16 November 2006
Westlife released a version of ‘The Rose’? Of course Westlife released a version of ‘The Rose’. That song has been performed at weddings, folk masses and other religious family occasions since its inception, and Westlife by the mid-’00s were pretty much specialising in singles for first dances and last rites. Their video for it even features a wedding day: bride collegially hugging her bridesmaids; groom steeling his nerves for the lifetime commitment; everyone happy and relaxed. So, a fictional wedding, then.
I actually have time for ‘The Rose’ as a song in itself: it walks the tightrope of high drama and heightened emotion while still being grounded and relatable. Any decent singer, from local folk mass leader up to Bette Midler, knows how to surf its wave of sentiment and plumb its depth of feelings. But Westlife are not even half-decent singers: they approach ‘The Rose’ with the same labrador blankness as they do all songs. Expecting them to nail the flash of anger in the final verse’s “for the lucky” is naive. Their job is to provide wedding DJs with a convenient copy of ‘The Rose’ to stick on the generic playlist. Otherwise, Westlife water ‘The Rose’ down to their bland, callow comfort zone, then gnaw it like greenfly.
On the plus side, ‘The Rose’ is Westlife’s final Irish number one single. They’re still around, of course. As in all things, they followed the standard boyband template: break-up, then cash-in reunion. We can’t discount the risk of them topping the charts again – if their plane goes down, say, or if one of their hits is used to soundtrack a particularly schmaltzy TV moment. I feel we’ve been through so much together.
