Well a hearty good morning to you (and you, and you, and you), and welcome to our latest instalment of overlooked pop goodness that is Pop Essays. This week: when is a new direction not a new direction?
- Artist: Westlife
- Song: Hey Whatever
- Released: 15/09/2003
- Writers / Producers: Ken Papenfus / Carl Papenfus / Steve Mac / Wayne Hector
- Highest UK Chart Position: #4
- Chart Run: 4 – 11 – 19 – 32 – 35 – 45 – 58 – 85 – 79
By 2003, Westlife were now five years deep into a career that, against all perceived wisdom for the average trajectory for pop bands, was continuing to defy the odds. Almost all their contemporaries around them at this time had either split up or had been dropped by their record label.
They however, were still topping the chart with regularity, still packing out arenas, and still selling records by the truck load. The release of their first best of package the previous year – Unbreakable: The Greatest Hits, Vol. 1 – had seen them consolidate the success they had accumulated in just that short four year gap, becoming yet another chart topping album for them.
News came at the end of the Unbreakable Tour that, with clockwork efficiency and reliability, a brand new studio album would be on the way from them at the end of the year, as it had for all of the last four years. But they were also entering uncharted territory for the first time, as this was the first new album in a while where eyes would be on them; chiefly, to see what happened when they started to move away from the first imperial chapter of their career.
Indeed, on World Of Our Own, the last studio album prior to this in 2001, there had been evidence of this that was – rightfully – praised as a step towards a more upbeat, contemporary sound, on the likes of the awesome “When You’re Looking Like That” and the title track, “World Of Our Own“, which had been their tenth number one hit and had been one of their few singles to crossover and do well on radio airplay. They were now arguably in a position where they could be allowed to take creative control a bit more.
So as the long summer of 2003 started to give way to the autumn, they returned with a new sound, a new single, and a new image. But alas, there was trouble brewing behind the scenes before anyone had even heard a note, and a large part of that lies at the feet of the men who had created them for the way things ultimately turned out.
It was only on that last album that the band had started to dip into co-writing some of their material – most notably of all, “Bop Bop Baby”, which ended up being the final single off World Of Our Own, but which was also the first single of theirs to miss the top 3, peaking at #5. Even though their unbroken run of every single release going in at the top had long since been interrupted, it was something that still played heavily into their own narrative as a band, for better or worse, leading to the warped idea from those higher up that anything less than a number one constituted the single being “bad”.
Which is what makes “Hey Whatever” such a complex record to discuss in Westlife canon. The track itself is a cover, which was a well established part of their stock in trade. Although on this occasion, it was actually a partially rewritten cover version of a more contemporary song, namely, the track “Rainbow Zephyr”, first recorded and released two years prior to this in 2001, by fellow countrymen and rock band Relish, consisting of brothers Ken and Carl Papenfus and their mutual friend Darren Campbell.
The change of title and thus a crucial part of the song is probably the first of only a few red flags here; but realistically, for anyone outside of Ireland not aware of Relish in 2003, a song called “Rainbow Zephyr” probably conjured up images of cool rock gods who may or may not have been indulging in the ganja and a slightly more laid back way of life, more than it did Westlife. For point of reference, only a year previously, Red Hot Chili Peppers had bought out their own “The Zephyr Song”, and you can just imagine what might have happened and the subsequent press and fan reaction had the song stayed in its truly original form.
But that’s not to say it isn’t still a largely fun song, whilst also being one of their most credible sounding singles. An anthemic bass drum and honky tonk piano riff ushers in the slight gospel meets pop rock feel, with Brian McFadden and Shane Filan taking the opening lines: “Well I can’t control the universe / Cause I’m only a man / And I may read the papers / But it won’t tell me who I am / And if you really need a new philosophy / Or one that makes sense / Here’s what I profess”.
And the chorus, when it hits, is equally one that you can see working with a big crowd, arms aloft and chanting loud: “And I say, hey whatever / Let your beauty come alive / Let your colour fill the sky / And say whatever / Why don’t you liberate your mind? / Let your colour fill the sky”. Ostensibly, it carries much of the sentiment of the original lyrically, in that it’s about affirming a life free from judgment of other’s opinions.
