Boyzone began life as an advert for an “Irish Take That”, and their first number one is a Bee Gees song, like Take That’s last. Those are the facts – but by this point the relationship feels more coincidental than planned. Boyzone are breaking away from the existing boyband model, moving toward something new – something less creative but far more commercially powerful.
Looking at Boyzone, you see the initial conception poking through – five hunks, one or two perhaps a bit grittier, one younger-looking and cheekier, and one a blond who writes the songs (or helps, at any rate). But Take That became more ambitious, varied, and self-serious as they went on. Boyzone got narrower. By “Words”, they’ve been having hits for two years. We’re already past their most charming single – a bushy-tailed cover of “Love Me For A Reason” – and we’re also past the catastrophically funkless “Coming Home Now”, their last attempt to do anything remotely R&B, except in the name of comedy.
Goofy is out, funky is out – where does that leave the lads? They’ve been developing what you might call the Irish Model of boybands. We have twenty Number Ones to explore the Irish Model (and contrast it with British boybands, who develop rather differently), so I’ll eke my thoughts on it out a bit – but by “Words” it’s close to fully formed.
There are two main issues with “Words”. It’s badly over-arranged – not cheap-sounding like the Robson and Jerome tracks, just slathered with gloopy strings and windy flourishes. David Whitfield would have approved. The second complaint – and this is more typical of Irish Model tracks – is that any gap that does remain gets blanketed with harmonies. Some Boyzone tracks are solo spotlights – like Ronan Keating’s hammy “Father And Son” turn – but a lot of them take this very direct approach to group singing.
It tends to smooth out any expression or nuance in a lyric, turning it into a comforting whitewash of melody. In the Boyzone version of “Words” every phrase has exactly the same imploring, exhausting weight. It’s particularly damaging, since the point of this song is to contrast empty words – “glory… story….” with the pain of disbelief and the disarming sincerity of the singer once he admits that’s all they are. Not exactly subtle, and by no means the Bee Gees’ finest record, but from them it’s at least a performance with a little thought behind it. Boyzone leech the song of character and intelligence, and they’re just getting started.
Score: 2
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After ‘Setting Sun’, there was I expecting another 9. Maybe not.
It’s not a good version and adds nothing. It loses something by filling the holes the Bee Gees left. This song is most notable to me as the one people invariably choose when attempting an impression of Ronan.
2 – fine.
Bit of year for extreme scoring number ones so far, and it’s not over me thinks.
whereas Take That seemed to appeal to an audience of girls their own age, Boyzone always looked and sounded like they were aiming for mums and aunties. Clearly they did have a wider (younger) fanbase but the choice of song plus the ham fisted arrangement seem deeply conservative
‘every gap that remains gets blanketed’ is good. The effect is not unlike compression, but at this distance I find the maple syrup approach much kinder to the ear. At least I don’t actively fight against it, as I do with the cognitive dissonance of things sounding wrong.
I’m not looking forward to this long run of Irish no.1s. I kind of feel your review has said it all already. For all the talk about song choice nowadays, I never felt the songs mattered a hoot, and not just because I wasn’t paying attention. The other lot talk about a notorious disaster they had, where they went off-piste and only scored a no.3 – Metal Machine Music it ain’t.
Funny how the memory plays tricks. I’d have bet that Boyzone scored their first number one earlier than two years and six singles into their chart career. Album one didn’t produce a chart topper, a state of affairs that might get a boyband dropped these days.
The Bee Gees did pretty well from publishing in the mid-to-late-90s, didn’t they? Leaving for now a bunny waiting for us in a couple of Popular years time which I imagine may polarise opinion a little, there’s How Deep Is Your Love, Words, N-Trance’s Stayin’ Alive, FNM doing I Started A Joke, More Than A Woman (911), You Should Be Dancing (via Blockster)…
[Whilst researching this post I discovered that the Levellers covered New York Mining Disaster 1941 in the late 90s. Blimey.]
This single? It exists but does little more. It’s as if the Bachelors had worked up a contemporary cover of Words whilst the Bee Gees were still in the chart with it. 3.
Is this the first number one for Louis Walsh’s management, by the way? Don’t think I’ve missed anything.
