9 November 2002
Didn’t we use to have more of these things? This is Westlife’s first Irish number one in a year and their only Irish chart-topper of 2002. Maybe their stock-in-trade of wedding anniversary anthems wasn’t the best mood music for Saipan-riven Ireland.
Anyway, ‘Unbreakable’ is more of Westlife’s usual boil-in-the-bag overwrought boyband balladry. The crass, gaudy video (below) pitches it more specifically as a slo-mo, tear-squeezing death ballad, which just comes across as Westlife PLC calculatedly expanding their product range from weddings and anniversaries to funerals. If there’s any positive to eke from this, at least it keeps Mark’s pseudo-soul wailing, normally the worst thing about any Westlife slowie, to a bit part. But don’t worry: funereal ballad or not, we still get the climactic Westlife key change!
The lesson we can learn from ‘Unbreakable’ is: someday you’ll be gone, perhaps before your time, so go home to your beloved right now and tell them you’ve made them a decent playlist. You’d sooner be forgotten than remembered with Westlife.
