What’s new with Blue & Westlife

Deep in December it’s nice to remember, goes a song from an off-Broadway play; and the two top British boy bands Westlife and Blue have put out new albums that do just that.

Allow Us to Be Frank, an album which has Shane, Mark, Nicky, and Kian imitating Frank Sinatra, is a first for Westlife. It is the group’s first album without Bryan McFadden, who has embarked on a solo career (which has so far been successful). It is also the first Westlife album to miss the number one slot in the UK music charts. The carrier single from the album, Ain’t That a Kick in the Head, is, finally, the first Westlife single to debut out of the top three. Locally, the album appears to be generating slower sales than its predecessors. Inauspicious signs these are for the boys whose touch was once like Midas’ (seven consecutive number ones, 13 number ones overall).

The people behind the idea of a Rat Pack Westlife must be kicking themselves in the head now.

One reason for the decline is probably the glut in the market of artists who in the last few years have been capitalizing on the great oldies. To name a few, there are Robbie Williams, Michael Bublé, Rod Stewart, Cyndi Lauper, and (locally) Martin Nivera. Westlife’s effort comes rather late in the game, and for those already biased against the group, Allow Us to Be Frank only reinforces the impression that the boys, never known for writing new material in the first place, are indeed pop music’s vultures: birds of prey more than songbirds.

This is rather unfortunate, because Allow Us to Be Frank is the boys’ most interesting work so far. The best way to take it is as a complete act as one would a costume drama or a biopic. From the sepia cover to the boys’ fedora hats and tiepins, this album recreates the Rat Pack look and sound. It is uncanny (though the purists may cringe at the thought) that the boys do manage to sound like Sinatra and Dean Martin. The boys are vocal actors, and they portray their roles down to the last note with painstaking accuracy. Listen, for instance, to the spoken outro of Come Fly with Me: And don’t tell your mama!

If one considers the fan base of Westlife (mostly early adolescents and teens), then the project acquires some educational value inasmuch as period movies do. Here are competent, though admittedly unadventurous, renditions of Fly Me to the Moon, Mack the Knife, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, and The Way You Look Tonight. This is a package that does not so much reinvent the old standards as introduce them to the new generation. If Westlife may be accused of covering one song too many, it is, at least in this album, covering the right songs in the right style.

The key is to allow Westlife to be Frank–and the boys will do a good job.

Meanwhile, Blue’s offering is Best of Blue, a compilation of the group’s hit songs and some new material. Like Westlife, Blue has apparently hit a plateau. When the boys Lee, Duncan, Anthony, and Simon were in Manila earlier this year, they dismissed rumors that they were splitting up: they would just be hibernating. The fact is, however, when such groups put out a greatest hits package, the end is almost always at hand.

Currently, the boys are either resting or pursuing solo projects. Duncan is probably the most visible, having recorded a duet (I Believe My Heart) with classical singer Keedie, taken from the new Andrew Lloyd Webber musical The Woman in White. The duet peaked at number two in the UK but is sadly still unavailable locally. Lee has just made a film called Changes, about "underprivileged inner-city kids."

As for Best of Blue, it is probably the one Blue CD the casual fan must own. It is a distillate of the Blue sound–funky, energetic, and in places gritty. Going down the song list, one is impressed by what the group has accomplished in just four years, specially the duets with Stevie Wonder and Elton John. Although some of the songs tend to sound alike (e.g., All Rise and One Love), the fact is compensated for by the extraordinary voice of the group’s lead singer Lee.

An extra attraction is that the album includes remixes of their old songs, so even those who have the old Blue albums will have something new to listen to. Such, for instance, are One Love the Sequel, which features Kyla and Vina Morales, Best in Me (2004), which is given a slightly different instrumental arrangement, and Fly By II, which has a different ending from that of the original edit.

Of the new recordings, Love at First Sight is ballad as infectious as the group’s earlier hits in the genre (i.e., If You Come Back and Guilty). Get Down on It, the new release, has the group singing with another Motown legend Kool and the Gang. It is, however, a rather unremarkable remake. Curtain Falls, a song that the group premiered at the Manila concert, is an unruffled anticipation of the end:

We’ll be ready when the curtain might fall

Feel my heart beating when the crowd calls

I gotta read between the lines

’Cause I’m living out the script of my life

’Cause we all got a part we must play

And I’ve done it but I’ve done it my way

I gotta read between the lines

In the script of my life

In its own way, it is the group’s thumping R-and-B version of Sinatra’s My Way.

These new offerings by Westlife and Blue show that there is certainly much to look back on and possibly some things to look forward to, even though, as the song goes, "you know the snow will follow."