Boys for all occasions

Like the boys that make them up, boy bands come in different packages. As a specific musical type that emerged in the early 1990s, they share some essential characteristics (e.g., a generally wholesome image, a membership of three to five, each in his late teens or early 20s, a shelf life of up to, but usually less than, five or six years). Within the domain, however, are variables to suit specific moods and tastes. One can have his boy band with or without facial hair, for example, or with more or less muscle, and, as sauce on the side, with the twang of a guitar or the pitter-patter of synchronized dance steps. The permutations and combinations are numerous, and, as another paper pointed out, there can be a number of character types per boy band (e.g., the belter, the leader, the fashionista, etc.). "Yet every mother breeds not sons alike," wrote Shakespeare, and that is apparently true of record labels that spawn boy bands as well.

However one likes his boy band, the aficionado is bound sooner or later to form a judgment on Blue and Westlife, arguably the top selling boy bands today and probably the last of the breed. Westlife, launched in 1999, is currently the oldest existing boy band, with a résumé that is enviable by any standard: 12 number one singles (just four short of the record set by the Beatles), five number one albums, and three Record of the Year awards. It also has the distinction of being the only boy band to live beyond a greatest hits album. Blue has yet to reach such a status, but already it has a number of Brit Awards to its credit, three chart topping albums, and eight top 10 hits.

In sound and style, however, Blue and Westlife represent two ends of a spectrum–proof of boy band heterogeneity–each with its own niche and with its own kind of pleasure to offer. Their latest efforts show them further securing their respective places in the boy band annals.

Guilty is Blue’s third album. It is in all respects as good as its previous albums All Rise and One Love, with the additional attraction that a number of the songs were written by the boys themselves (Lee Ryan, Duncan James, Simon Webbe, and Anthony Costa). As was true of its last albums, what makes Guilty worth listening to is Ryan’s grand (and grandstanding) vocal style, for which he may be called a male Celine Dion. The voice is as full as it is high, and at its most soulful is above the material that it is made to sing.

Guilty reaffirms the group’s commitment to the R&B sound. More than half of it is songs with heart-thumping rhythms, in a number of which raps Webbe. I Wanna Know, Back It Up, Stand Up are typical and competently rendered Blue material. One song, Alive, even sounds like a re-dubbed version of their early hits All Rise and Fly By.

Of more interest, then, are those songs that lend variety to the album and reveal Blue’s affinities with other boy bands. Rock the Night has a disco feel that should remind listeners of the songs of Take That, the father of British boy bands. Where You Want Me has a "hook" of a refrain, which interestingly alludes to the sounds of A1 (when it isn’t doing ballads), the Hansons, and 5ive. Somehow the eclecticism works. The best track, however, is the lead single, a ballad co-written by James and Gary Barlow of Take That. It continues the pseudo-legalese of All Rise albeit to pursue a different theme: "If it’s wrong to tell the truth, / What am I supposed to do? / All I want to do is speak my mind. / If it’s wrong to do what’s right, / I’m prepared to testify. / If loving you with all my heart’s a crime, / Then I’m guilty." The only song in the album that matches the hyperbolic diction of Guilty without is No Goodbye, which closes what is Blue’s most convincing effort to date.

The current single from the album is Signed, Sealed, Delivered, a collaboration with Stevie Wonder and Angie Stone. It may make one recall True to Your Heart, Wonder’s earlier duet with a boy band (98 Degrees). Blue’s, as to be expected, has more "blood," the music of 98 Degrees hardly ever rising above normal body temperature. Here again is evidence of some variety even within a subtype, in this case, the R&B-inspired boy band.

R&B Westlife is not. The Irish boy band (consisting of Shane Filan, Mark Feehily, Bryan McFadden, Kian Egan, and Nicky Byrne) is essentially a pop group, with romantic ballads as a specialization, and that is what it offers in Turnaround. This fifth album adds 13 new songs to the Westlife canon that pretty much follow the same formula as their old hits. And as to be expected of a Westlife album, there are remakes: Mandy (Barry Manilow) and To Be with You (Mr. Big).

Whatever turnaround there is lies more in the fact that the songs for inclusion in the album were apparently more judiciously selected. Each of the group’s previous albums contains, on the average, 16 songs, many of which are maudlin and unmemorable. The boys cannot be faulted for monotony this time around, as the number of songs in Turnaround, none of which was penned by the boys, are just right. The few uptempo tunes liven up the collection at the right places. One of the two remakes, finally, is something of a turnaround for the band as well. Westlife has been faulted for its unimaginative rendering of old songs. This version of Mandy at least adds a coda to distinguish it from the Manilow version.

The more remarkable songs in the album include the gospel-inspired Hey, Whatever, which espouses a carefree and somewhat egocentric philosophy; Heal, which reverses the traditional conventions of courtly love and which has solo parts for all five boys; the title track Turnaround, which combines electronica and pop (recalling songs from Madonna’s Ray of Light album); and Thank You, which is as infectious as the band’s previous hit World of Our Own and in its bridge reminds one of Ronan Keating’s Lovin’ Each Day. What Do They Know rehearses a favorite theme of 17th-century English verse (i.e., the superior status of lovers vis-à-vis the common crowd).

The equivalent in Turnaround of Flying without Wings, the Westlife anthem, is When a Woman Loves a Man, which has the same tripartite structure of the other song. (Interesting, however, are the echoes one hears of an Anne Lennox song.) It is songs like these that has made Westlife the equivalent of the troubadours; they express the gender politics of their medieval counterparts, especially in their idealization of woman: "When the stars are in her eyes / And the sun is in her smile / She’ll be a mother and a child / But all at the same time / When a woman loves a man. / She’ll be your air, / She’ll bring you life / She’ll make me sacrifice / When a woman loves a man."

All told, these latest efforts by Blue and Westlife show that they are sticking to the formulas that have worked so well for them in the past. It would be interesting to see whether trends in the industry would force them to reinvent themselves. However they turn out eventually, what is certain is that we are being served two dishes, the spicy and the sweet, both delectable, to enjoy which requires only our matching them to the proper occasions.