AJ MCLEAN: Mentioned On Westlife’s Surprising New Album

Westlife’s much-anticipated brand new album, ‘Where We Are’, was released two weeks’ ago. Cue girly screaming!The first single, the surprisingly indie-influenced ‘What About Now’ was released a month earlier, on October 26, reaching No 2 in the Irish charts in the first week it came out (pipped at the post by the unstoppable Geordie Cheryl Cole).In an interview with the Daily Mirror, Mark Feehily explained that the band “wanted the first single from our new album to be somewhere between the Westlife sound our fans know and love, and the new direction we’re heading in. We’ve been experimenting with a fresh vibe on this record. After eleven years we see this as phase two of the Westlife story.”

Indeed, the album contains other many surprises, including the track ‘Shadows’, which was written for by Ryan Tedder and AJ McLean for the Backstreet Boys’ seventh album This Is Us but didn’t make the track listing. It was subsequently purchased by everyone’s favourite cranky record-label owner Simon Cowell for Leona Lewis’s second album Echo, but it was decided that it better suited a boy band and was consequently given to Westlife to record. Another style departure comes with ‘The Difference’ an anthemic number with crescendo percussion.

While the songs are immediately recognisable as Westlife classics, complete with soaring melodies and stirring lyrics, the boys have been given an undeniably contemporary twist. It remains to be seen whether this will be the album that finally allows the boys to break into that elusive market, America. One thing’s for sure, though: the album will be found in many a Christmas stocking both here and in the UK.

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