving it full welly ('crossing the streams' - hehehe) to a surprisingly beefy Max Martin-esque hock-a-thwack beat. You know what? Once they're all up to full speed I quite like it! The two Blonde Westlifes provide a lovely thick base for Bryan McCurtains and Lead Westlife to pick out the deceptively tricky notes. Mark does a trill over the top and you can feel the layers of voices wrapping themselves around you like fluffy blankets. It's warm and welcoming - which for me equals Christmassy - and very unlike Frida and Agnetha's steely defiance.

Unfortunately there are few songs that are improved by a choir of children ('Another Brick In The Wall' is the only one that springs to mind right now). The combination of adorable tots and clanging chimes of doom in the final verse taint my happy memories of the middle verse. The backing completely overloads the 'Loife's vocals and I find myself gritting my teeth.

Perhaps the video can redeem this?

The creepy kids from the 'Flying Without Wings' video are back, this time as homeless ruffians dotted around a dystopian Sesame Street set. Their Christmas is set to be a dark and miserable one, eating turkey entrails from Oscar The Grouch's dustbin and pulling crackers made out of old syringes.

In a humanitarian Noel's Christmas Presents-style gesture the boys have brought along Tinkerbell (so THAT'S where the bloody bells are coming from) to weave a bit of magic and make their shitty pound-shop presents slightly less shit. Look at the glorious transformation that occurs!

A pile of old crap

A pile of old crap with some fairy lights on it

Well, quite. After one too many Farepak-hampers the children have had enough of Westlife's 'upselling' scammery. They encircle the boys in the time-honored occult fashion, chanting that they believe in angels but going WIDDERSHINS which in fact means they believe in DEVILS do you see.

Only Mark seems to have cottoned on to the fact that the time might be right for him to depart this earthly realm. Run, Mark! While you still can!

Conclusions: yes, I think the video narrowly justifies the singing children. I can't imagine "I Have A Dream" is among many people's favourite ABBA songs, but I could see it being among people's favourite Westlife songs.

[bloggingwithoutwings]

Flying Without Wings And so to the inspiration of this blog's title! This is actually one of Westlife's more interesting ('interesting') concept videos. The boys are trapped in the Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey version of hell, a corridor dimly lit by blue flourescent strips, with creepy children littered about the place. As we all know the only way to escape hell is to challenge the Grim Reaper to a game of Twister. Oh dear! Flexibility has never been Westlife's strong point. Get up off a stool, sit back down on a stool, occasionally raise arms up in a Jesus-like gesture: No wings but no flying either Predictably it doesn't seem to be doing much good, possibly because Brian isn't actually dead but inhabiting some sort of zombie limbo state: Brian McFadden, yesterday The others are doing their best but inevitably they are LEFT BEHIND as all the other inhabitants of hell manage the whole voler sans ailes business and go floating up to the pearly gates. Poor Wezzas! Doomed to spend eternity in Hades! For a long time I thought this, 'Hero' (Wind Beneath My Wings edn) and 'Hero' (Mariah ft Westlife edn) were the same song. SO CONFUSING. Westlife have also done a song called 'No More Heroes' (NB not a Stranglers cover) so Christ knows how one is meant to keep up with all this. One way to differentiate between them is to bear in mind that 'Flying Without Wings' is the one with the super-clunky rhyming scheme. BRINGS. THING. WINGS. MEANS. It's less catchy than the previous two singles, as hooks give way to bombast. It's a short song and it buckles under the strain of the arrangement. Lead Westlife and Tall Dark Westlife do their best but even they are drowned out by the choir and strings from about halfway onwards. In summary: for hormonal mums w/ dead children only.

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If I Let You Go Come with me for a stroll along an IRISH BEACH! Tick follows tock follows tick etc, a horse appears after literally 10 seconds so we know that we are in IRELAND with IRELAND'S biggest boyband since the last one. It's not raining though and no-one is drinking buckfast with an acid chaser so perhaps this is PRETEND IRELAND. They're making more of Brian in this video. Dressed in white, his tall figure is plonked in the foreground for us like a lighthouse on that murky beach, his fringe scanning this way and that in search of lost ships. The rest of them are doing quite well in the neutral Burton menswear stakes. Once you've got to the end of the video (no skipping! I WILL KNOW IF YOU HAVE SKIPPED), try and work out what the boys and their leprechaun chums are building out of all that driftwood. Telegraph poles? Something to do with Scientology? Perhaps they are a tribute to Frosta, She-Ra Princess Of Power's best mate (or was it worst enemy) whose weapon thing that came with the toy looked like a blue version of those wooden structures, and shot out icicle death rays: Whatever they're meant to be it seems like a lot of effort to just bugger off and leave them there without even attaching lanterns to them and having a 'night scene' at the end of the video. 3/10. Anyway, enough visual nonsense. Let's listen to the song, shall we? "If I Let You Go" has a very strange transition from verse to chorus. Even though you know *something* must be coming up after the bum-bum-bum-bum-bum PAUSE, the following 'BUT IF I' sharply shifts up a couple of notes. It's a bit of a jolt after the super-bland guitar intro, which is very Boyzone-ish in nature - not surprising given this is an Elofsson/Kreuger/Magnussen job. It's not a proper key change - that comes at around 2.48 - and most of the chorus melody follows the predictable ABBA lines. Go up here, and down there, chuck in a minor 7th for the penultimate chord. I can confirm that after three listens I could hum you 95% of the chorus so it gets a tick for catchiness. What about the lyrics? Surely the Loife cannot be mulling over the prospect of DUMPING someone! No of course not. These lovely lads will never abandon you, even if you WANT to leave and have made sure you are 'worlds apart'. Otherwise they will 'take the easy way out' i.e. top themselves. Further inspection suggests that's a little unfair - rather than being possessive/unhinged stalkers, the boys are just trying to pluck up the courage to state their true feelings. Awwwww. It's just Brian's FACE that is making you think they're creepy!

