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ON THE COUCH WITH: Westlife

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: It’s great to see you again in Australia, how has the Australian leg of the Love Album tour been going for you?
Westlife - Kian: It’s been going great. It’s only the fifth night of the tour and our last night in Australia and it’s been really good to be honest. I think the first time to ever tour Australia the response has been pretty strong every city feels like there’s a big audience there. We’re very happy with it to be honest with you, we couldn’t be happier

Access All Areas.net.au: Brisbane is your final show, how have Australian audiences taken to the shows?
Westlife - Kian: It’s very different for us. Generally back home we do concerts on a very different scale not necessarily audience wise but well I mean we have four or five thousand people a night here so far and that’s amazing for us and we’re very appreciative of that because it’s our first tour but the audience back at home we’re looking at eight or nine thousand a minimum a night and our production would be very very large, we’d have a completely over produced stage to a certain extent and we’re very used to that and to be breaking a tour down to the extent that we’ve broken it down tonight you kind of feel a wee bit naked on the stage but I think that kind of brings a better performance out in us and it makes us kind of give more to the audience because we don’t have the fancy tricks behind us its just down to the four of us and the songs.

Access All Areas.net.au: This is your sixth arena tour; does touring still excite you as much as it did the first and second time?
Westlife - Kian: It’s actually our eighth tour… and very much so I think you can never take a buzz away from standing in front of an audience and hearing the reaction of whatever amount of people it is cheering for you because they enjoy doing what you do and I think in that sense generally I think its just a nice feeling to be on tour and be shown appreciation from the fans for what you’ve done over the last year you know promoting a new album, making a new album, seeing that they’re still loving what you do so. I suppose the novelty of it to a certain extent has worn away from the like say of the first or second tour you know the whole idea of being on tour you know and our first tour we got smashed every night after the gig whereas we don’t do that anymore it has become part of our lifestyle now and its something that we’re used to now.

Access All Areas.net.au: In Ireland its single digit temperatures and here in Australia it’s been pretty hot weather. Were you prepared and have you adjusted ok to the hot weather?
Westlife - Kian: Yeah well I kind of did my research. You always know when it’s cold in Ireland its warm in Australia so we packed our shorts and t-shirts yeah.

Access All Areas.net.au: Apart from the interior of hotel rooms, have you been able to see much of Australia this time around or go out surfing?
Westlife - Kian: Yeah personally I’ll chase everything when it comes to things like surfing especially when you’re in a country that has so many surf breaks and stuff like that. When we were in Perth I travelled up and down the coastline a good bit for three or four days and last time we were in Melbourne I went down to great ocean road down to the 12 apostles and all that sort of stuff. When we were in Sydney we went to all of the sites, we went to Manly beach and Taronga zoo you know personally I buy a Lonely Planet book wherever I go and Ill read up on what I think is worthy of going to see and what I don’t and I generally hire a car and drive my Girlfriend with me and off we go.

Access All Areas.net.au: Sounds wicked…

Westlife - Kian: Yeah the boys don’t but…

Access All Areas.net.au: You do your own thing!

Access All Areas.net.au: How long does it take you guys to put together a tour of this kind?
Westlife - Kian: Generally about three weeks… three weeks as in the rehearsal stages but from the early early early stages you’re looking at like if we were to start touring for example this year in February we’d start the plans in November like the stage plans things like that because a lot of things have to be built….

Access All Areas.net.au: So you have a good say in the tour and the stage plans, etc?
Westlife - Kian: Well we design everything ourselves… I suppose when you make an album with the record company because it’s their product even though its got the Westlife name on it it’s SonyBMG’s product and they’re the ones selling it and they’re the ones making the money and then they pay us. They have absolutely no involvement in a concert tour, it’s a Westlife product from start to finish, so its up to the four of us to make the decisions. We may hire people in and take their ideas and put our ideas with their ideas and stuff like that because when you do it so many times it’s very difficult to continue to come up with fresh ideas so in that sense we do hire people in and we do kind of like get different ideas but it’s our baby you know.

