Heat magazine 'Where We Are' Review
01 Dec 2009
WESTLIFE
Where We Are (SONY music) ****
In a nutshell: They've promised to ditch the stools and promised to tone down the ballads, but is a ballad-free Westlife album and good?
What's it like? Well, it's not ballad-free. And thank goodness, because these lads can deliver some top smoochy songs. Highlights include the title track and Talk Me Down.
Verdict: The lads have a talent - so why change a winning formula? Welcome back, boys.
Karen Edwards
Credit/Source: Heat / Thanks Jane for typing it up smile
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new! magazine 'Where We Are' review
01 Dec 2009
Westlife - Where We Are ****
What you need to know… Got a Westlife-shaped hole in your life? They’re back to fill it!
First impressions… Newsflash, everyone! Westlife have returned, and they’ve got a brand new sound � or, as Shane Filan likes to call it, “a fresh vibe”. Wait, where are you going? Come back! Don’t worry, the ’Life haven’t gone all heavy metal or electro grime on us. They haven’t started writing songs about the political situation in North Korea or the plight of the Yanomami people of the Amazon rainforest. Nope. What they have done is put together an album of 13 tunes that are slightly rockier than usual.
Take That’s recent albums are definitely an influence on anthemic songs like What About Now, the ace The Difference and Reach Out. But fans of their soppier side needn’t feel left out � string-drenched ballads Leaving and No More Heroes are vintage Westlife. If this is what it sounds like when they cut loose, we like it!
You’ll like this if you like… Take That, Boyzone, Backstreet Boys.
Our favourite track… The Difference.
Did you know? Westlife have launched their very own perfume, just in time for Christmas. It’s called X.
new! verdict… Their best yet.
Credit/Source:
www.new-magazine.co.uk
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'Where We Are' No.2 In The Midweeks
01 Dec 2009
Westlife's amazing new album 'Where We Are' is No.2 on Tuesday's midweek sales for the UK albums chart behind Susan Boyle's album. Make sure you will all get your copies! wink
1. Susan Boyle - 81.000
2. Westlife - almost 50.000 (49.6)
3. Take That - more than 40.000
4. JLS
5. Black Eyed Peas
Susan Boyle looks set to spend a second week at number one on the albums chart, after selling another 81,000 copies of her debut album I Dreamed A Dream (Syco) yesterday.
The sales dwarf those of her nearest competitors, both of which are new releases: Westlife’s new album Where We Are (S) is currently Boyle’s closest rival, with sales of almost 50,000 yesterday, while Take That’s The Greatest Day - The Circus Live (Polydor) sold more than 40,000.
There are also set to be new entries in or around the albums top twenty from Coldstream Guards Band, with Heroes (Decca); Andrea Bocelli, with My Christmas (Decca / Sugar), and Rhydian, with O Fortuna (Syco).
The Pope, however, fares less well: Music From The Vatican’s Alma Mater (which features the voice of Pope Benedict and is released by Geffen) looks set to miss out on a top forty debut, as do Seal’s Hits (Warner Bros) and Hayley Westenra’s Winter Magic (Decca).
Credit/Source:
www.musicweek.com
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Westlife talk us through their new album Where We Are track-by-track
30 Nov 2009
Exclusive By Jody Thompson, Mirror.co.uk
Westlife have been talking to us exclusively about their eagerly-awaited album Where We Are - and revealing what they did on their year off, before they got back into the studio to record the new record.
The band's Nicky Byrne explained: "It's great to be back. We talked about a year off for a long time. We did things we all wanted to do - we travelled, we spent time at home.
"We also needed to refresh our heads, we needed to get away from each other. We needed to miss it again."
Mark Feehilly that they had also taken time to develop their sound.
He explained: "We wanted to make the production better, to have the vocals as good as we knew they could be, we wanted a variety of sound, not have every song sound the same...luckily, we pulled it off. We're really proud.
"We didn't want to change who we are, just do it better than we'd been doing it."
They also revealed that their manager, X Factor judge Louis Walsh, and fellow judge and label boss Simon Cowell were "really excited" about the album - and that they'd roped in former All Saints star Shaznay Lewis to co-write one of the tracks on the new record.
Where We Are, featuring hit single What About Now, which the band played on the X Factor, is in the shops now.