‘Words’ is like the first White Walker attack. The Seven Kingdoms still stands, but now everyone knows that a long, cold winter is coming…
There’s not just the Irish model of boybands to consider. There’s the Irish model of g*irlbands too!
I think the Bee Gees record is alright actually. A bit overwrought and they surely did better but it’s decent enough. The raw material is there and peeks out from behind this version, so it’s not as hateful to my ears as some of the upcoming bunnies and I definitely feel like I need to spare the rod here, in favour of taking it out later on. 3, I guess.
#4 it was Johnny Logan, apparently! (see “What’s Another Year” thread)
The closest Boyzone got to the top of the Australian singles chart was a number 4 for “Father and Son” and a bunny, so I’m blissfully ignorant of the specifics of what lies ahead. But this is the standard gloop I remember clogging up certain radio stations at the time (stations I rarely listened to). Like Cumbrian, though, I can imagine worse, so an unenthusiastic 3 from me.
It’s notable that Boyzone only got to number 1 after Take That had split up. To me at the time, at a boys’ school and not knowing many Take That fans who would admit to it, it seemed like they simply inherited Takes That’s fans and success after being a bit of a joke up to that point. Right place, right time.
#9 I remember thinking that as well and I’ve noted before that Take That’s last three number ones all had a Boyzone record in the top five simultaneously.
When we were discussing How Deep Is Your Love, which Tom gave a 4 to, I noted that it was arguably better than both the 1996’s subsequent Gary Barlow hit and its second chart topping Bee Gees cover and wondered if Tom’s scores would concur. Answer, they did as the combined scores of Forever Love and Words don’t surpass How Deep Is Your Love.
To be fair to Take That, their Bee Gees cover was a farewell single by a band whose focal member was already thinking of his solo career. By contrast Boyzone were launching an album of new material and it still feels Take That went to more effort.
I agree with a lot of what Tom says about Boyzone’s subsequent context (`less creative but more commercially powerful`). And yet and yet … I am itching to get a few number ones along.
That phrase ‘Irish model’ is going to take a bit of getting used to. Had I known at the time how much we were going to have to get used to Boyzone and then Boyzone 2: The Quest For Glory I wouldn’t have mildly approved of the soporific ‘Words’ for it’s elegant old-fashioned tune, then I found out it was a Bee Gees song and the full horror dawned.
Stools is the word which springs to mind with this one, in more ways than one. There are going to be a whole load of stools featuring in Popular over the next few years.
I would go so far as to say that the Gary Barlow record is actually slightly preferrable to this since it just wafts vaguely prettily around in the background, whereas this one (being a better class of song) unfortunately commands a degree of your attention and lodges itself in your head for more than 10 seconds after its finished.
#11 The standard phrasing would be Boyzone II: Electric Boogaloo but it seems inappropriate in this case.
#9/10: Boyband transference is an obvious theory but from what I understand of boyband fandom it’s a lot less common than it seems. It would be a bit like switching football club allegiance if a winning team gets relegated – it does happen, but in general the level of emotional investment is not so easily transferred. Same with any music really – when the Pixies split up in 1992 I didn’t rush out and suddenly declare myself an undying Sugar fan.
That said it obviously doesn’t need to happen *much* to push a regular Top 5 act into a regular Number One, as in this case. But also consider that Robbie quit TT back in late 1995, and the band announced their split at the start of 1996 – assuming boyband liking correlates with age (like metal or indie does) there have been at least 6 months’ worth of potential new fans for whom BZ would be the obvious first choice option.
TLDR: Boyzone obviously benefited from the Take That split, but a mass movement of TT fans isn’t required for that to happen.
(The transfer from Boyzone to They Who Must Not Be Named is a bit of an exception, in that it seems to have been managed and marketed as such – it would be interesting to know if there were many BZ fans who hated the other lot. There’s another fan-transfer scenario in the early-mid 00s which seems quite managed, too.)
We lurch from one extreme to another. Boyzone’s “Words” then. Gawd ‘elp us! This is aural cholesterol. And as Tom suggests, the Irish Model will be examined from every conceivable angle over the… Next. Few. Popular. Years (gulp!).
On behalf of the Emerald Isle, we are so so sorry, if not as sorry as we’re going to be.
