4 August 1995
If Take That and East 17 were the Beatles and the Stones of ’90s boyband pop, Boyzone were its Herman’s Hermits. All five of them are co-writers on ‘So Good’ and it’s almost unfair to point out that, on the evidence of this, none of them had a ‘Back For Good’ or ‘Stay Another Day’ up their sleeve. They write and perform this clumsy, feeble track as if it were homework in a foreign language. I’d say even the two lads standing at the back of East 17 were agape at this being the best their would-be Irish rivals could do. It doesn’t even have the personality or distinctiveness to be bad; it’s just a bland nothing.
The business need here was that the lads needed an upbeat one. The song itself doesn’t matter: the requisite faster tempo, with flashcards of senior infants level word-rhyming, and even then Ronan Keating has genuine difficulty singing it. Meanwhile, the video shows the lads trying their best with a basic dance routine—arms like a tree, kick, repeat—with all the co-ordination and mobility of elderly sumo wrestlers. Again, none of this matters. Boyzone fans bought it; job done. If ‘So Good’ can go to number one for you, you’d be a fool to expend any more effort than is necessary.