Credit/Source: mirror.co.uk
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Popjustice Song Of The Day: 'Where We Are'
30 Nov 2009
Song Of The Day: 'Where We Are'
By Westlife
As Christmas approaches ballads seem a rather good idea and if you're looking for a ballad the best bet is to reach for the latest Westlife album. Funny enough (warning: not funny in the slightest) Westlife have a new album out this week and the title track is also one of the best - it has a really good "ah-ah-ah" bit in it and we've played it quite a lot.
Credit/Source:
www.popjustice.com
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Kian Interview on RealMusic
30 Nov 2009
Having sold a squillion albums and racked up oodles of No.1s in their 11 years of existence, Westlife are back with new album Where We Are and new single What About Now. We caught up with the Life’s Kian Egan to talk about their new sound, Stephen Gately’s death, his new foray into pop management and how no matter how hard he tries, he’ll probably never get a lead vocal in Westlife…
You’ve had a year off from Westlife - what have you been up to?
“Myself and Louis Walsh have put a girlband together who’ll have an album coming out next year which my wife is in. Personally my dad died but I also got married too, so it’s been a rollercoaster year and hasn’t really felt like a year off…”
Your new single is a cover of Daughtry’s What About Now - why did you choose that?
“As a band we wanted to shake things up musically and then Simon Cowell brought us the Daughtry track and said we should find something original that sounded like that. But we didn’t find anything as powerful and as it had never been released in the UK, we didn’t technically see it as a cover.”
You’ve worked with Simon for a long time now - is he as hard to please as he seems?
“He certainly has a very strong taste of what he likes and what he doesn’t, but with this album I feel like he’s opened the doors wider with the style of music he wants for Westlife. We just did a photoshoot for the new album and he came along and rejected it, so he knows what he wants and for us this time around it’s something different.”
You’ve said that this album is a new sound for Westlife, but you’ve always done uptempo songs as well as ballads - so is it really a new direction?
“The sound is fresher and more modern but it’s still essentially Westlife. In the past our ballads have been very 80s-esque - Lionel Richie-style songs - but this album is far more current. We’re now competing with acts like Leona Lewis and Jordin Sparks, working with writers and producers they’ve worked with and I think we’ve created a new sound in terms of male vocal boybands.”
Are you going to get a lead vocal on this album?
“No. We did try stuff with myself and Nicky and we’re all over the backing vocals, but when you’re in a band with voices like Shane and Mark it’s difficult. When I hear my vocals compared with theirs they’re not as strong, so I have to take a step back and think what’s best for the band.”
You’re not going down the Take That route then of giving everyone a go?
“No - we didn’t want to put a crappy song on this album just to let me sing on it!”
You were on the X Factor recently - what do you think of the acts this year?
“I don’t think there’s a Leona Lewis this year. Everyone’s talking about John and Edward so the show’s reached new heights but for different reasons.”
As Westlife were close to Boyzone, has Stephen Gately’s death had an impact on the band?
“It’s had a big effect on anyone who knew Stephen - he was a lovely guy who didn’t deserve to go so soon. And of course, we understood what Boyzone were saying at the funeral when they spoke about the unity of five guys on the road - it hit us hard. But if you’re talking effect, it’s made us want to really go for it as a band and for me personally it’s made me assess what’s important to me and to try not to be pissed off for no reason…”
So after Westlife, will you be going into pop management?
“I’m already in it - I’m in the meetings with the record companies right now and I’m loving it. It’s an amazing opportunity for my wife too - she was in a girl band before I met her and she’s an amazing singer.”
You can be the new Posh and Becks…
“Oh god no!”
Perhaps a Christmas single?
“No!”
Westlife’s new album Where We Are is out today.
Credit/Source: real.com
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Mark’s new blog
30 Nov 2009
A message from Mark:
Quote:
Hi guys,
Today is a MASSIVE day for us four boys...all the waiting, singing, preparing, promotion, commotion, revolve around one thing, our NEW ALBUM, WHERE WE ARE! The fact that it’s OUT NOW (AS IN TODAY!!!) is highly exciting! The single is one thing but the fact that the entire collection of 12 brand new ORIGINAL songs are out there being heard all at once is huuuge for us! Go get the album, give it a listen, who knows ya might even like it! Seriously though, thanks to anyone who’s got it or is going to get it, we appreciate your support more than ever!