#4 I’m curious as to why this state of affairs didn’t get them dropped back then – Louis Walsh worried that if he gave up he’d be a failure? What were the public channels through which you could gauge fan devotion pre-social media* (were Fan Clubs still a thing?) and were they hitting the mark there? Maybe it’s just that they’d had every single hit #1 in Ireland and he reckoned that the UK would crumble eventually – the first album will be troubling Marcello in due course too.
* not that social media buzz is any sort of gauge of who’ll buy records, of course.
Also relevant to #4, another unexpected BeeGees cover particularly if you haven’t kept up with the band in question.
#17 they were a Top 3 band in the UK from the outset – the only previous single not to get to #2 or #3 was “Coming Home Now” which is SO dreadful even some of the fans must have rebelled.
Take That’s early singles were a much dodgier commercial proposition – Boyzone (tho they were following the formula) were comparatively fully formed, I doubt dropping them was ever an option.
A note of comfort (to me anyhow): This is #748, the final (to date) number one from the two groups is #1046 – so that’s 20 in 299 songs i.e. only 1 in every 15 is an Irish Model boyband. They owned a particular niche absolutely, but had little effect beyond that. (“Why weren’t there more of them?” is a subject for a future entry.)
#17 “What were the public channels through which you could gauge fan devotion pre-social media”?
Little postcards in CD singles that you* filled out & sent off to an address in Warwickshire to join a mailing list, I guess. If the list kept growing, that would indicate increasing commercial clout.
You’d think the lead single from a second Boyzone album would have been heralded by a mailshot to every single member of that list.
* – I subscribed to the Pulp list whilst at uni, and over time received a series of promo cards for Lip Gloss, Do You Remember The First Time, Sisters EP etc that I *really* wish I’d kept hold of.
This is one of the tracks I always skip over on my Bee Gees comp.! ‘Words’ is well written in that it captures something fairly specific – sort of a relationship going nowhere/being stuck, and does this by starting in G modulating up rather leadenly through A and B-flat only to arrive back in the chorus on G. The effect is deadening as intended: we don’t, can’t escape G. That is, even though there are a few extra chords the song feels like it’s all on one note. I tend to skip the song precisely because of this accurately rendered monotone/sour feel. As everyone’s noted, Boyzone pad out the arrangement and don’t have the inherent lightness of Barry Gibb’s vocal, hence a very static song becomes thick and bloated too; most unpleasant. I wouldn’t go above 5 for the (clever but unpleasant) original and the cover for me is a:
2
I remember thinking at the time that that band name was hilariously terrible; were they deliberately trying to evoke knitting and sponge cake periodical Woman’s Own? And now it’s forever associated with Peter Serafinowicz recruiting a boy band in 15 Storeys High “‘Boys So Cool’… say it fast, it sounds like bicycle.”
This is one of their more bearable number ones. It’s a bit more up-tempo than some of the plodding horror to come.
The fella on the right of the sleeve – Shane or Mikey, by elimination – has a bit of an Aphex death stare going on.
#18 to be fair Coming Home Now hit number four in an unusually strong sales week; 1(-) How Deep Is Your Love 2(1) Don’t Look Back In Anger 3(2) Robert Miles’ Children which I remember Mark Goodier noting had increased its sales from the previous week despite the fall. Mulling it over now, for a band like Boyzone to clash their release date with their main rivals would be unthinkable a few years later.
#22 Mikey Graham, the least known member of the group and (ironically) the one who was arguably most passionate about music.
As a song, I think Words is a lovely tender thing. The problem, as Tom touched on, is that the ‘Irish Boyband model’ makes no distinction between a heartfelt piece of songwriting and a cheesy Barry Manilow ballad. They’re all performed and arranged in exactly the same way.
Amongst the gloopier efforts, a similarly classy number that suffered the Boyzone effect was Tracy Chapman’s Baby Can I Hold You, which they took to #2.
For an altogether more thoughtful reading of the song, I recommend Shawn Colvin’s version.
http://youtu.be/6RZQkgsqv5I
21: the name’s not bad, if they’re going after some Junior Boy’s Own cachet. The other lot I just don’t understand, it doesn’t seem to be referencing anything (used to be Westside iirc, but changed for some reason? But not to anything in particular).
