Westlife History

Westlife orginated from Sligo in the West of Ireland. With Boyzone singer Ronan Keating backing them up and Louis Walsh as their manager, they were bound to be a great success. Originall known as Westside was made up 3 founding members Shane Filan, Kian Egan and Mark Feehily from sligo who were in a band called IOU with two Dubliners Nicky Byrne and Bryan (though spells it as Brian now) McFadden to produce the hunky Westlife we know and love today.

The band have come a long way since they first broke out on the music scene in April 1999, making and breaking records as they went. From support acts for Boyzone and Backstreet Boys to the record breaking artists they are now. Since their debut single Swear It Again, they have had 14 UK No 1's so far, they aim for at least 20 UK No 1's. With 14 No 1's they are tied level with Sir Cliff Richard with most UK No 1's with only the Beatles and Elvis ahead of them with most UK No 1's.
They have also dueted with many stars world wide including Mariah Carey, Diana Ross, Donny Osmond, Lionel Ritchie and many more.
They were the first boyband to top UK Charts with their 1st 7 debut singles at No 1 placing them in the Guinness book of records when My Love went straight to No 1 in Oct 2000, beating the Beatles and Spice Girls record. It took the lads 2 years and 10 months to achieve 13 No 1's which is 3 months faster than the Beatles. They are the only artist to have won Record of the Year four times since the awards was casted.

Despite Brian quitting the band on 9th March 2004 (roughly two weeks before tour started) to be with his family more, and critics all predicting the end of the fab five, they carried on and continued with their tour and brought out an album of rat pack covers Allow us to be Frank, which was the only album other than their debut album not to reach the No 1 in the album chart. No official singles were released from this album in Uk or Ireland but a few songs were released as downloads.

After the Number 1's Tour in 2005, Westlife took their longest break in their career, they had 4 months off. In that time, Nicky enrolled in an acting course in New York achieving a dipolma for that. Shane and Gillian became proud parents to Nicole Rose Filan on 23 July 2005. Mark announced that he was gay on 19th August and was currently in a relationship with Kevin McDaid of former boyband V.

That autumn they bounced back with a brand new album and single You Raise Me Up taken from the album Face to Face. Both album and single were No 1 but this was also the first time in which the band had both single and album both at No 1 at the same time.

Often branded as the Kings of Covers due to numerous covers of songs such as Abba's I have a dream, Billy Joel's Uptown Girl, Barry Mannilow's Mandy etc but not all their music are covers. They have written their own material but not all have been released as singles, the only self written material released was Bop Bop Baby written by Shane Filan and Brian McFadden which only reached No 4 in the singles chart. Majority of their own self written material are usually reserved for their b sides on singles

Their fan base is not only based in UK and Ireland they have fan bases all over the world. Austraila, South East Asia, Europe, Latin America, South America and even Iraq...

They released The Love Album in November 2006, an album of carefully selected love songs, this album contained covers of Bettie Midler's The Rose, Bonnie Tyler's Total eclipse of the heart (this was due to be released as a single in March but was cancelled due to the clash with the tour), Lionel Ritchie's Easy and many other songs.
When The Love Album was released, there was comptition between who would win the number on album chart spot. At the time, there was Oasis, The Beatles, U2 and George Michael all competing for the top spot. The newspaper The Sun even put an article in the papers urging people to not to buy Westlife's album and support Oasis, but in the end Westlife still came out on top.
The Love Tour 2007 kicked off in Australia, reaching South Africa before hitting the UK and ending in Dublin in time for birth of Nicky's twins. On 20th April 2007, Nicky and wife Georgina became proud parents to Rocco and Jay Byrne, they were born roughly 8 weeks early.

The lads released a brand new studio album in Nov 2007, this year they have included help from different producers other than Steve Mac, it is rumoured the pop singer Mika would be penning a song for the lads' new album but was not confirmed.
Westlife's 9th studio album 'Back Home' is due was released on 5th November 2007, it was rumoured that Spice Girls, who had recently reformed, had changed their album release date to avoid another clash with Westlife.
Westlife's first single from the new album is called Home a cover version which was originally sung by Michael Buble only reached No 3 in the UK charts
The lads have announced that they would not be releasing an album in 2008 but will be doing a one off concert in Croke Park, Dublin to celebrate the 10th anniversary
In Christmas 2007, Kian Egan proposed to his girlfriend Jodi Albert of 5 years who glady accepted, despite telling the press he would not follow in the footsteps of bandmates Shane Filan and Nicky Byrne who had done the same back in 2002
The second single from the album "Us against the world" released Jan 2008 reached No 8 in the UK charts making it their lowest chart record to date.
Shane also at this time announced that he was expecting a second child with wife Gilian. Their tour in New Zealand sold out in 3 hours. Due to high demand for tickets they added extra dates to the tour for Belfast, Sheffield, Wembley.
On the 16th June 2006, the band released a new book called 'Westlife: Our Story' written by the lads. They've had book signings at Lakeside, Piccadily, Milton Keynes, Liverpool, Manchester, Dublin, Belfast, Sligo and Galway