Lots of love,
See you soon,
Mark xx
|
Credit/Source:
www.westlife.com
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Westlife: Us against the world
30 Nov 2009
It has been a year of sorrow and loss for Westlife. Or, as Nicky Byrne puts it, 'It has been a **** year and I can't wait to see the back of it.' In their only in-depth interview this year, the four members of the band tell Barry Egan how tragedy has made brothers of them.
May, 2003: I get to spend two ostensibly fun days and nights in London in the company of Westlife. At 3am one night, Louis Walsh and I are standing in the courtyard of the Conrad Hotel overlooking Chelsea Harbour when one Robbie Williams comes over and tries to wind up the Westlife manager. The ex-Take That singer repeatedly says to Louis: "What did you mean, man? I respect you . . ." A few months before, Louis, being Louis, had dubbed Robbie "a bad karaoke singer" in Heat magazine.
Standing to our immediate left, Kian Egan is waiting by his brand-new BMW. Then Louis, myself and Kian make our excuses and leave Mr Williams to argue with himself.
Five hours earlier, Kian and his bandmates had been mobbed by thousands of teenage girls as they attempted to leave Wembley Arena. I wonder whether a certain insufferable glamour model was in the audience, not least because that day's newspaper featured the particularly tender headline: "Jordan -- I want to f**k Kian".
The day before, the band are in their dressing room before the show. Outside, in the backstage area, Georgina Ahern looks utterly gorgeous in a demure, summery dress, wandering around happily as her fiance Nicky prepares to go on in front of 15,000 fans. When Westlife -- Kian and Mark and Shane and Nicky and a fella by the name of Bryan McFadden -- take the stage, each song is greeted with a veritable volcanic eruption of pubescent squeals: the choruses of Tonight and then Flying Without Wings building over soulful, multilayered, five-part harmonies are not your average boy band fare.
"Westlife are a great, great vocal group," Louis tells me during the show. "They appeal to everybody. It's not just to kids. Mammies and daddies and twenty-somethings love them. That's why they sell so many records."
"The one thing that Westlife have and that Boyzone and Take That didn't have -- it's not about one person," Bryan tells me after the show. "With Take That, Gary was the singer and Robbie was the joker. In Boyzone, it was Ronan and the other four. In our band, we are all singers."
I meet Nicky and Georgina the following morning over breakfast. I ask Nicky how they met. "We met in first year when we were like 12 or 13," Nicky says fondly, "but we didn't really talk to each other then. We were a little bit shy. She was more shy than me. We started going out when we were 16."
During the 48 hours I spend with the band, they all appear happy young people untouched by life's pain and suffering, especially Nicky Byrne who, like a young Larry Mullen in his jeans and jacket, walks around like a personification of love's young dream with Georgina.
November, 2009: Nicky Byrne's face carries the permanent, troubled aura of someone who only two weeks ago lost his father. He is standing in the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin's Ballsbridge. He points to the room opposite and says that his father, Nikki, often came here for Westlife album launches and after-show parties. It is still too soon to put any kind of proper perspective on losing his father but Nicky, who was always mature, says he is still in shock. And shock is probably an understatement. "I still don't believe it. Actually, it's not that I don't believe it's real, I can't believe it's real. I can't," Nicky says.
"I hate to sound like I'm sorrowful," he adds, needlessly. "People have dealt with grief before me and people will deal with it tomorrow and the next day. But he was the youngest 60 years. He was so full of life. He had everything going for him. He was fit and healthy. He loved his job. He loved his motorcycle. He loved his gigs at the weekends. He sang. He played guitar and he could play a bit of keyboards but his main thing was vocals."
You obviously came to music through your father?
"I spent all my childhood watching my dad sing," he answers, immediately. "He went out gigging seven nights a week. Every night after dinner, he would get his clothes on and go out singing. You would see him going out during the summer in pale blue trousers and flowery shirts. He was a cabaret star."
Nikki's favourite song, the song he always did without fail, was Honey (I Miss You), made famous by Bobby Goldsboro. At the funeral in St Laurence O'Toole Church in Baldoyle in early November, Nicky asked his mother, Yvonne: "Do you want me to sing Honey?"