The blandness troubles me I confess. Not what I associate Ireland with at all, though that may be me – it’s not like there isn’t a long line of Wogans and de Burghs preceding them, to go with the country’s spikier produce.
Boyzone’s Late Late Show debut though – http://youtu.be/hpVyGaHM6rE – that’s much more promising. If only they hadn’t got all professional so quickly.
28: Yes! Most unPopular to disrespect Manilow so. I’d go in to bat for a surprising amount of his work, even if I do prefer naughty Barry to nice.
I listened to this for the first time last night. No idea it was a Bee Gees cover. Shows what I know.
Boyzone was a complete non-entity on the Hot 100, as I confirmed on Wikipedia last night. I have a vague memory of an attempt by one of their future bunnies at cracking the US market, but I might be confused by my sister bringing it back (like a virus) from a semester in London in 1998. Anyway, if this is indicative of the rest of their work, I’m not looking forward to it. About as exciting as “Forever Love”. 2/10 is fair.
#21 Have to agree: Boyzone is the worst major boy band name ever. It pretty much captures in a single word, “we’re just a bunch of good looking lads for adolescent girls to fawn over, please don’t ever plan on taking us seriously, even when we reach the age of majority”.
#21 – I think the name is a pun on “Boy’s Own” – as in the Boy’s Own Paper.
24: “The problem, as Tom touched on, is that the ‘Irish Boyband model’ makes no distinction between a heartfelt piece of songwriting and a cheesy Barry Manilow ballad”
I must admit, I am not seeing the distinction myself necessarily. Didn’t Barry mean those ballads in his heart when he wrote them?
#28 which of those ballads did Barry write?
Never liked the original, didn’t much like this, so much meh. My sister screamed at the TV when they performed Love Me For A Reason at the previous Smash Hits Poll Winners Party (whatever happened to those?). She didn’t scream at this.
Wake me up when Shane’s sisters arrive. 2 is bang on.
#4 I was going to mention The Bachelors as well. Something I’ve realised through following “Popular” and also reading Bob Stanley’s book is that there always seems to have been forms of gentle, oozing pop treacle in the charts, whether it’s David Whitfield (who Tom mentioned), The Bachelors, Cliff Richard at his worst, or Boyzone. As soon as a gap in the light, water vapour pop market emerges, something seems to come along to fill the niche.
The problem with talking in this manner is that I leave myself open to accusations of music snobbery, which is exactly what happened when I had a live-in landlady who was a huge Boyzone fan (she knew I liked music and asked me my opinion on them, I didn’t volunteer it of my own free will). The argument that Cowell and Walsh have used for years is that this music touches people, it comforts them, it entertains them, so who are WE to say it’s bad? Aren’t WE the villains in all this? And I have no satisfactory answers to this charge, except to say that it’s usually obvious to most people when you play them the original versions of the tracks Boyzone covered that theirs subtract a lot and add very little. This is no exception. It’s just lazy material. For all that, though, I struggle to get genuinely irritated about them – one of the benefits of their wispy arrangements is that they are incredibly easy to ignore.
#31 yes, I mean, I don’t like them – NB I don’t listen ahead very far, so this is based on memory largely – but I’m trying to treat them as panto villains not actual villains, and I’m pleased there’s not been much fan-blaming going on too.
Cowell and Walsh themselves are a different matter – you can make strong arguments that their ultra-rigorous application of formula made pop worse: there’s always been glurge in the charts but the successful acts had previously rung the changes too, or released their grip sooner. With Cowell in particular the crossover of interests – management, his own label, publishing, TV – gives him unprecedented control and influence: the Murdoch of pop. All of which is a story which will play out across the rest of Popular.
I like the chorus, although not particularly when Boyzone sing it (I hear it in my head in a female voice – was there some high-profile country-ish cover of it, too? Then again ‘female voice’ doesn’t exactly exclude The Bee Gees). The piano intro sets off my fight-or-flight response [3]
I think the perception of Boyzone being almost bearable, compared to what’s to come, despite the quality of their offerings, especially now, comes down to their “Late Late Show” debut, before there was even a single released. I don’t have the link, but anyone who has seen that clip would probably have a tough job forgetting it.
#29: I don’t know but my point is that Barry Manilow’s stuff probably also comprises heartfelt pieces of songwriting. Boyzone’s problems are not about distinction of songwriting as far as I can tell.