Access All Areas.net.au: In these shows, you do a medley of other boybands like Backstreet Boys, Boyzone and Take That, how did the idea of that come about?
Westlife - Kian: Well it came about a few years ago… the idea of a boyband medley and we kind of were like no no it doesn’t feel right. We do a medley every year, Westlife is a very ballad based band and for us its kind of like we kind of feel like we did it the first year and the fans got kind of hyper excited about it and we realised that and the following year we were like we’ve got to do it again and do a medley of other people’s songs and we got a bigger hype again the second time around so it stayed in our show every year… we do a medley of other people’s songs every year and we’re not the type of band that writes our own songs and stuff like that so we’re not very anal about what necessarily as long as they’re great songs… we’re anal about it but we’re not anal about doing other people’s songs so I think I suppose with the Take That reunion and with Boyzone getting back together and stuff like that it seemed to be like the year to do it and I threw the idea in there this year and everybody went for it and I mean it goes down good, it doesn’t go down amazing because I think that some of the fans kind of like know exactly what we’re doing and some of the fans don’t because some of the fans might not have been a Backstreet Boys or New Kids On The Block or Boyzone or Take That fans but it works. We like it we enjoy it.

Access All Areas.net.au: Flying Without Wings is bound to be an Australian favourite being that it’s the first time fans have had the opportunity to see Westlife perform it live, how has the reaction been to this song?
Westlife - Kian: Really big actually for that song. Working on the stage every night can be the same for the Australian audience where it’s like you know “nobody knows us in Australia and they go off ohhh what are you talking about you know nobody has known us in Australia only since You Raise Me Up or since Face To Face” but it seems to be like we certainly seem to have this core fan base that were fans from the very start and you can certainly feel that I would say at least 20 to 30 percent of the audience has continuously been there every year so like even with song like My Love and Unbreakable, Uptown Girl they’re going absolutely ballistic for them and we’re kind of like whoa we didn’t expect them to notice but they do and they know them all. Flying Without Wings always gets a big reaction we actually close the show with that song but it gets big big reaction and its great to see it.

Access All Areas.net.au: Your manager has hinted that he’s currently sourcing writers for your next album… where do you see the next album heading?
Westlife - Kian: There will be another album at the end of the year without a doubt and what kind of album it’s going to be exactly yet we’re not 100% sure. There’s a lot of talk about different things, there’s talk about doing a greatest hits part two the best of Westlife or something like that because it’s nine years this year or ten years this year so there’s talk about doing a ten year anniversary like ten years of Westlife or something along them lines and there’s talk about another love album and then there’s talk about another studio album as in original songs. A lot of it comes down to the songs a lot of it will come down to what songs are being suggested if theyre cover versions or what songs are being sent in to us from original song writers and its all going to be based on what’s going to be the best move you know whether we feel like we have a full album of hits or do we thing another teened album shall we call it is going to work so it’s going to be interesting to see.

Access All Areas.net.au: Any chance of coming back to Australia for another tour?
Westlife - Kian: As far as we’re concerned we’d have no issue with putting it on our yearly tour it only takes a week and a half to do it five nights you know so I mean without boring the readers with the politics of it its down to a promoter. It’s down to a promoter coming to Westlife and saying yeah we want you guys you know and if the offer is there and if it makes sense for us to do it then we’ll do it you know it’s the best way to explain it. We’re not going to come down here if we’re losing money and we’re not necessarily interested in coming down here and walking away with a hell of a lot of money or anything like that because we know it’s a new territory for us and it’s a territory we want to build on so that is kind of the way we look at it.

Westlife - Kian: We were coming down here to build on the fact that we’ve got our foot in the door or we’ve probably got more than a foot in the door now but we’re the type of the band that once we get a taste for a place we always like to try to keep it growing so we’re extremely interested in doing it on a yearly basis.

INTERVIEW: February 6 2007
Access All Areas.net.au: Congratulations on yet another successful album with the ‘Love Album’!
Westlife - Nicky: Yeah it’s going really well which is great! 2006 was a special year for Westlife in Australia and to now have the Love Album following it’s great!

Access All Areas.net.au: Your new album ‘The Love Album’ was released in Australia late last year, when you went in to record that album, what did you want to do differently from ‘Face To Face’
Westlife - Nicky: Face to Face was the studio album where we obviously worked with lot of different producers, there’s lots of Swedish guys on there and Steve Mac and a lot of original songs and when we were working on this album to be honest with ourselves with the Love Album we wanted to get more original material for the album and because we don’t get the luxury of writing songs, we’re at the helm of song writers and when you’re in that position you’re hoping and banking on producers and songwriters to come up with the goods and that didn’t happen this year so we sat down and asked ourselves “do we wait?” so we sat down with our manager Louis Walsh and Simon Cowell, our AnR Manager and both suggested doing a love album and we pick twelve of the greatest love songs or twelve of our favourite love songs and that was how the idea was born.

