Here we go, then… Our most successful boyband’s reign of terror begins…
Swear It Again, by Westlife (their 1st of fourteen #1s)
2 weeks, from 25th April – 9th May 1999
As tempting as it is to go in two-footed on Westlife from the start, they do have a hell of a lot of number ones to get through (only Elvis and The Beatles have more). So can I imagine a world where ‘Swear it Again’, their debut single, was their only hit, and find something good, or at least interesting, to say about it?
I’ll give the verses the credit of having a hint of ‘80s Elton John about them, in the confident piano lines. Beyond that though, it’s a struggle. This isn’t just Westlife’s debut single, it’s their Manifesto. The template through which they’ll be dominating the charts for much of the next decade. It’s bland, it’s MOR. It’s soppy. It’s crap.
This sounds so much like every other song they’ll release between now and 2006, that as I listen I can clearly picture them rising from their stools, through clouds of dry ice, for the final chorus. There is no key change, however, no matter how much one is teased. Perhaps we’ll find that a Westlife trademark key-change wasn’t as common as we think? Maybe they actually did very few, like how Sherlock Holmes hardly ever said ‘elementary’…? The truth will be revealed, slowly, one syrupy ballad after another.
Westlife are usually seen as taking the baton from Boyzone as Britain’s favourite Irish boyband. They shared a manager, Louis Walsh, and Ronan Keating was also involved in their early days (they had supported Boyzone and the Backstreet Boys on tour before releasing any music). It wasn’t a clean transfer of power, though, as Keating’s gang still have one more #1 to come. Westlife had formed a couple of years earlier, as a six-piece, but were rejected by Simon Cowell, who claimed that they were “the ugliest boyband I have ever seen in my life”. Three members were promptly sacked – the ugly ones, we can presume – two new ones hired, and off they went.
Off to score fourteen (yes, one four) number ones in seven years. Interestingly, though, ‘Swear It Again’ did something that only four of their chart-toppers managed: more than a single week at number one. Their fourteen number ones will amount only to twenty weeks in total at the top, a phenomenon that we can perhaps explore in more detail in a later Westlife post, once we’ve lost count of the key-changes, and run out of synonyms for ‘bland’.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
And thus, the Westlife era begins. Dread it, run from it, Westlife still arrives. I’ll be honest, the only Westlife songs I know I’ve heard are “You Raise Me Up”, their cover of “Uptown Girl” and “Flying Without Wings”. So this was a new listen for me. And while it’s more on the bland side, this song isn’t that bad. I dunno, maybe it because I’m in a good mood right now that it’s not grating to me. The chorus is decently catchy, the vocals and the production are perfunctionary. Definitely not a crime against humanity, this one at least. Just a slightly generic pop ballad.
Maybe I’ll have a better time coping with their No. 1s after all if they’re just bland pop. I can deal with that. I think I can anyway.
Yeah I don’t think any Westlife song can be described as a true musical hate crime, because that would require them to have released something that was, on some level, interesting… Instead they were largely just bland.
It’s their success that mainly seems to get people’s backs up, and the fact that they’re alongside Madonna, Cliff, Elvis and the Beatles for total number ones. Their management were clever in pinpointing the best weeks for them to release, when there weren’t any other big singles coming out, and of course they really benefited from the fast-paced charts of the late 90s and early 00s.
Yeah I was looking at the UK Singles charts during the 2000s on Wikipedia and a lot of their No. 1s had relatively low sales numbers. Of course, sales for singles started declining by the mid-2000s, but even before then they had relatively low numbers compared to other acts. Calculated and shrewd management there.
Ah well, at least the next No. 1s is a certified pop classic.
Unsure whether I like Westlife or Boyzone less.
It is a tough choice…
This is their best song.
And that’s not a compliment.
There is one Westlife song I have a soft spot for, but I won’t embarrass myself until I have to…
I came here to – anonymously – say much the same thing!
They are like a mirror image of BSB!
A bit less interesting, with worse songs, than Backstreet Boys, I’d say.
This one actually isn’t that bad and you can certainly see why it was a surefire #1. Yes it’s ‘bland’, but it doesn’t actually do anything ‘wrong’ as such. Compared to say, their egregious covers, and correct me if I’m wrong but at this stage I don’t think they’d cottoned on to the ‘get up off stools’ thing yet. ‘If I Let You Go’ is obviously far better but this is certainly no crime against the charts.
Bland is certainly the word – That said this is marginally tuneful and quite pleasant, and I hadn’t got the stage where I was just assuming a new Westlife record would be bloody awful…
Not something I would buy…but I agree with your Elton John comparison…it’s not too bad.