Westlife – Turnaround

By Tan Lili • UrbanWire
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These five luscious Irish lads, who gave us smash hits like “Swear It Again” and “Uptown Girl”, are back again on the pop music radar with their 5th album titled Turnaround after a year’s break. The noticeable changes in Westlife’s latest effort are their purportedly more mature music, and probably unofficial leader Shane Filan’s mohawk on the cover (which almost completely destroyed his squeaky clean image).

Turnaround comprises 12 tracks (making this their shortest album to date), each is uniquely-flavoured, but all essentially boil down to what they do best – pop. Here’s a lowdown on some of our choice picks.

“Mandy” is a brilliant cover of Barry Manilow’s already-splendid original. The boys’ distinct voices bring a note of freshness to this beautiful ballad.

The second track off this album, “Hey Whatever”, has a highly catchy mid-tempo chorus that’s bound to get you humming along whenever it’s played. A wise choice indeed to make this their first single, as it unveils a different side of Westlife – a rockier and a more upbeat side.

“Obvious” is the quintessential Westlife song. With lyrics like ‘…and since you never noticed, the way that we belong, I’ll sing it in a love song’, this highly-anticipated 3rd single is bound to set every teenage girl’s heart aflame.

The seventh song off Turnaround is its title track, which promises to surprise fans with its funky electronic beats give it a bit of a rock edge, and Westlife have pulled it off without sacrificing their trademark pop appeal.

“To Be With You” is probably the only cover that Westlife fails to carry off well. Shane tries a tad too hard to sound like original artiste Mr Big (think Bryan Adams), which may leave you squirming in your seat.

For those who love Westlife’s wistful ballads, “What Do They Know” is the ideal song for you. This last track is a perfect end to Turnaround, with the final 2 lines declaring ‘…we’ll still be here, we’ll prove them wrong’.

If you liked Coast to Coast and World of our Own, you will definitely not be disappointed with Turnaround. With most of the band members married, Westlife croons songs that are no longer puppy love tunes. Going by this, you can expect more of Westlife in years to come. For chronic critics of Westlife’s lacklustre music talent, cut these young men some slack. After all, we love Westlife for what they bring to us – tracks after endless tracks of pop music.

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