If there’s one member in particular who really shines on this song, it’s Mark Feehily. Always one of the strongest vocally in the band, he sounds like he’s having immense fun on the middle 8, as he cuts loose and riffs with abandon: “It’s like taking a seat at the roulette table / Just spinning the wheel / Good or bad you take what comes / Don’t change how you feel / You’re a champion of science / You’re just some freak show fool / What cannot be proved no, no / Can still be true”.
All of the band – Kian Egan in particular – got excited when they finished their version of the song with their long time collaborators, Steve Mac and Wayne Hector, and they really pushed for it be the first single from the new album, which was called Turnaround. They visibly buzzed with excitement in interviews about their new direction, and spoke about how this album would be all original material for the first time. But the only ones in all of this who weren’t excited were their A&R – one Mr Simon Cowell, and their then manager, Louis Walsh.
Compared to the earlier part of their career, both Simon and Louis were arguably becoming more well known than the boys were at this point; Simon had just completed a second series of American Idol as a judge, and was about to start judging on the second – and what turned out to be final – series of Pop Idol back home in the UK, whilst Louis had been a judge just under a year previously on Popstars: The Rivals, and was becoming a public media figure in his own right.
And both were unfortunately full of the narrow minded hubris and arrogant cock of the walk mentality that they both still posess to this day, about what they think “works” in pop music, with no deviation allowed from this. And unfortunately, it was they who ultimately still held the keys to the castle with Westlife, so to speak. And so they tactically relented and “Hey Whatever” went ahead as the first single.
Then, when the single debuted and peaked at #4 in September, after getting the midweek chart position, the whole band was summoned to Simon Cowell’s office, and were told that their next single was… a cover of “Mandy” by Barry Manilow, which duly returned them to the top of the chart in November that year. A miserable reminder, if any, of who held the power.
And from that point onwards, the band got less and less actively involved with writing and choosing singles, instead only ever writing or co-writing album tracks. But this appeared to come at a cost, and made a damaging blow to the overall perception of Westlife publicly that, until their 2019 reunion, they would struggle to shake off; namely, that they almost always played it safe with ballads, and furiously backpedalled to this when they dared venture outside this comfort zone.
Of course, this wasn’t entirely true. Almost any other sensible manager and A&R team would have wisely tempered expectations at this point for all concerned; as we mentioned before, they’d already had a handful of singles not reach number one, or even the top 3 in some cases. And the relatively modest total sales of 80,000 copies that this single sold was not an issue exclusive to them either; overall single sales had fallen for everyone in 2003, with the bite of illegal downloading pre-iTunes launching, and there was only one instance in the whole of the year when the #1 and #2 record had weekly sales in excess of 100,000 copies (at Christmas, to be specific, when The Darkness went head to head with Michael Andrews and Gary Jules for the festive top spot).
What’s more, a #4 was still a solid chart position. It probably seemed worse than it was, just by virtue of the fact that it came out on a week that was, oddly for them, a very busy one (no secret was made of the fact that they got the large bulk of their chart toppers by releasing on less busy weeks). The same week “Hey Whatever” came out, the Black Eyed Peas were halfway into a six week run at the top with that year’s biggest seller, “Where Is The Love?”, whilst equally massive new records from Rachel Stevens (“Sweet Dreams My LA Ex”, new at #2) and Jamelia (“Superstar”, new at #8, and which would eventually peak at #3 several weeks later) also made their debut.
It was surely no coincidence, and little surprise then, when six months after this single came out, and just a couple of weeks after “Obvious”, the third single from the Turnaround album was released, (and one which, being honest, they could have recorded in their sleep back in 1999), Brian McFadden turned on his heel and announced he was leaving the band for good in March 2004, with them being forced to release “Mandy” cited as one reason why he quit.
As for “Hey Whatever”, it almost never got spoken of ever again after that; tellingly, it’s not been performed on any of their tours since 2006, just shy of 18 years ago at time of writing. Perhaps it’s because of the amount of upheaval it subsequently caused them, inadvertently or otherwise, that it’s now been given short shrift. But surely, now under their own terms and vision, and free from the men that had a hand in their creation, we say it’s time for Westlife to reclaim it and let, well… it’s colour fill the sky in their back catalogue.
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The Niche Reference 