Access All Areas.net.au: On the album you’ve recorded a track with Delta Goodrem who Australian’s hold close to their hearts, what was it like working with her and how did that collaboration come about?
Westlife - Nicky: The way it came about was our Manager, Louis, suggest it. He managed us for nine years and he suggested about doing a duet with Delta and to be honest, we were talking about approaching Delta three years ago when she had broken the Australian scene and a mega superstar in Australia and we thought it would be good and that was the plan and it never materialised for what ever reason I’m not sure and then Brian left Westlife soon after and started dating Delta and at this point we’d met Delta and then we just wanted to make sure Brian didn’t feel uncomfortable with the idea so we called him ourselves and we called Delta’s manager and they were all up for it and then we got in to the studio for it and the four of us can’t speak highly enough of Delta. Professionally, she is an amazing singer and on a personal level she is a really lovely girl.

Access All Areas.net.au: Are there any plans to release ‘All Out Of Love’?
Westlife - Nicky: I mean it’s been spoken about lots of times and personally I would love to release it because it would be a huge hit, it’s been a huge hit for different people who’ve released it over the years but there’s lots of politics involved. It’s the music industry and it’s not the easiest thing in the world, and for us to even get it recorded was very positive. I’ll never say never but I would say it’s not likely.

Access All Areas.net.au: Your latest single ‘The Rose’ rocketed up to the top of the UK charts again… your 14th single to hit the top spot earning you yet another Guinness World Record for most singles to debut at number 1. What’s it like to break another record and what were your thoughts when you heard about it?
Westlife - Nicky: It was eight or nine years ago that we started and to this day we still get flabbergasted and excited by that. We’ve had fourteen number ones in the UK, twelve or thirteen Irish number ones and in Europe twelve or something amazing. When we were starting to take off we were successful from the start and then Brian left the band to take a break which meant we lost a member and at the time of our career then we were at an unsteady time. Four or five years in to a boy band they usually call it a day and that was always bouncing around the media and we were not sure where we were going and You Raise Me Up was like a lifeline for us. Our manager had said try this song and we did as a pop song. We turned a song that wasn’t meant to be pop in to a mainstream pop song and it went well around the world and it opned doors for us in Australia and New Zealand and then The Rose that became our fourteenth number one to be honest it’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger and at this stage after eight or nine years you still have to pinch yourself!

Access All Areas.net.au: You came to Australia twice last year for promotional commitments and were to tour in September but unfortunately had to postpone to later this month, are you excited about coming back to Australia to finally tour your material?
Westlife - Nicky: Absolutely! We are well known on this side of the world for our live shows and with our tours we put a lot of time and effort into them, and it’s different to just sitting down and singing songs, we like to make sections in our shows like there’s an energetic part and we have a big back catalogue I mean we’ve got Flying Without Wings, World Of Our Own, Swear It Again, If I Let You Go… songs that have all been hits, maybe not so much in Australia but different parts of the world and touring is a big part of us. We kick off on the 21st of February Perth and it’s nice and it’s amazing that this long in to it that Australia has opened up to us.

Access All Areas.net.au: Is there anything that you’re really excited about doing or seeing in Australia in any down time you have?
Westlife - Nicky: Obviously it’s summer down there so the small time of we do have we’ll try and get a sun tan and visit the beach. Kian is a big sufer so he might catch some waves if he can but we’ll chill. We don’t have a lot of time, it’s mainly gig then fly, gig then fly, gig then fly but again it’s nice to be down there and really promoting Westlife and showing off what we do.

Access All Areas.net.au: You’ve sold millions of albums around the world; raked up countless number one singles, won dozens of music awards, what do you think has been an attribute to the success of Westlife?
Westlife - Nicky: You can’t put your finger on one thing it’s lots of different things. We’re four of the luckiest guys in the world, I mean anyone would give anything to sample or experience what we do and we’re lucky in that respect, we don’t take things for granted and we’re high working and we don’t lay off. When touring we’ve got the foot on the gas and we don’t let up. We’ve also had a lot of great guys around us, our Manager has been a great inspiration to the band, SonyBMG have been exceptional especially in the international departments, we’re lucky enough to work with Simon Cowell from day one and when it boils down to it generally we get on as people. We have our arguments just like anyone else and we’ll sit down and talk it through.

