9 September 2004
The boy band solo bolter, 2004 edition. Brian McFadden had already co-written two Eurovision-connected Irish number ones, Simon Casey’s You’re A Star runner-up ‘A Better Plan’ and Chris Doran’s You’re A Star winner ‘If My World Stopped Turning’. Both songs felt like continuity Westlife. Now here’s Brian himself with his first solo single.
‘Real To Me’ isn’t the one whose video inadvertently associated corporal punishment with an actual and unimpressed Dublin school: that’s ‘Irish Son’, which we won’t be seeing at number one. Instead, ‘Real To Me’ is Brian’s anguished cri du coeur at another type of intolerable cruelty: being a wealthy and successful pop star. Yes, it’s one of those songs. Among the soul-destroying horrors visited on Brian’s celebrity alter ego in the video (below) are him having to meet young fans backstage and him throwing a vase-smashing tantrum at his retainers elsewhere backstage. Backstage life sure is rough on nice guys like Brian.
Any discomfort of mine is small beer compared to Brian’s celebrity Calvary, of course, but for what it’s worth, the naff title and single cover (above) have me gnawing my knuckles in mortification. Fair’s fair, though: ‘Real To Me’ is better than those unattractive first impressions. Style-wise it’s how you’d imagine mild post-Oasis soft rock might appeal to Westlife fans and Westlife themselves, plus it continues the Westlife theme of domestic bliss. So yes, it has a degree of continuity Westlife about it too. In true 2004 style we get a clean radio edit and a dirty album version: the latter starts with a naughty word—“bullshit”—replaced for the single by “showbiz”. That awkwardly prominent compromise captures a lot about a song bemoaning the big-budget major-label record industry then being released as a big-budget major-label record. In rock music and pop culture, the biggest pose of all is authenticity.