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Swear It Again Let's start at the beginning! Westlife's first single back in the mists of time (1999) was a reasonable indication of the path the band would take over the next 10 years: BALLAD O CLOCK. Another clue as to their future style can be heard at the very beginning of this beginning: the tinkly glissando of pixie dust sprinkling itself over some plodding piano. Saccharine tinkles and simple piano chords were both massively overused in 90s ballads - both good and bad. The chords in the opening bars of Mariah's version of "Without You" have a dogged determinism to them, whereas in "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" they make Bryan sound triumphantly pompous. The tinkles in Toni Braxton's "Breathe Again" are more like hyperventilating tears at the end of each phrase, but in the hands of Max Martin they are a touch of icing sugar to sweeten the Britney/Backstreet slowjam experience for us all. Strangely enough Westlife's predecessors Boyzone mostly avoided the tinkle on their singles, preferring a godawful acoustic guitar to pick out their soppy intros. In "Swear It Again" the chords and tinkles have little emotion to convey - they've been selected to smooth over the canvas and prepare us for an All-New Boyband who, as it happens, turn out to be very good at singing with each other. Almost too good! Having listened to the track several times I am just about able to pick out their different solo voices, but together on the chorus they become a single force with a standard deviation of approximately 0.05 (that was the as-promised science bit for this post). They are all singing the same note at the same time. You WILL remember this hook! We will drum it into your skull with our combined power! There's no distracting bassline and the super-high angelic synths are so buried in the mix you can barely hear them. The tactic works: I can now totally hum this chorus when prompted. Apart from that chorus hook though, there's not much left to distinguish the song from the rest of the Westlife canon. The verses are the usual teenage heartthrob promising never to abandon the listener in their hour of need nor do them WRONG. However I should direct readers to the video above - the version made for Westlife's US launch. While the UK version has them sitting glumly around a dress rehearsal (perhaps waiting for the REAL video to be shot?), in America they are working in a car wash with some sexy ladies who do a DANCE ROUTINE. The boys look young, happy and excited. Well, most of them do: This one is Kian.

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CRITERIA

In 1999 I did not like Ballads or Boyzone, let alone a Boyzone-spawned boyband singing a ballad. Hell, I didn't even like the Backstreet Boys back then. I liked songs like this. It's ok - I'm... *sob* fine now. FINE I TELL YOU. Thankfully now we are in the correct century my Mumpop Mojo is stronger than you could possibly imagine. The mere thought of Will Young singing to his pet hamster reduces me to tears (different tears from the last paragraph). But that's not to say a good strong beat isn't important, and I am worried that over the course of this project Westlife will come a cropper on the BPM front. They are not exactly going to compete with my favourite song of 1999, which (at the time) was this. Neither are the Westlife any good at co-ordinated movement, dubstep breakdowns or saying 'fuck' in an amusing way - all standard elements of amazing pop music. Are they buggered before we've even started? Therefore, to try and be as fair to the Wezzas as possible, let's draw up some basic Mumpop criteria: - A hook you can still hum after the song finishes - Harmonies that can make fallopian tubes tie themselves in knots - Mention the title of the song in the lyrics - Lyrics you could sing to yourself even if your toddler is within earshot - First Dance At Wedding Potential I will also be on the lookout for the following in their videos: - Confirm/deny hand gestures (or its close relative 'grabbing air and pulling towards chest') - Getting up off a stool and/or sitting back down again - Wearing a big long coat and/or polo neck jumper (or general M&S For Men catalogue) - Looking down at feet then sharply looking up at the panning camera in a serious manner Hopefully I am not damning Westlife with low expectations here. Let's say that I will be pleasantly surprised if there DOES happen to be a song about aliens or how fun heroin can be*. I will be as open-minded as possible! Now that's sorted, on with the songs! *Hey kids! Heroin isn't fun! Glad we've cleared that up.

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Welcome!

Some say Westlife's songs are shit. Some say Westlife's songs all sound the same. Some say Westlife have sold 44 million records. These facts may or may not be true (though the last one does have a citation on Wikipedia) but for such a successful band, it's certainly the case that Westlife do not get a bite at the critical apple. It's not that music critics give them bad reviews - they do not get reviewed at all! I intend to change this, and find out for myself whether Westlife are a big bag of shit or not. However I meant to start this project three years ago so we shall see how far I get.