Access All Areas.net.au: What lies for the year ahead for Westlife?
Westlife - Nicky: We’ve got the tour that kicks off in Perth and goes to all the cities: Adelaide, Melbourne, then Sydney and finishes in Brisbane and then on to South Africa and do a heap of cities there and then back to the UK until the middle of April and then back to our home country Ireland and finsh there on May 4. Personally for me, my wife is expecting a baby, we’re expecting twins actually and they’re due in the second week of June.

INTERVIEW- August 2005

Access All Areas.net.au: Congratulations on your re-invention in to the Australian market, you must be excited to be heading back to Australia after six years?
Westlife - Mark: Yeah absolutely! I mean we went there so long ago and I mean it’s literally so long ago that I can’t remember almost what it’s like because we’ve done so much since then… so when we went back there in February it was almost like our first time over again because so much had changed since the first time we got there and we really did genuinely have and I’m sure it could sound like I’m just saying that anyway or whatever but we really did genuinely have a great time… we had some of our family and friends and it was an amazing tour, three week… not a holiday, obviously because we were doing lots of work and stuff, but it was like a really nice time you know.

Access All Areas.net.au: The last time you were in Australia was in 2000 for a quick promotional tour for ‘Coast To Coast’, why has it taken you so long to come back to Australia and more so to tour Australia?
Westlife - Mark: Well I mean honestly I can say we have been begging our record label to have another shot in Australia practically since the last time we were there and we’ve seen other acts and some bands a million miles away from Westlife style or whatever and have enjoyed great reception there and we always said why not give us a chance to do it you know and it was late last year that we eventually persuaded them to look at it and they talked to the Australian label on that end of things they said you know what ‘You Raise Me Up’ we like that song we’ll give that a shot.

Westlife - Mark: So we went down there in February not currently knowing what to expect and it all kicked off and it all looked great so we’re all delighted and at this stage and age of the band, to still be breaking new territories and to be finding like a whole bunch of new fans is kind of really a refreshing feeling because you kind of think eight years in, you kind of would’ve broken every market that you could by then you know so it’s great to still be opening up doors down there.

Access All Areas.net.au: You had so much success in Australia for the release of ‘Coast To Coast’ in 2000, and thereafter your albums failed to do as well in the Australian market. Have you been surprised at how well received your new album ‘Face To Face’ has been with Australian audiences?
Westlife - Mark: Yeah absolutely! I mean kind of, the last thing we expected was to kind of break a new market especially to kind of get such a massive immediate response from a song you know and its been fantastic, you know, we have our website which obviously allows us to communicate internationally at the touch of a button and we’re getting so many more new kind of Australian people signing up to the website and kind of visiting the website and everything and that’s one good way of gauging the amount of people and whether they like our stuff or not obviously and also the success of the single in terms of chart positions and radio play and stuff and its all going so well… its fantastic we didn’t expect that and the fact that its going so well is something that we’re very proud of.

Westlife - Mark: We make our music so that people enjoy that and if most people in Australia are enjoying it then that’s kind of our goal met you know and the next stage of it all now is to go there and do our first proper big live concert tour over there which is something that we feel is kind of our best point you know our live show is the end product out of everything, we make the album and the fans get to hopefully know the album and then the next stage is finally perform face to face with the fans in a live show.

Access All Areas.net.au: For sure and we can’t wait to see you guys return here in September!

Westlife - Mark: Yeah we’re looking forward to it!

Access All Areas.net.au: Before ‘Face To Face’ you had a bit of a Frank Sinatra phase with your last album that was released in the UK with ‘Allow Us To Be Frank’, what led you in to that direction?
Westlife - Mark: The music kind of industry over here is changing so much and like when we started out there was lots and lots of amazing pop songs up for grabs from a lot of producers and songwriters and these days most of the people are going a rock direction or RnB/hip hop direction and at the point, and we call it the swing album… the ‘Allow Us To Be Frank’ album, it was just basically we were finding it very difficult to find songs of the quality that we wanted them to be at and we certainly didn’t just want to throw out any old album so we decided to try something different for one album and wait and give ourselves a bit more time to find the songs to put together for ‘Face to Face’ so essentially we gave ourselves an extra year to find the songs for the album for ‘Face to Face’ and I think that kind of shows because I think you know it’s obviously doing really well and if we kind, like I said before if we didn’t wait that year and threw together any old album who knows what we’d be doing right now if you know what I mean.

