The fifth and final number one from Westlife’s debut, “Fool Again” is an unhappy ending on every level. For once, the lads don’t realise their mistake in time to turn things round and win back their beloved. In fact – gasp – she’s found someone else, leading to a coda in which the band drop the creamy close harmonies and indulge in unrepentant yowling and breast-beating. It’s an undignified sound, but it’s the only musical distinction in “Fool Again”: otherwise we’re in well-ironed, not actively unpleasant Cheiron ballad territory. The guys are good enough anaesthetists by now that nothing grates, and perhaps if you shifted enough of the blanketing away you’d find a pea of interest in the song. But probably not.
Still though, five number ones off one album: that’s something. Nothing good, but something. For all that a close look at Westlife’s success reveals how much of their record-breaking was down to canny singles placement – and beyond that simply luck – by now they appeared, in public, unstoppable. A band with a colossal fanbase, ready to sweep any challengers away. It would make the ride easier from this point.
Westlife weren’t the only group to pump out singles from their albums – and while five releases isn’t exactly modest, it wasn’t absurd by CD era standards. REM’s much-loved Automatic For The People went one further, and five would have been at the low end of a Michael Jackson album campaign. Of course it’s the sustained success that’s remarkable – and that it was sustained by such ferocious focus on a target market. But you could – as “Go Let It Out” made clear – have said the same as Oasis. Westlife weren’t even loathesome: small girls and their mums are never well-respected by vocal fans of other music, so the group caught hate to a degree their competent music didn’t honestly deserve. It was awfully boring – “Fool Again” no exception – but it rarely imposed itself longer than a week.
Still, a wider unease lay behind the groans at Westlife’s success – a sense that Westlife and Oasis and assorted trance hits might be part of the same problem: a pop culture whose connective tissue had atrophied, islands of fans with nothing useful to say to one another. Was that new? Perhaps not, but the giddy pace of the charts made it more acute. I don’t totally agree with that gloomy diagnosis: behind the scenes, the turnover of number ones in 2000 is mostly a function of labels gaming the chart system. But records like “Fool Again” remind me that sometimes the chart was also just what it looked like, an unmixed salad of records that treat fans as bank machines and either can’t keep a grip on a wider audience or never cared to in the first place.
Score: 3
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We haven’t even got off the first album yet?
Mah na ma nah
dum dum de tum tum…
Just seen the “2000 remix” on the sleeve – oh come on. Even they’re ashamed of it.
I have a vague sensation that mixed slightly differently this could be a modern-day X Factor winner’s single. Plus ça change. [3zzzzzzzz]
Umm…nope, I got nothing. Hey, is that video set in Mexico City? (1)
I’ve somehow ended up with the original and the “2000 remix” in my itunes. Oh good!
The non-remix is notably different, it has none of that mild percolating synth stuff, or the echo on the vocal, or the Irish pipes. It also includes a dramatic slow down around 2.55 for “I guess… it’s… ohhh… ve-er-err”… big pause… EastEnders drums… key change into final chorus. In fact, it’s much less creamy, punchier, and quite enjoyable in a 1975 Osmonds sort of way. Really not bad at all. I’d stretch to a 5. (For detractors, the album version is also 30 seconds shorter).
The “problem” with these Westlife singles, which I don’t have with most of the one-off trance hits or Oasis long-tail number ones (at least not so far) is that I don’t remember them, not at all, and I’m guessing I’m not alone in blanking on them. I must have heard them a fair bit, especially as I was a Radio 2 Breakfast Show listener at this point. But I don’t even remember the title of Fool Again, let alone the song. It isn’t that they sound too similar (again, at least not yet!). Is it the lack of any jarring qualities? No surprise features? So, effectively, no lasting hook? I dunno. Fool Again sounds melodic and catchy enough fifteen years on, so I’m at a bit of a loss.
I wonder if I’ve reviewed the wrong one!
WIPE PAGE, RESTART!
see if anyone notices.
was Westlife’s success due purely to a hardcore of fans primed to buy the single at a key time? The UK Charts and Number Ones of previous decades had reflected the tastes of a broad range of consumers from teens, through 20 somethings and beyond to grandparents buying singles for their grandkids (and vice versa). That broad audience seems to have gone elsewhere in the late 90s (and/or the differences to have blurred). Westlife’s success may in part be due to wooing some of that audience back. Admittedly though perhaps by the fifth single (presumably with exclusive b-sides or whatever) it may have mostly been the hardcore fans buying this.