#31 But then who are they to call it snobbery? I sometimes suspect a lot of people are increasingly mistaking basic discernment for snobbery.
Furthermore, I’ve never heard anyone accussed of being a ‘television snob’ for thinking House of Cards is better than Splash with Tom Daley.
#36 So-called TV snobs.
I’ve seen comments about fans of The Killing (Forbrydelsen) along these lines. “Typical middle-class Radio 4 listener”, etc. If you like a TV show that requires you to read, you must think that all TV that doesn’t is watched by illiterates, you snob. Even if it’s just a (very good) police procedural that happens to have subtitles and nice jumpers.
My problem with “basic discernment” is that it doesn’t take into account what a fan wants to get out of a record. It slyly assumes a context, of, roughly, the individual understanding of artistic expression. This is an excellent use for a record – if it wasn’t worth trying I wouldn’t be sitting down and writing about records and I certainly wouldn’t be attaching marks to them (however playfully). I think within that context “Words” is crap on a bunch of levels. But it’s not the only context. “Canvas for romantic fantasy” – for instance – is also a use for a record. “Comforting escapism” might be too.
So I think the ‘snobbery’ isn’t one of choices between records exactly, but one of an assumed hierarchy of uses.
It’s totally possible to make the argument that artistic expression is a better use to put a record than comforting escapism, or romantic fantasy, or dancing for that matter, even if I don’t necessarily agree. It seems to me, though, that simply saying “Boyzone are shit and if you like them you’re undiscerning” isn’t making that argument, it’s assuming the argument’s already been made (and won).
& one of the reasons I decided to write about No.1 singles – rather than “my favourite records” or “the best etc.” – is that it’s a place where these different uses and contexts for records get to fight and confront each other.
#33 Rita Coolidge (number 25 in 1978 in UK)
#25 Wogan was bland on his BBC1 chat show in the eighties. Brilliant on the radio.
#28, #35 – Certainly didn’t mean to denigrate Barry Manilow. It just strikes that Mandy (which he didn’t actually write, and actually had to be coerced into recording as he wasn’t at all fond of it at first) and their ilk are very much in a genre of very slick, sentimental MOR. There’s nothing wrong with that genre at all, many of my favourite songs come from it. And in many ways its a perfect genre for crowd-pleasing boybands to mine.
The likes of Words and Baby Can I Hold You are just a bit more stark in their original forms, and I think the fragility is lost when you try to apply the same vocal and production style to them. Not that one genre is more ‘worthy’ than another, at all. It’s just a bit of an awkward fit, to my ears.
There’s another Boyzone hit to come which is also a cover and probably seen as their signature tune, which I think is a *much* better fit for what they do than something like this, which can’t help but sound neutered and insincere.
Fair enough.
My most memorable rendition of Mandy culminates in the following exchange:
Homer: Uh-oh..
Lisa: Dad, why are you singing?
Homer’s Brain: Tell a lie, tell a lie!
Homer: Mmm.. because I have a small role in a broadway musical. It’s not much but it’s a start.
Homer’s Brain: Bra-vo! *clap clap*
Re 41/42: I was just about to write about M***y and then realised it’s probably emerging from our collective subconscious because of the Curse of the Irish Model. Bunnied!
Problems with this record:
1. Replacing Maurice Gibb’s thick, super-compressed piano chords (the intro on the original is my favourite bit of the whole record) with Ferrero Roche prissiness.
2. Unnecessarily screwing with the structure to squeeze an extra chorus into the first verse. Seriously! It’s like Phil Collins extending Ringo’s drum roll on the Abbey Road medley to make it “better”.
3. Getting rid of the counter-melodies to Barry’s “da da-da da” middle eight. No French horns for you, Mr Keating.
Otherwise, it sounds considerably more thorough than I remember it – albeit with Up Where We Belong-borrowed piano flourishes (come back Floyd Cramer!) and militaristic tympani. 3.
I feel like The Irish Model is going to become the new Bunny (i.e. if anyone lands here for the first time, it’s going to take some time to decipher just what the hell we’re on about).
was The Irish Model from Kraftwerk’s Celtic album?
