Ronan Keating still on a merry-go-round

The sophomore jinx is every pop singer’s fear, especially the graduates of the boy band conservatory. Having been sheltered in a campus of airbrushed images, sanitized lyrics instant reconstituted music, electronically processed voices, and even orthodontically corrected smiles, the summa cum fraude of boylandia sallies forth on his own, only to find that he has become superfluous. He begins to sing an old song to himself: The merry-go-round is beginning to slow now. / Have I stayed too long at the fair? / The music has stopped,/ and the children must go now. / Have I stayed too long at the fair? Eventually, like the proverbial seed that fell on the open road, he is "trampled down and devoured by the birds of the air."

In Ronan Keating’s case, however, the merry-go-round ( or more apropos, roller coaster) has, to his relief, not decelerated yet; it is merely making a turn and, in the absence of the negative press that attended the launch of his solo debut, perhaps even zooming up. Ronan admitted to worrying that his fans had left him, but with both his current album Destination and its carrier single If Tomorrow Never Comes debuting at number one in the U.K., he apparently underestimated his public. He is also gaining airplay here if MTV is to be believed.

It seems, then, that the album is properly entitled Destination. It signals Ronan’s arrival as a solo artist, with a sound that departs from his boy band past and which might give him the "respectability" he lacks. "I know now the sort of music that I want to make," he said in a recent interview. "That’s why I called this album Destination, because I’ve finally arrived there."

What is this sound?

On the one hand, he seems to be heading not for County Kerry, where he spent many a childhood holiday, but for County Kenny (Rogers). A fourth of the album, including the carrier single (originally done by Garth Brooks), is country, a genre with which he seems to have a natural affinity, In fact, he had a hit in the country charts last year as writer of The Long Goodbye. The song is included in the album and is, in his estimation, "the best song I have written." This album also includes his version of We’ve Got Tonight, a hit for Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton in the early 1980s.

Looking back, one sees that Ronan never hid his fascination for country music. Even when he was singing with Boyzone, he would put on cowboy hats to go with his Armani suits. Remaking I Love the Way You Love Me, Boyzone’s fourth number one song, was also his idea. Before it was released as a duet, he had recorded it as it was originally arranged: as a country ballad. He also wanted to record If Tomorrow Never Comes with the boys after watching a Garth Brooks concert in Dublin. Finally, the look he sported in his last video (Lovin’ Each Day) was also western, from his denim jacket and motorcycle down to the blinking motel lights in the background. (The pictures used in the current album, though shot in Dublin, have the small-town, "Bible-belt" feel about them.)

The relative artlessness and occasional earthiness of country seem suitable for Ronan’s voice, which critics have compared to a goat’s. (At certain registers, it bleats.) If anything, it is a step away from the manufactured gloss of boy band pop, and these days, it seems that anything is better than boy band pop. If Ronan’s interest in country is sustained, it may not be long before we hear fiddles, banjos, and harmonicas in his records, as well as descriptions of rural topography peppered with nuggets of practical sententiae (e.g., Tell that someone that you love/just what you’re thinking of/if tomorrow never comes). We may even see his pictures line the walls of the next multinational ribs and roast chicken fast food.

On the other hand, the rest of the album is the result of his continuing collaboration with Gregg Alexander. To him does Ronan owe the more memorable tunes in the album (Time for Love, I Love It When We Do and Come Be My Baby), indeed, of his young career as a solo artist. Alexander’s songs are of the soft rock variety characterized by simple and repetitive melodies, the reliance on electric guitars, reverb, and nonsense syllables to fill in breaks, an optimistic though not uncritically roseate view of life, and the intermittent use of "babe," "baby" and "girl" as terms of endearment and "c’mon," "yeah," and "uh-huh" as idiolectical markers. It is generally a fun, upbeat sound, the type that gets one’s heart thumping when it is played at full volume; so that even if some listeners may find parts of this sophomore album sophomoric, it is, at least, not soporific.

Ronan’s shift is more than auditory. As if to accentuate the new, less fabricated "Ronan Keating," the packaging of the CD abandons what by now are the conventions of boy band CDs. There are no long-winded notes or dedications studded with ellipses, crossed, or tiny hearts and signed "hugs and kisses." Ronan simply thanks "all those who have listened, played, bought, loved, and believed." He is also photographed unsmiling. In one picture his figure is half-covered in shadow and framed by a window that looks out into what appears to be a yard full of litter. The picture is such a far cry from his cheery Boyzone days, as to suggest that he is all grown up, has seen the sordid side of the world, and is here to tell us about it. (The censorious critic, however, may ask, "Is he Lazarus or just Prufrock?")

Recently, too, he has been shattering whatever hopes there are of ever singing with the rest of Boyzone, and his language has been increasingly foul. Listen: I said that [that he would stay a virgin until his wedding night] when I was a 16-year-old gobshite and didn’t know my arse from my elbow. … Was I honest about it? What do you think? Our target audience was young girls. We were seen as role models. We were in a successful band. We were on the road. Of course there were groupies. Like any young lads, we had stuff to get out of our systems. Let’s just say I never went short. The remark is shocking, coming as it does from someone who used to sing. Love me for a reason/Let the reason be love.

There is something of the Fall in this, although Ronan prefers to think of it as a graduation. The innocence of Boyzone was certainly one giant and profitable media fabrication, but if romance isn’t his roller coaster’s destination, some listeners are eager to return Ronan the ticket. Of course, like Adam, they cannot. Boyzone (and boy bands) are, to borrow from Shakespeare, " a dream too flattering sweet to be substantial." Against the irrefrangible reality of growing up and growing into balding heads, skinny legs, and "one-night cheap motels," it dissolves. One simply enjoys the ride for what it is – and hopes that the landing isn’t too hard, Ronan apparently is doing that already.