Westlife - Mark: In terms of the direction of the ‘Allow Us To Be Frank’ album we kind of looked at a lot of different options and different styles to try and do and we just felt that first of all the Frank stuff was down our street and we’d definitely like to try it out, and also our A&R man, Simon Cowell, is a massive fan of swing music, its his favorite type of music, and he was very expressive on how much he would’ve liked to have heard us singing that sort of stuff so we gave it a shot and I think it kind of worked and it got us through a year which was one where there was some turbulence because it’s the fact when Brian left the band and we were looking for the pop songs and we couldn’t find them so we done this album which bought us some time and we put together ‘Face to Face’ which ended up being one of our most successful albums ever so I think it all worked out quite nicely.

Access All Areas.net.au: As you say, in 2004, you lost Brian McFadden to a solo career, how did that impact the band?
Westlife - Mark: That was kind of the worst thing that ever happened in the band really. We’ve been through ups and downs of coarse like anybody else but a member leaving the band was something we… first of all was something we didn’t expect and we weren’t ready for but secondly we didn’t know how to handle it… we had learnt how to handle every other obstacle over the years and because we’ve been through so many different ups and downs and obstacles with this, that and the other but we never anticipated a member leaving, so we didn’t know what to do and it was the first time in a long time that was something new, that we were up against something new that we had never kind of experienced before and that was a very scary situation you know and we didn’t know whether it spelt the end of the band; we didn’t know whether the fans would be like ‘oh well its not the same, the five of you out there anymore’, the kind of ‘sorry its all over now’ or whatever.

Westlife - Mark: It was exciting and scary, every emotion going through our heads… but we decided to pick ourselves up and move on and we all sat there and said “guys at the end of the day it’s A or B… we either want to continue or we don’t, so what is it? And we all decided that we wanted to continue and we did continue and we probably were more focused than we were before he left because we had a new motivation and the motivation was to prove everyone wrong because everybody started saying that was going to be the end because the cracks are showing, but actually the band has become bigger and better since Brian has left and its in no disrespect to Brian, but its just the story of the band kind of goes on and its fantastic that we’re still here and I think the fact that Brian leaving gave us a bit of a shake and we sort of took the negative thing and turned it into a positive thing and just focused even harder you know.

Access All Areas.net.au: It must be quite mind blowing that you’ve notched up four ‘Record Of The Year’ awards in the UK and sold 40 million albums world wide!? Where do you see the end of Westlife… or more to the point, is there an end?
Westlife - Mark: It’s certainly no time soon as I said it’s definitely not going to leave for the next two years at least and the only reason why I don’t say any longer than that is because it’s hard to predict anything after that, but we’ve got a new album coming out this October, we’re recording a new album at the moment and if we don’t record another album next year we’ll do a greatest hits and after that that will be our second greatest hits album.

Westlife - Mark: fact that it’s a greatest hits doesn’t mean the end it’s just time to put all our singles on an album again if you know what I mean and at the moment that’s kind of the goal is to get to a greatest hits part two which is two years away but that’s just in terms of goals, I don’t think that’s the final goal its just the next kind of as far as we can see ahead at the moment you know.

Access All Areas.net.au: The Westlife catalogue is huge when you consider you have released seven albums, which song is closes to you and why?
Westlife - Mark: Mostly we’ve recorded over 200 songs or 300 songs and its hard to pick one in particular and ‘Flying Without Wings’ is one song which was off our first album that I still, to this day, don’t get sick of singing and that song was first of all an amazing career record for us, and by an amazing career record I mean the chart positions and the sales and the song that really confirmed to our audience that we weren’t just about six packs and dancers or whatever we were more about the vocals and stuff like that and the quality of the song and as I say, to this day I still don’t get sick of performing the song.

Westlife - Mark: Also there’s another called ‘World Of Our Own’ which is the same except it’s just more up tempo, then there’s just random songs like a song called ‘You Can’t Lose What You Never Had’ which is more sort of an urban song and it’s got more soul and an RnB type song which is a particular favourite style of things for me… there’s so many songs to be honest and there’s another song called ‘Bad Girl’ which is very up tempo, more kind of N’sync style song… there’s endless songs that I kind of enjoy singing so its kind of hard to decide on what.

