27 October 2005
A lot has happened to team Westlife since we last saw them at number one with ‘Mandy’ at the back end of 2003. For one thing, they’re now down to four. Also, those two years without an Irish number one tell a story – not that Westlife-ism was on the wane, but that others were applying its rom-dom schmaltz and bootcut blandness to greater success: TV talent show lads like Will Young; dreary balladeers like James Blunt and Daniel Powter; even that errant fifth member, Brian McFadden, now notching up solo Irish chart-toppers with post-Oasis soft rock for Westlife fans. Westlife-ism in 2005 was living high on the hog, baby!
As for Westlife themselves, they chanced a Sinatra-style Rat Pack swingin’ oldies record they actually called Allow Us To Be Frank. It got to number two in the Irish album charts, though that still made it the first Westlife album not to go to number one in Ireland. As for singles, no tracks from it appear in the Irish top 50: I’ll be polite and assume they weren’t released as physical singles here. So, enough of the vanity project; back down the schmaltz mines, then.
I don’t like knocking a song I suspect is inspirational or comforting to someone somewhere, and ‘You Raise Me Up’ is certainly custom-built for that purpose. Still, though, it’s dreadful: a Lidl ‘Danny Boy’ to monetise for weddings, funerals and Irish gift shops, garnished with droppings from ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’. The song had been turning dollars and stomachs around the US as a Josh Groban variant for a year or so before team Westlife cottoned on to its money-making potential in its spiritual homeland. Seasoned Westlife-watchers that we now all are, we know to fear the worst when they reach for the B&W slo-mo video. Sure enough, we get saccharine imagery of small children being performatively cared for by nearby adults, elderly couples pretending they’ve not actually been trapped for sixty festering years in a loveless silent marriage, would-be young lovebirds on the Tinder date from hell, and the lads doing their best meaningful off-yonder glances. Get in there!
The thing is, I think the members of Westlife sincerely love this style of music. I can respect that, to a point; I liked music once too. So, who’s more cynical here, me or Westlife’s handlers? Oh, they are. Theirs, as evinced by snaffling ‘You Raise Me Up’ as low-overhead Westlife tat for sure-fire chart-topping, family-event-soundtracking, Irish-American-wooing profitability, is a level of cold-blooded cynicism I aspire to. I’m too nice, that’s my problem.