She said: "No way -- I couldn't hear that."
The song Nicky did sing with Westlife at the funeral was Please Stay by The Cryin' Shames.
"It was a song that my dad always wanted Westlife to do," he recalls. "He always thought the song would suit Westlife, and me in particular. It was one of those songs that I never did. And I did it at the funeral. I said in my eulogy, 'It is probably a bit late, Dad, but I'm doing it now for you.'"
His father singing was Nicky's earliest childhood memory. He can remember Nikki singing at the Racecourse Inn in Baldoyle, or at the Grand Hotel in Malahide throughout his childhood.
"There are hundreds of people, thousands probably, walking around this city whose weddings my dad sung at. He was such a likable man. He always had a smile," says Nicky, almost smiling himself.
I ask Nicky what his oul' fella was like.
"Oh, he had bundles of energy," he smiles, adding that the Sunday before his father died he was playing football with Nicky's godson, Zack, in the garden. "I never thought we'd only have him until he was 60. I thought we'd have him until he was at least 75 or 80. But it wasn't to be."
There is a long pause. Then Nicky says: "My dad looked amazing in the coffin. He didn't look dead. He looked asleep. I have seen so many people over the years in coffins that had illness and they deteriorated and they looked terrible. He looked like he was asleep. I have a picture of him on my phone. I can't believe he is not just awake. But all those things help.
"You know, I think talking about him kind of helps it," he adds, leaving the sentence hanging there.
One of toughest parts of losing his father so suddenly was that Nicky never got a chance to say goodbye. "I was chatting to him on Saturday night, Halloween night, and he died Tuesday morning," he says. "He was out in the house on the Saturday night. We had a fancy dress for the kids and a few of the friends' kids and my dad was over and I was chatting to him. He seemed in good health and in good form."
And then he says: "I had a bad day on Sunday. And my mam had a bad day on Sunday. It is just so strange. I mean, where do you even start to pick up the pieces? His birthday is coming up on December 14 and Christmas after that. Last month, we were talking about Christmas. He was looking forward to his Christmas gigs at the Regency Hotel on the Airport Road. It is all such a punch in the face. It is like a steam train. Every morning, I get up, I feel sick."
Death of a loved one, I say, makes you realise what forever means: you will never see that person ever again in this world.
"I know," Nicky says. "The finality of it all kills me. The fact that I can never see him; the fact that I can never talk or have a laugh with him or anything like that. I suppose when you realise that, that's a bad day. Other days, you still think you have all the memories and a million photographs of him. Things like that, I suppose, help. A part of you dies with them and obviously you learn to cope and you do your best, especially when you're married and you have kids. But a part of me died with him."
His and Georgina's twins, Rocco and Jay, have been told that their grandad has gone to God. They call Nikki 'Grandad Nucan'. Ten years ago, Nicky explains, his father came in from a night out with his wife, and was plastered. When Nicky started to rib his father for being drunk, he said, "I'm not drunk at all. I could drive from all the way to Nucan and back."
"He meant to say Lucan," Nicky explains. "From that day on, his nickname was Nucan. The boys called him that. I told them that Grandad Nucan is in heaven and he is a star. So at every night at nighttime they point up at the stars to Grandad Nucan."
In July of this year, another member of Westlife, Kian Egan, had his father, Kevin, die after a long battle with cancer. The new Westlife album Where We Are is dedicated to both Nicky and Kian's late fathers.
It was a very difficult time, Kian says. He and his bride, Jodi Albert, had planned to get married in Barbados in May. But his dad, he recalls, got progressively very ill, fast. "And by Christmas of last year we knew he wouldn't be here by this time next year," Kian says. "We had to try and make a final decision on whether to move the wedding or not; you know, was he going to be able to come to the wedding, etc. So that was a whole rigmarole in itself.
"He wanted us to go ahead with the wedding. So we did. Then we came and we were on cloud nine for a week. But then we were kicked off it with my dad on his deathbed. He was dead on July 19.
"It was a very strange year," Kian says. "But that was meant to be for me."
Some people say that a man truly stops being a boy and only really becomes a man when his father dies, I say.
