Westlife biography

Having already received a warm welcome at two Backstreet Boys gigs in Dublin, the band had started to make something of a name for themselves, but the release of their first single in the spring of 1999, 'Swear It Again', bagged them their first of many UK number ones. The Smash Hits tour of the UK the preceding autumn had had the desired effect, creating sufficient buzz, and also bagging them 'Best Live Act' at the Smash Hits Poll-Winners Party in November of 1998.

Their next single release, 'If I Let you Go' went straight in at the top in august that year, a feat replicated by 'Flying Without Wings' in late autumn. They kept it up by achieving the dubious honour of knocking off Cliff Richard from the top spot, supplanting his 'Millennium Prayer' with their double A-side of 'I have A Dream/Seasons in the Sun'. While many may have questioned the sanity of the pop-record buying public, and the justice in a world which saw the words of the Lord's Prayer sung to the tune of Auld Lang's Syne being replaced by an Abba/Terry Jacks double-header at number one, Westlife, Walsh and Keating must have been laughing all the way to the bank. Their imaginatively-titled album 'Westlife' had reached number 2, containing four number one singles at the time, and also the ensuing number one, 'Fool Again'.

A duet with Mariah Carey ensued, on Phil Collins's 'Against All Odds', and also the single 'My Love' - both went to the top of the charts with what was becoming alarming predictability. Seven number one singles in a row probably had the rest of the pop world wondering why they bothered. However, they were to be cruelly stropped in their tracks by a non-existent figure with a yellow helmet - they were kept off the coveted Christmas number one spot in 2000 by Bob the Builder's 'Can We Fix It?', a spin off from a UK children's show that proved just popular enough to keep the young boys from Sligo out of the number one slot for once.

Eager to cash in on the band's stellar success, a second album had been put together - 'Coast to Coast' - which reached the number one spot (of course) upon its release in November 2000. The following year brought another no. 1 album, in the shape of 'World of Our Own', yielding three more number one singles – the title track, 'Queen of My Heart' and the cover of Billy Joel's 'Uptown Girl'. A world tour followed, and then the Greatest Hits collection - calling it 'Unbreakable, the Greatest Hits Vol. 1' sounded like a mission statement - not only was the band supposedly 'unbreakable' (a response to rumours of a split in the press?), but the greatest hits were not about to dry up, and a second album of hits would be along soon.

As it turned out, this was only half true. While the hits were to keep coming, and still do, the band went from five members to four in the spring of 2004, as Bryan McFadden decided he'd like to spend some more time with his wife, Kerry Katona, formerly of Atomic Kitten. It wasn't all that long before Bryan decided that, upon reflection, he'd rather not spend time with Kerry, their marriage ending in divorce 6 months later. However, he managed to tread the well worn path of former boyband members who'd like to take themselves a bit more seriously, entering the chart at no. 1 with his first solo release 'Real to Me' - and changing the spelling of his name back to the original 'Brian'.

His former band-mates, meanwhile, managed to do what Take That couldn't, by staying together, going on tour, and keeping the hit records coming. An album of Rat-Pack covers, 'Allow us to Be Frank' (see what they've done there?) was released in 2005, and after a short break they came back with another number one, a cover of the middle-of-the-road favourite 'You Raise Me Up' - it was totally unsurprising that this song was chosen, as it featured so heavily in that year's series of the reality fame show, 'X Factor', on which Louis Walsh is a judge. If the public love singing the song, it would have been concluded, they must want to buy Westlife's cover of it. That's the kind of reasoning that makes a Svengali.

Mark Feehily was publicly outed as being gay by the Sun newspaper in 2005, yet even this felt somewhat like old ground – not least because Stephen Gateley of Boyzone had undergone the same treatment, in the same newspaper, 6 years previously. Arguably Gately's experience had helped somewhat to remove the stigma for Feehily, and other members of groups marketed towards housewives and screaming teens, none of whom seem to have been deterred from buying the band's output.

Most recently, they have released 'The Love Album', filled with the requisite amount of covers sung in their own syrupy-soul style, and backed up with the ongoing 'Love Tour'. That the first single release was a Bette Midler number, 'The Rose', would have shocked no-one, nor would the inclusion of Jim Steinman's 80s classic, 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'. Less shocking still was the news that 'The Rose' was their 14th number one. Most book-makers must have stopped taking bets long ago on the next Westlife release reaching the top – and with the stated aim of 20 number one singles, the boys from Sligo don't seem to be thinking about going away quite yet. As their official website blurb states, 'It's a straightforward formula that's been winning hearts and ears since the dawn of popular music! But no one's done it with so much success as Westlife - 34 million album sales are testament to that!' ' and, true enough, the sales figures don't lie.