Westlife - If I Let You Go (Radio Edit).mp3 Westlife - Swear It Again (Radio Edit).mp3 So, it was unsurprising – and actually not at all unwise – that they instead focused on their core market.Westlife - Greatest Hits (Deluxe Edition) That being said, Westlife’s early album campaigns were rolled out in an entirely risk-averse way, and few things posed a more significant threat to derailing a group’s success than becoming fixated on America. Yet, it feels almost incidental because there was never any serious attempt to follow it up until World Of Our Own in 2002, which is quite unusual when they had attained something that so many other acts desperately yearned for.
It should have been, though, because a top 20 single in America was a huge achievement. By July 2000 – when the single peaked at #20 on the Billboard Hot 100 – Westlife had five #1 singles in the UK, so perhaps, by comparison, this didn’t seem much to write home about. It never seemed to be as big a deal as it should’ve been, though. Given Westlife’s strong affiliation with Cheiron, who were pumping hit after hit into the American charts at the time, it’s faintly ironic that it was Swear It Again, which became the group’s only major success there. It’s not that sales were entirely unimportant, but the status associated with the group’s rapid ascent and accumulation of #1 singles held just as much value to an audience who were not yet fully-fledged chart geeks with the ability to scrutinise week-by-week stats. However, that doesn’t diminish what Westlife achieved because they quickly occupied a corner of the market and made it their own. Nevertheless, it’s interesting that despite all the hype, the single’s first-week sales of 102,000 copies were still relatively modest by 1999’s standards the ninth-lowest of the year, in fact. Quite when the group crossed over into the realm of fanbase-driven #1 singles is unclear, although it was probably a bit too soon to tar them with that brush here. In the UK, it gave Westlife their first chart-topper. Thus, to the surprise of absolutely no one, Swear It Again was a huge hit. Not everyone gets a turn in the spotlight here, but there’s equally nothing to suggest that they weren’t all capable of doing so.īoth videos approach their subject matter differently while being entirely appropriate for the markets they were trying to court. The most notable point of difference the song establishes is that it does sound as if it’s being performed by a group – rather than two lead singers and three backing vocalists – when all five members sing together. The song is never overcooked yes, it’s performed with doe-eyed sincerity, but everything is kept in check even the presence of a key-change is debatable (the first and last choruses really aren’t that different at all). His voice feels steady and safe, while Mark Feehily comes in on the middle-eight with a slight urgency and drama that ably lifts Swear It Again towards its finale: “ The more I know of you is the more I know I love you, and the more that I’m sure I want you forever and ever more and the more that you love me, the more that I know, oh that I’m never gonna let you go, gotta let you know that I …”. Shane Filan is immediately established as the lead singer with a tone that has a similar – albeit softened – twang to that of Ronan Keating. But in hindsight, it’s terrific and perfectly sets out their stall. Of course, because Swear It Again was so readily emulated, it’s easy to overlook it as just one of many, many songs that sound alike within Westlife’s oeuvre.
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Setting up Steve Mac and Wayne Hector to nurture and refine their talent through Westlife allowed the pair to craft a musical identity that, for a long while, was moulded almost exclusively to the group. But that sound would never be ‘theirs’ it would always be shared with acts like the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC. Arguably it would’ve been the easier thing to do. Of course, thanks to their alignment with Cheiron, the group could still dip their toe into more contemporaneous waters. But it doesn’t wed itself intensely to a specific era of the charts Swear It Again would sound as at home on Westlife’s third album as it did their first. Make no mistake, the track is still unrelentingly slushy: “ I’m never gonna treat you bad, ‘cos I never wanna see you sad, I swore to share your joy and your pain, and I swear it all over again”. It rejected the growing trend in boyband balladry towards heightened, (gloriously) gloopy production values.
Buoyed by gentle piano riffs and a swirling orchestral accompaniment, Swear It Again was a bold statement as the group’s debut single. The approach here was almost to take pop music back down a notch or two.