MANILA, Philippines - To be told by a 23-year-old hotel receptionist that she listened to your music throughout her years in grade school must make any singer feel old. That, we were told, was what happened to Westlife when the boys checked in at the EDSA Shangri-La. But last Thursday night at the Araneta Coliseum, Shane Filan, Mark Feehily, Kian Egan and Nicky Byrne, all in their 30s now, hardly looked any older — or less prepossessing — than when they last came to the country five years ago.
It has been more than 12 years since the release of Westlife’s first single, Swear It Again, which became the first in an unprecedented string of No. 1 hits. The boys — there were five of them then — were being managed by the frontman of another Irish boy band. When Bryan McFadden decided to go solo in 2004, it was thought that the end of the group was imminent. But the remaining boys played on. Since the separation, they have made five more albums, visited the top of the music charts a few more times, and weathered a few National Enquirer-type controversies. Coming in November is a second greatest hits album, a rarity for any boy band. (Indeed, a boy band this old is a contradiction.)
Twelve years is a record for any pop act, especially given that the group has not changed its sound and style that much. The British boy band craze of the 1990s had given way to more rough and rocky acts on one hand and to Disney-fabricated teen stars on the other; but Westlife apparently did not get lost in the shuffle. True, the initial mass hysteria that made the group arguably the most commercially successful British pop act of its time has dissipated somewhat, but the core fan base has remained large enough to sustain tour after tour and CD after CD.
And the Philippines appears to be a lucrative market yet. This is Westlife’s fourth visit to the country. Looking at the size of the crowd, one would think that it was its first.
Was the fourth time just as good the first?
It would not be impertinent to say that it was. In fact, the boys sounded better. Bryan had been the second man of the group, but with him away the vocal burden has had to be more equitably shared among the remaining members. Shane, the lead, carried his bulk of the singing predictably well; Mark was irrepressible. And the other two? They made a respectable showing — not that anybody would have minded much if they had not.
There was, too, the stage patter, always a test of a performer’s charisma. One knows that all is scripted, of course, but one is willing to play along: How charming they seemed when they stopped to address the audience. But a fly had to land on the ointment. Inviting three members of the crowd to the stage, the group asked each one to name which song was his or her favorite, ostensibly so that it would sing the song — a kind of “by-request” session. One of guests answered, My Love. It was a song that the group had just sung — and with the crowd, too. Shane had the graciousness to say, “We sang that for you.” But one of the other boys (which one?) said, “Hello?” When Dionne Warwick scolded latecomers at her concert at the Aliw Theater some years ago, her position was at least defensible. That derisive “Hello?” was just a case of rudeness.
The other downer is the inevitable one of some songs — even the best-selling ones — being left out of the program. But what else was one to expect, given that the group’s repertoire had grown and that the show was only a little over an hour long? Westlife, after all, was here primarily to promote its latest album Gravity, from which they sang at least two songs (Safe and Beautiful Tonight). Still, the loudest cheers noticeably were for the earlier, more familiar and obviously more beloved songs (Seasons in the Sun, My Love).
“We had joy, we had fun,/we had seasons in the sun,” the boys sang, lines, appropriately it seems now, from an old song. Youthful (childish?) enthusiasms cool down with age, but last Thursday night a little stoking was all it took to rekindle them. On the first beat, the three front acts, the 30-minute delay, and the dozen or so years that separate the boys’ first single from their forthcoming album and that perhaps also separate the first stirrings of romance in an adolescent heart (now a memory tucked away in a corner) from the drudge and dust of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeping in its petty pace — all that vanished. That hotel receptionist, had she been there, would have felt like 12 again, defying gravity, flying without wings.