Mark & Nicky Interview From Indonesian Magazine

Mark & Nicky Interview From Indonesian Magazine - October 2006

Westlife should win an award for being the longest lasting boyband in Brit pop history From the fresh faced boys singing tunes the likes of "Swear It Again" & "Flying Without Wings", to four grown men crooning Frank Sinatra covers and melodic songs like " You Raise Me Up ", Westlife have grown up not just physically, but musically as well.

The happily married Shane & Nicky, Kian (in a steady relationship) & Mark (who came out of the closet about his sexuality last year) were bright and chirpy at their group interviews when they were in town recently to perform at the Face to Face Asian Tour. Teens got the chance to chat with Nicky & Mark, to find out more about their growth as a band.

Teens: What's the biggest challenge you've faced trying to change the perception of Westlife being just a boyband?
Mark: Naturally, over the years, the fan base that started with us from the very beginning has grown up with us. I think many of them probably have been 15 or 16 when we started out, & that’s 7 or 8 years ago. Now they're 22 or 23 & everybody including us has grown up in this time. One of the things that we've done to show we've grown up, but wasn’t necessarily well-received in South East Asia, was the release of the Rat Pack album that we did. It actually did quite well back home & I think that's something an average 4-member boyband that is all about cheesy smiles wouldn’t have the ability to pull off. You have to have a bit more depth than that, and the album definitely showed that we're not just cheesy boyband - we're young men who can sing different type of songs.

Teens: Do you think you'd ever get too old for all this, or get sick of your job?
Mark: Well, I reckon Nicky's already too old, so he's proof that you can still do it, even if you seem too old for it! Ha ha ha!
Nicky: It’s the buzz of surviving that keeps us going. There are so many bands that have come and gone. Bands that were together when we started, like Five or Spice Girls, many of them have all come and gone. We've always had a dream that we wanted to be the band that changed things, or the normal perception of the length of time a boyband could last. Many boybands seem to only be able to last for 5 years - that's always seemed to be the cut off point. We've always known that we have the talent to succeed, & that we have the desire to succeed. The most important thing was that we, as individuals, had to make sure of, was that we didn’t fall out or become enemies. In these eight years, we've all had our arguments but we’ve never really struck each other - and succeeded. We've actually let previous tour managers go because they started getting too friendly with one particular member and started working harder for that person instead of for the band. It’s a funny business to be in, but when you have the desire to do it for so long, then it’s possible to last as long as we have. We don’t know how long it'll last, but we're just riding the wave.

Teens: Is there anything you'd be happy never to have to do again?
Nicky: wait for Mark to get out of bed!
Mark: (laughs) They have to do that quite a lot, really.

Teens: You're supposed to be releasing yet another album soon… What can we expect to hear?
Nicky: We just completed recording the album, which is due for release in November. It’s a themed album called The Love Album. Simon Cowell & our manager wanted us to do a 'love' album of cover songs of classic love songs. We have Total Eclipse Of The Heart by Bonnie Tyler or You Light Up My Life by Debbie Boon... songs like these. The album will be made up of 13 or 14 songs that we chose collectively. There are some really good songs. We actually wanted to do a full studio album with original tracks, like how we released Face To Face last year, which has been successful. It was an album that kind of kick-started our career again in many different countries. That’s the album that brought us here for our concert, and to places like Australia, which we're going to tour next year. But Simon's a good judge of the quality of original songs available out there, and there aren’t many suitable for a band like Westlife (shrugs) So it came down to us doing a cover album, and we'll promote it, tour it and then look at releasing a studio album next year.

Teens: What was your biggest reservation about doing an album of long song covers?
Mark: There are so many great love songs from the past, and we couldn’t just pick all our favourite love songs for the album. Each song that we chose had to fit into the Westlife style. Another thing to be careful about was not going down the karaoke room. It actually made it a lot easier to choose songs.
Nicky: At the same time, we're pretty sure that the songs on the album wouldn’t be mistaken for karaoke versions because its obviously Westlife singing the songs, and we'd like to think that there's certain level of professionalism in our versions of the songs, & that the songs will sound like us.

Teens: Any all time favourite love songs?
Mark: Probably anything by Prince. "Purple Rain" or something.

Teens: Will there be any duets on this album?
Mark: Actually I was just thinking about it the other day, and realised that we've done a lot of duets on our previous albums, like Mariah Carey and Diana Ross. It’s something that we like to do because it brings another voice into the equation. It’s nice to have a different voice winging with us once in a while. On this album, we recorded a track with Delta Goodrem. We've become quite good friends with her recently - we met her through Brian and we know her really well now. She's an extremely nice girl, like a princess. We're also going to record a duet with Lionel Richie, something that’s quite down our streets in terms of the type of music and fanbase.

Credit/Source: Teens Magazine / Mae