"My dad was a teacher in his role to me as a father," Kian says. "He would teach you how to do something. That was the type of man he was. He was a quiet man but he read books on how to fix an engine."
Kian's mother said to him recently: "Death comes in waves."
"There has been so many deaths around us this year," Kian adds. "So I kind of hope that our wave is over and that is it."
Boyzone singer Stephen Gately's sudden death on October 10 was another part of the dark wave that hit Ireland this year, lest we forget.
"People tend to forget about how powerless everyone is against the reality of the inevitable," says Mark Feehily. "It definitely does bring it right to the front of your mind. Stephen was so young. Kian's dad's death was prolonged. Nicky's dad's death was so sudden. It instilled in me, in a way, that whole thing of 'Get out there and do it before it is too late. Don't leave things unsaid.'
"Over the past year I have taken time to be able to hear myself think by taking some time away from Westlife. I took time to decide what I liked about life and what I didn't like about life. And it is quite difficult to do that in the middle of the madness. I am following my gut and believing in myself more. I stand up for what I believe. Automatically I started being happier. I wrote a song on this new Westlife album. It's called Reach Out. I've been putting my songwriting off with Westlife." His dreams, growing up in Sligo and watching Top Of The Pops, were, he says, always to sing and write songs.
So, Jedward -- pop heroes or the end of civilisation as we know it?
"I have grown to like them an awful lot," says Mark. "Some people hate them. I look at them as two 18-year-old lads from Dublin over in London and they have become the two most famous people in the country overnight. I look at them and hope they are OK and hope they can cope with all the madness. I am so close to it because I can understand to a certain extent what they are going through."
How did you deal with being judged?
"I didn't deal well with it, because I don't think I have ever been designed to be, like, a pop star. I hated it all. I couldn't believe there were people who would just casually say to you, 'You need to lose weight', or, 'You look terrible', or, when you were singing your heart out, 'That was ****ing ****'. I was brought up by a lovely family with two lovely grannies, Bridget and May. So I was brought up to be nice to people."
2009 for Westlife's Shane Filan was, he says, both joyful and horrific. He started the year with him and his wife Gillian having their first son, Patrick -- someone for four-year-old Nicole to play with. "So that was great to be at home with the new baby," Shane says. "It was a big family year for me; to stay at home a lot, and doing normal stuff like having me pints in the normal pub with my father-in-law. But then, as the year went on, Kian's dad got sick and he was dealing with that the whole time. It was hard to see that. Then he died and then Stephen died and then Nicky's dad. There was so much sorrow and sadness in the year for us."
Westlife are like a band of brothers, I say.
"That's really true," he says. "We always were close but I think now we are closer than ever. We see each other like brothers. We feel like giving each other a hug more often."
So, you will be watching Nicky at this very difficult time for him?
"Oh yeah," he says instantly. "We've got to take care of him. Me and Mark, we still have our dads, but our job now is to make sure Kian and Nicky are OK in their personal lives and try to make things easier on them whatever way we can; because there are going to be really hard days for them, I'm sure. We just got to look after each other now because, as a band, without each other we don't have a band.
"It has been such a strange, strange year," he adds.
"The whole year was very strange," concurs Nicky. "Imagine: two months before my dad, Kian's dad passed away from his illness; he had been sick for a while and he didn't make Kian's wedding in Barbados. And then there was Stephen at 33. That was impossible to comprehend.
"I'll tell you what," Nicky adds, "it has been a **** year and I can't wait to see the ****ing back of it, to tell you the truth."
It must have taught you a hard lesson of how random and cruel life can be.
"Absolutely. When Stephen died, I remember going to the funeral and we had to fly to Iceland the next day to shoot a video. On the plane it was just so morbid, the four of us. It only really sunk in then.
"I noticed this with my own dad's death. At the funeral, as sad as it is, you are on a bit of a high because everybody is around you and you are doing so many things. But even a day or two afterwards . . . everyone is gone, and you are alone with just your close family. I have been going to the graveyard. It's just, he was my best friend. I bought him a motorbike for his 60th last December. I bought him a brand new Merc in 2002. It is just so hard to even consider at the minute. I don't know where to start. I really don't."
Westlife's new album, 'Where We Are', is out now
- Barry Egan
Credit/Source:
www.independent.ie
