The lads in Westlife know what their audiences want, and what their audiences want are cameras zooming in on their arses. My one and only live Westlife experience was at their Croke Park 20th anniversary show in 2019 and I will never forget Mark, Shane, Kian and Nicky shaking their denim-clad behinds in unison during a Queen medley as the image filled the big screens. One of them — Nicky probably — pulled his jacket up higher to expose his full bum.
The stadium was filled with screams and in an out of body experience I realised that I was screaming too. I didn’t feel violated. I didn’t turn my face away to preserve my innocence. I knew I was safe and that this extremely PG bottom display was as risqué as it was going to get. Ireland’s greatest manband knows its bread and butter is multiple generations of the same family, hopelessly devoted to the hits and the nostalgia. Arses is as low as they go.
I was being largely ironic when I went to Westlife in Croke Park. “It’s good book research” and “they have a few decent hits” was reason enough to head along to a band I had no real nostalgia or fan-based link to. I wasn’t disappointed. That same evening, Mayo and Galway were facing off in the football championship qualifiers at the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick. Kick off was at 6.30pm and multiple TVs around Croke Park were broadcasting the action live, while people ate carvery dinners and packets of Tayto. The only appropriate warm up for a Westlife concert surely?
The show itself was wall to wall hits. Songs I’d forgotten they’d released but somehow knew all the words to. A lot of questionable dad dancing. They even brought out some stools to facilitate the classic Stand Up For the Octave Change move, leaning into the cliché with their tongues firmly in their cheeks. From the stage, Mark Feehily revealed the gender of the first child he and his fiancé were expecting, and I definitely had tears in my eyes as I toasted the baby girl. I had lost it and become a Westlife superfan over the course of an evening.
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Maybe mature manband arses on big screens is where I’ve found my musical settling point?
I flashed back to my early 20s when I worked in Golden Discs on Mary Street in Dublin city centre, and I was forced to forgo any music snobbery a decade of grunge and indie had instilled in me. There was a strict CD rotation of Pink, Avril Lavigne, Daniel Bedingfield, Eminem and Westlife. I became so enamoured with When You’re Looking Like That that I brought Westlife’s album home. My flatmates would capitulate after a few hours on the white wine lady petrol and we’d scream, “She’s a five foot ten in catsuit and Bambi eyes”, around the tiny sittingroom.
Westlife weren’t Ireland’s first boy band. Boyzone walked so that they could run, from that infamous “performance” on The Late Late Show in 1993 to the peak of their success later in the 90s. It was almost like Boyzone faded away so that a new Louis Walsh vehicle could take their place, this time with Simon Cowell in the driving seat. That’s kind of how it is in the life cycle of a pop band. They have an embarrassing start with dreadful haircuts, they win over kids and teenage girls, they have their first UK number one, they win over teenage girls in Asia, they break up, they reform eight years later and then on each major anniversary, graduating to manband.
Boyzone’s 30th anniversary is coming up in a couple of years and I’d be surprised if the four surviving members don’t reform for a tour. The death of Stephen Gately in 2009, two years after they reformed, devastated them but they continued to record and tour until 2018 before slipping away again to make room for Westlife to re-emerge. There’s big money in anniversary tours, I’ll bet. Repackaging greatest hits and throwing in a few crowd-pleasing medleys will draw original fans along with daughters, granddaughters and curious fair-weather looky-loos like me. Take That have been doing it for years as a three piece and when I saw them live a few years ago, again somewhat ironically, I was screaming in delight by the end of the show. Maybe I’m finally making up for not being a teeny-bopper in my youth? Maybe mature manband arses on big screens is where I’ve found my musical settling point?
A few weeks ago Westlife were back in Dublin for two headline shows at the Aviva Stadium. As footage of a nine-song Abba medley and excruciating yet mesmerising dad dancing and synchronised downstage trots to Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love circulated like wildfire on social media, I cursed myself for not securing a ticket. It looked like another life-affirming, musically rich and ultimately harmless night out and I would defy anyone not to enjoy it. I think what I’m trying to say is that everyone should see Westlife at least once in their lives. When You’re Looking Like That is a stone-cold banger, and you know it.