Just as I still hold a grudge against Englebert Humperdinck and Rod Stewart for (respectively) keeping Strawberry Fields and God Save the Queen off the top spot I imagine there are those who rail against Westlife for preventing their indieband of choice from their deserved success. For someone who wasn’t invested in the charts at this time I couldn’t care less and find this song (and the predecessors) perfectly pleasant if pretty forgettable. For someone brought up on the thin gruel of the Brotherhood of Man, etc. this seems a little better presented if no more nutritious.
Spanish colonial architecture, skyscrapers in the background, North American-style license plates – I guessed Mexico City even before seeing the big ol’ flag in the center of the plaza. Interesting choice of filming location.
Oh wait, there’s a song here? 3/10, I guess.
Re 7: Well, the pipes on the single intro are the giveaway! I don’t think your review would have ended up that different, to be honest. One sounds like a demo of the other; all your points are valid for both versions.
(an hour after hearing it three times in a row, I’ve forgotten how it goes)
Re 9: The “primed” and “hardcore” fans seemed to be relatively few in number according to statisticians on previous Westlife Popular entries – it seems, at this point, they were extremely fortunate to have scored five out of five number ones. Someone on the Never Be The Same Again thread also suggested that Mel and Left Eye were ahead in the midweeks at one point, within an ace of cutting short Westlife’s run of consecutive number ones.
The record we should be talking about is the new entry at number three, Destiny’s Child’s 10 out of 10 Say My Name. Also new to the Top 10 at no.6, See Ya by Atomic Kitten.
I think they did this in TFI Friday. I could be wrong. But I’m pretty sure they did.
Just think about that for a moment.
Easily the weakest of the singles from album 1, it’s lightness manages to offend in its sheer nothingness.
Can we move on please?
The expectation was indeed that Melanie C and Left Eye would just nudge it (in an earlier Westlife discussion somebody noted an instance when a rival record was held back by distribution problem and this may well have been it). Had the previous number one held on it would have reported as a sensation; Westlife kept off number one for the first time.
Only it wouldn’t have been. Westlife would have been undone by their clever (or lucky) marketing strategy where their string of relatively modest selling chart toppers made them look bigger than they were. Fool Again was a stop gap single in lieiu of new product and missing the top or indeed the top three wouldn’t have been a disgrace. However for better or worse they prevailed, they made it five number ones from five with one more to go before they equalled the Spice Girls record of six. Mel C must have been slightly irritated about that under the circumstances – bunnying but we’ll see another chart clash between her and Westlife later in the year which culminated in an album head to head. Adding to the fun Mel C, buoyed by the brief peak of her solo career, chose to be very vocal about Westlife’s shortcomings.
I do recall there being something very iffy about this sneaking the number 1 spot, with it being behind Mel B in all the midweek updates, if I recall correctly. Then inexplicably nabbing top spot at the death. Especially as it plummeted to 8 the following week. Almost as if there were mysterious forces at work behind the scenes to ensure it kept their number 1 streak going?!
Perhaps the aforementioned appearance on TFI Friday offers an explanation if true. Anyone know what the winning margin was in the end?
“A useless bunch of talentless tossers” and “hyped up shit” – so said Mel.
In context it did drop to eight the following week but Mel C dropped to seven and we’ll come to the record breaking six new entries shortly.
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee – I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee – that says, fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again. ”
1.
I prefer cranachan – the oatmeal and the whiskey play off the fruit and cream delightfully – though I’ve not had one to surpass my dear departed Granny’s recipe. Remove the textural and alcoholic highlights though and I too would be left to say “oh no, not Fool Again”.
#17 I should have gone with the one liner “Meet the new Westlife. Same as the old Westlife.” review really.
#15 which I suspect had the effect of swinging people over to Westlife’s side, not least because if anybody had said something similar about the Spices they’d have been pulled up for sexism. I personally disliked Mel C intensely (still do tbh) and this has always prejudiced me against her music. She could have criticised Westlife’s anodyne music – she would hardly have been the only one – without resorting to personal comments.