Access All Areas.net.au: Your touring Australia in September, what can fans expect to see from a Westlife show?
Westlife - Mark: The main objective really is from the moment the show starts to the moment the show ends is to totally keep the audience entertained to the maximum… I mean the last thing that we want is for someone to sit down and be bored, you know what I mean and we all love going to see other bands and live gigs and there’s always lots of ups and downs you know where some parts will be amazing and other parts you can like ‘oh this bits a bit boring you know’. We want there to be no boring parts of this show, we kind of never get too anal about it.

Westlife - Mark: Our show is designed for the audience therefore we design the show around songs that they would know and songs that they would enjoy or to listen to and then we have all the big lights, we have a big live band, got lots of different costumes and lots of lights and pyrotechnics and explosions and stuff like that so you know, so hopefully they can expect hopefully what we feel as a really good quality pop show where from start to finish they will be entertained and hopefully they won’t be bored for a second.

Access All Areas.net.au: Now you’ve just signed a new recording contract with SonyBMG to release another five records? Where do you see Westlife going musically in the future?
Westlife - Mark: I think to be honest we’re a pop band through and through and obviously there’s little variations in pop music… one song could be a little bit more live sound or a little bit more rocky and one song could be a little more folk or whatever but the core of our music will always be pop music. We love singing pop music and it’s always going to be pop music… and just kind of modern pop songs really if you know what I mean, that’s kind of the style that you’d call it if you know what I mean and classic pop you know and that’s what its going to be and I don’t think that’s ever going to change.

Access All Areas.net.au: Well thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to chat to us, congratulations again on the album and we can’t wait to see you back here in September!

Westlife - Mark: Fantastic man, same here, we’re really looking forward to getting back, we had a great time in February and we really want to get back down there and get back in to it you know.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Sometimes, a little love can make the world go round. No matter what life throws at us or how difficult things get, people of all ages, all over the world, continue to turn to the songs that move them; that comfort them and make them think of the one person that makes everything worthwhile. When Westlife came to record the follow up to last year's 1.5 million selling 'Face to Face', they knew they needed something special to match its incredible success. The original songs they heard just didn't quite fit the bill, but those classic love songs that transcend time and cross generations seemed perfect.

"We decided to try and record some of those songs and see what we thought," Shane Filan remembers. "I actually enjoyed recording this album more than any other because the material was already of such high quality and the songs have been massive hits. They're famous love songs so they were always going to be great to sing and there's bound to be memories on this album for lots of our fans. We're known for singing love songs too, so it seemed like a great idea."

'The Love Album' comes after one of Westlife's best years yet. The biggest vocal group in the world right now, the band enjoyed unprecedented levels of international success with 'Face To Face' and are more eager than ever for it to continue now.

"We knew we were on to a good thing with 'You Raise Me Up' but you never know what other people will think," Nicky Byrne says. "For it to work so well has made us feel like we've reinvented ourselves. What other pop band has managed to do that? To have a greatest hits and then, a couple of albums later, have their second biggest album yet? We enjoyed every bit of last year."

"It was great," Shane agrees. "'You Raise Me Up' broke into Australia and China and places we'd never broke into before. In Ireland, it was the number one selling and number one airplay song of the year."

"It proved to us that with the right material, we have the potential to continue as long as we want," Nicky adds.

Their devoted fans wouldn't have it any other way. They have stuck tirelessly by Westlife since they formed in 1998, helped sell out six huge arena tours and voted them winners of the prestigious Record of The Year four times.

"We're still a bit surprised by it all," Shane admits. "Sometimes we wonder what they see us, especially when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror! We know we're very lucky to have our fan base and without them, we wouldn't still be around."

With their unfailing support, the band have gone from strength to strength. They've enjoyed a record breaking 13 UK number ones, picked up two Brit Awards and an MTV Europe award and sold 35 million records around the world.

"Statistics like that are amazing but they're not important to us right now," Kian admits. "When we're old men sitting on our couch with our granddaughters, we'll look back on the statistics and be impressed. But what matters to us now is our next album. Forget about what we've done in the past, because that's not worth squat if what we do in the future is a waste of time. Right now, we're still living it and enjoying it and what happens next is all that matters."

