A fifth number one single in less than twelve months, with the fifth and final single from their debut album, it’s…
Fool Again, by Westlife (their 5th of fourteen #1s)
1 week, from 2nd – 9th April 2000
…we know perfectly well who it is (the picture above probably helped). And there’s a reason why ‘Fool Again’ was the fifth single from the album. It’s average, and not just in a wider musical sense (which it obviously is). It’s average in a Westlife sense: not as good a pop song as ‘If I Let You Go’, but not guilty of the same musical crimes as their recent Christmas #1.
This was marketed as the ‘2000 remix’ of ‘Fool Again, as opposed to the 1999 original, and that probably eked out a few extra purchases from fans who already had the album. The only change I can make out, though, is the beefed up intro. The bridge really, really reminds me of a song that I just can’t quite put my finger on. The key change is massive, even by Westlife standards. The rest of the song descends quickly and happily into boyband schmaltz, rolling around in said schmaltz like a pig in shit.
Since they’re coming thick and fast, I’m going to keep track of Westlife’s many number one singles with my brand-new feature: Westlife Watch! (Hey, at least it will use up a paragraph every time I have to write about them). After five chart-toppers, the ranking currently stands at:
- If I Let You Go
- Flying Without Wings
- Fool Again
- Swear It Again
- I Have a Dream / Seasons in the Sun
I feel that bottom song will take some shifting, but I have faith in Westlife’s abilities to serve up something bad enough with their nine remaining number ones.
I think it must be a record, having five number one singles from the same album. I can find no other examples, on the British charts at least. But perhaps here we should discuss Westlife’s management, and their clever release schedule. Louis Walsh had a smart knack of picking quiet weeks for his boys’ singles. ‘Fool Again’ made #1 with sales that would have fallen short in all but nine weeks of this chart year. This doesn’t apply to all of their chart-toppers, as many did debut on top with impressive sales, but they definitely padded their stats with some lucky number ones. ‘Fool Again’ fell to #8 the following week, which says it all.
At the same time, maybe it was also a case of other acts avoiding weeks when Westlife were releasing, especially after five chart-toppers in a row? It would have been a brave act that went up against this Irish juggernaut in 2000, when they were at the peak of their popularity.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
This is actually my favourite Westlife song. I’m not saying that it’s good. I’m not even sure I’ve ever listened to the whole thing.
These posts have made me ponder my own exposure to Westlife. I can remember when Boyzone came along and were very successful. Being Irish I felt a sort of mingled pride and shame that we had our own manufactured boy band and they were actually storming the charts. By the time Westlife came along, the novelty was gone and it somehow felt irritating.
The fact that Westlife were considerably more successful than Boyzone seemed unjust and annoying. Despite being a manufactured boy band, Boyzone seemed to have at least a modicum of character; they were all handsome guys, obviously, but they actually looked like they might have quirks and personalities. They famously made fools of themselves on their first chat show appearance Unlike Westlife who just looked like male models. And the name Boyzone was quite clever, but Westlife…what the heck does it even mean? And my exposure to both of their music was pretty much limited to hearing choruses, but even at that, Westlife’s seemed even more tepid and anodyne than their predecessors. And I can’t really explain why, but Boyzone seemed noticeably Irish, while Westlife just seemed utterly generic.
Whether these thoughts are of interest to anyone but me is another matter, but there you go.
Maolsheachlann, Dublin
If you look at the three big ‘British’ (as in, popular in Britain) boybands of the 90s then it feels like a case of quickly diminishing returns: Take That, to Boyzone, to Westlife. Take That were often quite good, Boyzone did sometimes try to go in an upbeat direction (though never on a number one), while Westlife just felt like a cynically programmed, ballads-by-numbers, boyband-bot. I genuinely wonder who bought their records, because most of them are really not aimed at tweens and teens.
And with TT and Boyzone we knew who the cool one, the cute one, the silly one, the quiet one was. Like you said, they had a bit of personality to them. With Westlife they were all very similar, and I still couldn’t name all five of them! All in all, their huge success is simultaneously obvious (they released fairly bland music with mass appeal) but also quite strange.
Agree completely . Neither Boyzone or Westlife ever released anything as good as Back For Good, which is a genuine classic. Maolsheachlann.
Can we go back to the 70s? Pleeeaaassseee? LOL. They had great voices…certainly really good for what they were doing.
Back to the 70s? Sure! I’ll do a post on the Osmonds… Oh, wait…
LOL…ok you got me there! Oh…remember the Cowsills? I have a post coming with them…on a Friday or Monday…that is quite different from thier usual music.
Oh cool. To be fair, as much as the Osmonds liked a ballad, Westlife wouldn’t have come up with anything as fun as ‘Crazy Horses’.
That is true! That album really kicks…and I’m NOT kidding. I wish they would have went that way lol.
Crazy Horses is a classic, and in terms of ballads, I just made The Proud One a number one 50 years late in tribute to Wayne Osmond. That’s a proper song, with proper harmonies and emotion. The Osmonds could sing the pants off Westlife any day of the week because they were committed to their records and songs, Westlife were just part of the Louis Walsh production line. They were replaceable and he didn’t care that much about them artistically. That said, this song is one of their more memorable ones. I can still remember the hook, which must say something as they dont generally get oldies radio play, largely because they had their fanbase, and then there was everybody else preferring better records that were around at the time. I don’t see this ever doing a Murder On The Dancefloor and coming back decades later as huge as ever…..
Wow, I’m shocked to say, but I really dig this one. Was prepared to write it off since it is Westlife, but it’s very solid. It has a very nice melody. And their vocals while still banal aren’t so banal that they’re noticeably annoying. Actually, now that I think about it, I think I might like this song because it sounds like a Take That ballad from the mid-90s.
Looks like that’s 2/5 their songs I really like, while the others are just meh or blah.
Judging from the views and streams on Westlife’s YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify, it’s surprising that they overall have more popular songs than more respected 90s UK boy bands like Take That or someone like Boyzone. I think you have a point that their audience was more than just teens – I think a good chunk of their fanbase were adult women.
Yes, they weren’t the sort of boyband to appeal to the kids, or the gays, so it must have been the mums and grans.
As for their continued success on YouTube etc. Having lived in Asia I can confirm that they are still huge, in a part of the world where people have a much higher tolerance for soppy ballads, and more importantly always seem to be on tour in Singapore, Macau, Malaysia and around.
Fourteen number ones, goodness. This one’s pretty inoffensive for a Westlife song.
Michael Jackson had 5 #1s from BAD, which is the Billboard record. Katy Perry technically matched it with 5 from TEENAGE DREAM, though the chart-topping version of ‘E.T.’ was a Kanye-featuring remix that wasn’t on the original album, and ‘Last Friday Night’ might have stalled at #2 if not for a remix (featuring Missy Elliott) that retailed at a discount on iTunes and bumped up its overall numbers. ‘Part Of Me’ topped the charts in 2012, which sorta-technically made it 6, but by then Billboard had decreed that bonus tracks from ‘deluxe’ reissues didn’t count as part of the album cycle.
Yeah, I think the days of five or more hits from an album has long gone. With streaming, technically every track is a single, and it’s often very hard for anything to chart after the album has been released.