That said, I remember suggestions at the time that Westlife could be a bit obnoxious, probably because despite the po faced balladry they were five young lads enjoying the high life so maybe they gave Mel C a reason to dislike them. As an aside I remember reading a report that Louis Walsh had to tell Westlife off about their backstage antics and succeeded in reducing them to tears.
“the group caught hate to a degree their competent music didn’t honestly deserve” – Can’t agree with this. This isn’t a local business awards, it’s pop music: competence surely isn’t a virtue in and of itself if it isn’t in service to something of interest. Being boring is the greatest, perhaps the only crime pop music can commit. And ‘only hung around for a week or so’ doesn’t wash when it was every other week!
To be fair to Westlife, they were no more boring than much of what Oasis and The Manics were producing around this time, which aggrieved me far more: I disliked Westlife like I disliked trudging through light rain, hearing Tolerate or D’you Know What I Mean for the first time was like biting into a doughnut and finding a turd inside (which I think is unfair on both counts now but that’s how it felt at the time)
Westlife autocorrects to Westhide. WTF is Westhide?
#21 That’s what I mean, really. They were a slightly better version of Boyzone, who turned up at a time when a lot of British music was stuck in a gruesome rut – the arse-end of Dadrock, and the even drabber follow-ups to Dadrock. All I mean is that they were treated as something uniquely awful, straight 1s not straight 3s: hindsight suggests this is a little unfair. Boredom is a fair charge: but to say pop’s only crime is boredom is to shrug off the historic massive success of hymnal slowies among the UK pop audience. Pop is quite happy to be boring and pious when it suits.
I’m guessing Tommy means Westlife were “boring” as in predictability and stasis, not just the pace of their singles. Their lengthy reign, with no apparent progression from one record to the next, seemed to defy pop logic. I’ve been surprised, with a decade and a half’s distance, that they don’t make me clench my fists. I might feel differently further down the track.
It’s a matter of opinion of course but I’ve always considered Boyzone to be superior to Westlife. Boyzone’s output probably hasn’t aged quite as well but the best (okay and worst) thing about them were the vocal stylings of Keating and Gately – they may have been an acquired taste to say the least but at least it was distinctive. Also Boyzone were prepared to take the occasional gamble even if it normally went horribly wrong.
My frustration with Westlife at the time was that they had a lot of collective vocal ability and could have done something quite stunning with the right song; they get a bit better than the verse chorus verse chorus of the first album. Boyzone, by contrast, did at least manage to make a little go a long way.
Tom, I’m quite impressed by how fluidly you managed to spin “I have literally nothing to say about this record” into four paragraphs.
I have nothing else to say about this.
2.
#22 Hymnal slowies are only boring if they don’t move you emotionally or please you sonically (lush bed of harmonies etc).
#23: A bit of both really, I find their songs boring as stand alone singles. Contemplated as a complete body of work it’s almost unimaginable. I don’t imagine I’m alone in thinking that.
I don’t find stasis stultifying in and of itself. I laughed out loud when I heard AC/DC’s last single. Let’s say it was not dissimilar to Back in Black: thoroughly enjoyable (if you like AC/DC) but I can’t see why anyone who owns Back in Black would buy it.
Clearly though, millions of people didn’t think Westlife were at all boring which leads us back to another of your points, do the Westlife fans and haters have anything to say to each other? If we do, I can’t think of it and I find that enormously depressing.
PS: Westlife as better Boyzone: I think I’d rather hear BZ’s cover of Love Me For A Reason than anything by Westlife.
21: Westhide is a village and civil parish in Herefordshire, England, 9 km north east of Hereford. The parish had a population of 79 in the 2001 UK Census and is grouped with Preston Wynne and Withington to form Withington Group Parish Council for administrative purposes.
The parish church is dedicated to St Bartholomew and has a large but short 12th-century tower. In the churchyard are the remains of a medieval preaching cross now topped by an 18th-century sundial.
The course of the Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal runs just north of the village.