On 'The Love Album', the band knew the choice of songs would be the most important thing; that it was crucial to select timeless, classic tracks but not necessarily the most obvious ones.

"There were loads of songs suggested," Mark recounts. "Everybody was texting each other ideas all the time. We wanted songs that were more than just a big hit and could translate well into being a Westlife song."

"We were adamant it wouldn't turn into 'The Most Cheesy Pop Songs In The World Ever' album," Shane says.

"It's definitely different from all those love compilations you see on TV all the time," Nicky adds. "There are some songs you really wouldn't expect."

Though the choices are surprising and occasionally daring, they work together perfectly, sounding as if they have always been Westlife songs. From the stirring Bette Midler epic, `The Rose', to Lionel Richie's laid-back classic, 'Easy', the band have stayed faithful to the original versions that are close to so many people's hearts, yet made them their own with their distinctive soulful voices.

"We couldn't change them too much because they're so famous," Shane reasons. "If you do, people will slate you for changing their favourite tune! We put our own stamp on them vocally as much as we could but some were so beautiful, we literally sang them as they were. With a ten year improvement on production!"

The album's theme certainly sees Westlife in their element. Self-confessed romantics, they list the likes of Celine Dion's 'Because You Love Me' (Nicky), Lonestar`s 'Amazed' (Shane), Bryan Adam's 'I'm Ready' (Kian) and Maxwell's 'Whenever, Wherever, Whatever' (Mark) among their personal favourite love songs, while Nicky and Kian cite 'The Notebook' as an all-time great romantic film.

"Rent it tonight!" Kian laughs.

"It's unbelievable," Nicky agrees. "I think we're all quite romantic. My wedding day was my most romantic day. It was amazing because you want to do it loads of times, but you only ever want to do it once with that one person, so you never want it to be over."

The album is therefore one of the band's most intimate and emotive yet, as they pour their own experiences and feelings into versions of 'You Light Up My Life', 'You Are So Beautiful (To Me)', 'Have You Ever Been In Love?' and O Town's 'All Or Nothing', a song originally written for Westlife before the American boy band went on to have a US Number One with it. Perhaps most striking of all, though, is Westlife's gorgeous version of 'Total Eclipse Of The Heart'.

"It was a mad idea because it wasn't like anything we've ever done before," Mark admits. "It could have been a disaster but it seems to have worked really well and everyone we play it to is really surprised."

"It's a great song and actually it's one of the best songs on the album," Shane agrees. "Simon [Cowell] loves it, he thinks it's unreal. Sometimes, I think he likes songs that are out there just because he wants to prove to himself that they can be done so he can say 'I was right!'"

The album also includes 'All Out Of Love', a duet with Australian singer Delta Goodrem. "We'd been thinking of doing a duet with her for ages because she's such an amazing singer," Kian says. "When we did well in Australia with the last album, we started talking about doing it again and luckily, she said yes. We really like her and we're very happy with how the song turned out."

It sits perfectly on an album that should stir memories in many fans, and introduce some all-time classic tracks to others. 'The Love Album' is a chance for Westlife to show just what they are capable of vocally while pouring their heart and soul into versions of songs that are bound to be treasured just as much as the originals.

"We're absolutely delighted with the album," Nicky says. "And I think it will surprise people."

"We've really enjoyed choosing and recording all these amazing songs, so we just hope other people like it," Shane concludes. "Our fans have stuck by us all this time, it's really important to us to give them music to get excited about. And for a few months at least, the world will have a bit more love in it!"

www.westlife.com

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MY FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE

Children Collide
I was very young - very very young – and I tried something for the first time and it was at Big Day Out and Sound Garden were playing and it was meant to be the last Big Day Out ever and I was lying down on the grass watching Sound Garden and feeling [ahh] pretty good. laughs

Ideal Lineup?
Wow this could take me days to go through – The Birthday Party, Scientists, The Drones, The Stabs who are a Melbourne band, Hungary Ghosts… I could go on for ever!

Fave artist you've seen at a Music Festival?
Oh, when I was really really young, too young to be at a festival I got snuck in to Summersault Festival and saw Sonic You play… that was amazing!

Tips for attending a Music Festival?
Stay out of the sun definitely! I’m a very very white man and at Big Day Out I got burnt just walking from our band tent to the stage… 30 seconds in the sun – so definitely slip slop slap!