Tom Ewing’s Popular reaches the Irish Model, and the dawn of the Walsh/Cowell era. Good god, it started 18 years ago: http://t.co/dMhi9rIZSN
Googling “the Irish Model” brings up a very interesting Paul Krugman graph about the impact of economic collapse on the Irish Republic’s growth.
It brings up some other pictures too mind.
Don’t mind the Killing and quite a fan of (the original Swedish) Wallander, but I can’t help thinking many people wouldn’t have given those kinds of programmes a second glance if they were set in, say, Peterborough. Citation needed? Be my guest. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSoPXXJQz2c&t=4m40s
There also seems a very arrogant and calculated forced “grimness” to Scandinavian noir – it’s the same aspect which makes me avoid Editors and White Lies-type bands like the plague. Then again, someone like Depeche Mode, like that kind of telly, when they’re on form they get the balance between the bleak and the beautiful spot-on and it’s a treat for the senses.
None of this whatsoever can apply to Words. A completely pointless record which adds nothing to an original which bored me to tears anyway. (Bizarre for a boy band to debut on Popular with something as modest as this – and a cover! Though I would say that as one of those who think the Bee Gees got better as they became more sparkly, garish and high-pitched.) I’m sure these and *other Irish bunnies* are perfectly lovely guys in “real life”, but there’s something vaguely heartbreaking about this whole shebang. 3 at best.
I have no other anecdotes about this other than:
1. My sister was a massive, massive Boyzone fan around the age of 9 and autumn 1996 was the first time we had the Internet in our house (AOL, boo!) I think she asked me to print some Ronan posters out on my PC and rather than the “search” button I naively typed “http://www.boyzone.com.” Which led to.. well, a site where the adult male was presented “artistically” and “tastefully”.. nudge nudge wink wink AARGH! To paraphrase Groove Armada, goodbye childhood (hello fucked-up adolescence.)
2. None of my male peers at school had any time for this. I remember one lad’s charming parody ditty on the school bus – “It’s only gay, and all I am is gay, I bum sheep in the hay.” I sincerely apologise to anyone offended or non-funny-bone-tickled. It was a very different time and place. After all, we were at the age where we thought you could get pregnant by sharing a chocolate bar.
3. I know it was a shame Boyzone/Bunnies’ ambition started and ended with making music for mums and grannies, but I did, indeed like the way they worked hard – no dignity (you got to back it up, 20 more times.) Oh the hilarity.
Starts off prettily enough but soon grows dull, and remains devoid of personality throughout. A depressing portent of things to come: give them cover versions, don’t worry about the hard stuff like actually writing decent and original songs. THREE.
I do share the general consensus that Boyzone were immeasurably preferable to w.w.w.w.w.w…..what came later.
But still, this isn’t their best: too smooth, no gaps; music for a coffee ad.
It does strike me that Boyzone, like the Pet Shop Boys*, almost certainly announced the coming of their imperial phase with a high-charting cover version in the run-up to the Christmas period (the similarities almost certainly end there): Their version of “Father and Son”, the previous Christmas, certainly stood out from anything they had released before – both for the quality of songwriting (thank you Mr Stevens), and also production, singing, arrangement, the meat and veg. I think they’d been a bit of a joke, and rather too wet up until that point. But suddenly they demanded, if not to be taken wholly seriously, then certainly not to be dismissed high-handedly with utmost contempt.
*he wrote semi-provocatively
And (err..can’t remember “Coming Home Now” at all. Was still in Ukraine then, don’t think the Ukrainians loved that one like they did “Father and Son”), it was true that for a bit afterwards, they were a little bit more adventurous, a little bit more experimental, a little less complacent, and a little more polished, in the singles they put out , before gradually, and slowly becoming rather more boring again. (Have just seen their other bunnies. How many? And good grief? With one partial exception, hardly the best set of their singles, either. Seems almost all of their better singles were actually those that got to number 2. Aforementioned Cat Stephens cover, “Isn’t It A Wonder” and, a little below those two in stature, “Picture Of You”. Hmmm. Not that any of those were earthshatteringly brilliant, either).
I’d give it a three. Bland but it passes the time. OK to hear once in a while. Not convinced it’s actually markedly worse than the original, either. Although I kind of wish it were a cover of the FR David number with the same name, instead.