More information is to be found on the Group Parish’s website http://www.withingtongroupparishes.co.uk
Here’s my 2p on Fool Again, which is mostly me ripping into the video. Out of all the Loife songs I’ve covered so far I think it’s actually my favourite. They sound amused and unbothered at having been ‘fooled’ yet again, shrugging it off as if they’d waited ages for a bus then three came along at once.
“I thought it would never end. What did I know?”
Really this is a load of syruppy self-pitying old toss, to use the technical term. It’s not even sufficiently substantial to be actively dislikable, or particularly identifiable at all. 3
(My take on BZ vs WL in brief: WL more polished, and probably more proficient. but less versatile. BZ more adventurous, and thus, at their best, rather more interesting)
The Boyzone/Westlife comparison can only end in insanity. Samantha Mumba’s launch must have been in the works by the time this hit number 1 and she was by far the best Walsh-managed act of the period.
The last few days, I’ve been trying to pin down my dislike of Westlife. Pop prejudices are like any other prejudice; born out of ignorance, indifference and powerful propaganda (in the case of propaganda, read: rockism). I think all of these play their part in reinforcing my dislike of Westlife, but reading the Westlife threads we’ve seen so far, even the most ardent poptimist finds Westlife a sticky issue. If it’s what they do that makes my hackles rise, then I must be an enemy of pop? Well no, that’s a false dichotomy…think harder, TFG!
Who’s pulling the strings? Walsh & Cowell. Yes, easy targets indeed, but James BC mentions Samantha Mumba who is undoubtedly agreeable, but the opposite gender to Westlife. How did I feel about Boyzone? Well, they were from my perspective on Popular, never not interesting, despite their wildly inconsistent output, but Ronan’s voice could so often be a dealbreaker. Westlife clearly don’t have a Ronan. All the boys can sing and deliver lyrics in a way that smooths out any, let’s call them “Ronanisms”.
So ignorance can be dismissed right away, as WL were all over the media. Teh ‘Loife were one of the boybands that were widely acceptable on R1 & R2 playlists. They could turn up on TFI Friday or Lily Live! (iirc), let alone TOTP and other Pop programmes.
Indifference is easy to own up to because I’m not WL’s target market. My then-wife and my daughter were, but they didn’t buy into their brand of pop, and they didn’t buy into BZ either. I’m not sure what that’s saying about any of us, other than we had other preferences, and at the height of their popularity, it was easy, often encouraged from some quarters, to diss WL.
Which brings me to rockism. I’ll admit I was not the same man I am now, but still my active dislike for Westlife persists. I believed wrongly, that they were an assembly job, spoon-fed songs from some of the best writers available, the music produced and arranged by some of the best producers available and all they had to do was turn up, sing the lines and look pretty in the videos. This, of course, does everyone involved a disservice, because it likens pop to the manufacture of sausages. Pop is not Frankfurters in a jar. So why does WL feel like it is? Why do I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with everything they do? There’s nothing offensive, no controversial lyrics, no issues with delivery, nothing remotely ugly or unpleasant aside from their aggressive blandness. Is it their formulaic approach to pop? Their lack of ambition to subvert even their own cliched image? Is it their unassailable success in selling what is essentially an unchanging product? And that takes me back to Walsh & Cowell, who are the ones who did the selling, not the boys from Sligo alone. Shouldn’t I be hating on them instead? More on them as Popular’s story unfolds, without doubt. But I’m still left with the nagging suspicion that I dislike Westlife for no other reason than good old fashioned pop prejudice. What a Git!
I think Westlife lose their grip on stultifying competence quite quickly after this, FWIW, and are forced into (or lunge at) more variety. This isn’t the last of their number ones to get there based purely on them doing their thing, but their imperial phase doesn’t last too much longer.
I share TFG’s faint concern over my rote dislike for Westlife, and have tried to be fair to them. The problem is that even when they do nothing wrong it’s devilishly hard to see what they do right.
#32 hand gestures?
“I thought it would never end. What did I know?”
It’s bugging me now, there’s a rock song that has this or something very similar. Its not that “I thought love would last forever, I was wrong” but what is it?
@34 Isn’t it this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD9aqgKsiq8
It is, well done thanks.
#32 It would be interesting if there were some massive Westlife fans on here putting the counter-argument but I don’t reckon Westlife’s fans tend to be discussers: people who are interested in the Why of their fandom. Which is probably a reason they’re so despised: easy for the critic/discusser-type music fan to dismiss WL’s fans as an unthinking herd (I think the same is true to an extent of the dadrock stuff although less so since western dads are relatively wealthy so support a whole subsection of publishing industry to argue their case on their behalf)
That said, there’d have to be a powerful argument to make me reassess Westlife. As you imply, there’s nothing in particular to hate about their music so there’s nothing in particular to like. Most of the stadium indie bands who were producing equally boring stuff at this time had at least built goodwill through better stuff in the past (except Travis but then I think Travis are more despised than Westlife ‘they took our music and gave it to the Westlife fans’ I can imagine Steve Sutherland-types saying)
To be fair to Westlife fans I think whether I was a discusser or not I’d think twice before piping up if I came on here and seeing a string of bad reviews and worse comments! Not to mention us old giffers trying earnestly to analyse the appeal. It would be like walking into a petri dish!
A glance at the Westlife tag on Tumblr and at the Facebook page suggests that the fandom articulates itself in much the same ways as every other fandom though with fewer stresses and faultlines (naturally enough since the boys’ story is essentially over). There’s a nice line in 1D fans looking to these elder statesmen of boyband-dom for lessons and hints as to the longevity of Harry et al, though.
The Facebook fandom seems very heavily Asian. Not sure whether this is a) simple demographic weight, b) because the ex-members are particularly active out there, or c) because Westlife songs are closer than most Western pop to C-pop ballads (and other Asian pop strands’ balladry). I don’t really have any grounds for c) but I include it because it’s a bit more interesting than the more likely reasons.
(Every now and then a fan forum for a particular act will discover Popular and link to all the reviews, but it has only happened with artists I’m broadly positive about – Madonna, ABBA, the Spicers. The reaction is an even split between “great stuff” and “he goes on a bit”)
The missus is a Westlife fan, but it doesn’t seem to be the type of fandom that requires particular devotion or deep analysis.
She would watch them when they were on telly, but they were on telly a lot so there was no real effort to seek them out. She got the albums for Christmas because that’s when they came out; they made for a nice, easy present for someone to buy. She went to their concert once a year, with the girls, which was a good way of making sure they all did meet up and nobody cried off. She’d make sure she had the most recent cd in the car that week so she’d know any new numbers they wheeled out. I don’t know whether any individual songs stand out but they do seem fairly similar to me; which might be expected if they are to soundtrack reliably nice times.
In short, Westlife met needs – same as any other band I guess, only these needs seem rather more banal than Bowie or the Manics.
I’d be interested to know how their demographic skewed agewise? It’s hard to imagine they were meeting the same needs as, say, Take That at their most buffed.
Anyway, Fool Again might be my favourite of theirs so far, though again all I can talk about is the quality of the writing – the way the melody naturally accelerates into the chorus is very pleasing. The boys themselves are little more than tugboats guiding it in, but then that’s all they’re for. (6)
Can confirm, Westlife are still huge in China, see my comments on other WL threads for details. Why? Not sure, but music being able to fit into the background and not offend anyone seems like the best of all worlds here, especially if you can’t tell what they are singing. Fundamentally this may be to do with not valuing music, especially pop music, so highly – it’s not associated with rebellion or defining who you are. Good music is usually “nice” and “relaxing”, bad music is “noisy.” Not saying this is true of everone here, but at least 90% of the people I meet, probably more, and my sample is heavily skewed towards more Western-facing Chinese people.
I think this was the single that pushed me over the edge, Westlife-wise. It’s not noticeably worse than anything they’d done before, but five consecutive number ones pushed them into real phenomenon territory, and I remember being infuriated by the *injustice* of it all.
My experience of the pop charts to this point was that number ones *mattered*.
Some crappy or superfluous ones slipped through, but there was a rough sense of meritocracy. The Spice Girls ruled the world from 1996-1998, so all (bar one) of their songs went to #1. Britney and Madonna had #1s. Robbie Williams had #1s. Occasionally a long-serving second-division player would get to be at #1 (Five, Gabrielle etc.) That Westlife could essentially release the same song five times in a row and get to #1 every time seriously offended my sense of pop justice.
I thought I understood the rules of pop music, but Westlife seemed to be playing by a different game. I couldn’t relate to them or the reasons they appealed to their audience. You can’t just have five number ones because a load of girls and mums think you have a nice smile! That’s cheating!*
Eventually I came to see them as sort of top 5 squatters. I didn’t like or understand them, but their presence was inevitable and the only recourse was to ignore them until they went away again. I can look on them more charitably now – if anything this is Westlife at their best, before they completely lost all veneer of ambition and became almost exclusively a covers act. That they released far worse and lazier records than this isn’t much of a recommendation, but it’s the best I can come up with.
3
* I don’t recall being as irritated by Boyzone – aside from the time they had the audacity to thwart Geri Halliwell – but I was younger and even if they were arguably even more cover-reliant than Westlife, at least their songs were generally quite distinguishable from one another.
Is there any sort of study compiling the sort of ‘customers who bought x also bought y’ sales data? I’d wager Westlife and Boyzone have a huge chunk of their audience who didn’t buy much else. I.e. As Tom said in earlier WL or BZ piece, they didn’t get much out of the rest of pop music. C.f. Oasis, Weller and Kasabian, though those artists spawned hoards of imitators whereas, while there must have been plenty impresarios trying to launch ‘the new Westlife’, I can’t think of any who’ve had any real chart impact. Bunn-A1 maybe?
That lot hit biggest with a very poptastic cover version and a Max Martin knockoff though – they had the lack of threat thing but were ending up at a very different place. More on them anon of course.
A1 never struck me as an attempt to replicate the Westlife formula. They were much more in the cheerful 5ive/Budget Backstreet Boys mould.
In fact Westlife imitators were quite thin on the ground that I recall. D-Side were the most obvious ones, but they came and went very quickly.
Tommy Mack @ 42 Well there’s this https://yougov.co.uk/profiler#/Westlife/demographics
I wish Westlife Woman was in common lazy demographic parlance like Mondeo Man.
“I would be more likely to vote Labour if [checkbox] ED AND ED SANG IN UNISON MORE OFTEN”
All 5 Westlife #1s so far are currently in the reader bottom 100 – though “Swear It Again” is only there by a whisker, one fan away from redemption…
The opening three seconds sound like “Where Is My Mind!” Sadly, all downhill from there. 2.
OK asking my Cambodian fiancee about Westlife, since they’re big down there (she’s a rockist fwiw.. much more than me, haha. Fell in love with the Stones and CCR in war camps growing up.)
So Westlife is the most popular Western act at karaoke joints… better known than Michael Jackson, for example. Largely popular because it’s easy to sing… pop culture completely revolves around karaoke there, not exaggerating, half the channels are just karaoke music videos, so ability to take part is something we may be overlooking.
Considered “cool” by the young crowd (and before we judge, what do “hip” Arabs think about the West’s recent love affair with Omar Souleyman?). Especially popular with men… the equivalent of Britney Spears for women, but both have become somewhat passe the past five years. They have unquestionably influenced the music scene there, including with direct translated covers. I can say that the one redeeming feature of the band — the close harmonies — are not emulated. Harmony is not a part of the East Asian musical language; pop music there is all about vocal emoting. I specifically asked her if the harmonies are part of the appeal and she’s vociferously denying that (though it could be, unconsciously.) While rhythmically they are certainly more laid back, lyrically they aren’t at all. Sean Kingston’s “Suicidal” was probably the biggest Western hit of the decade… extreme emotional responses like that are big in pop music, the singers often weep throughout the song.
Discussing Westlife again is getting tiresome and we’re still about only halfway through.
Such was the inevitablity of Number 1’s after a year it was hard not to have an aversion to Westlife. Fool Again felt like something put together in a 3 minute countdown and all the westlife traits are present and corrrect – 10 15 seconds of intro,almost quietly spoken first verse, punching the air chorus, then a big shout about 3 quarters in. You could actually make it up! 3 or a 4 from me.
All that I can take from this if Mexico was the setting then its no surprise that the budget was restricted to Ireland for the next bunny.