The Love of the Irish

Capital FM October 2000

Despite being branded boring by J from Five, the Westlife boys are hot property at the moment. They tell us about their new single 'My Love' and get all slushy and romantic as they take our Love Test.

Your new single, 'My Love', is out on 30th October. What's it about?
Mark: It's about the feeling of being at home and the places of home that you remember. It's a feelgood song thinking about the good memories you have from home - in our case Ireland.

How did it feel to beat all the records when the Mariah Carey duet went in to Number One?
Shane: It was brilliant. We didn't expect it because we didn't do much promotion as we were out of the country recording our album and Mariah was doing a movie in Canada. We're very very happy, we broke our own record and it's pretty cool to be able to do that. Hopefully this one will do the same.

What was Mariah like to work with?
Kian: Mariah was really nice to work with. You hear lots of rumours about Mariah, that she's very egotistcial and other bad stories but I have to say that they're untrue. We had a lot of fun with Mariah and we found her a very down to earth person.

Did you like the Phil Collins version when you were younger?
Mark: It's excellent, yes. I was really happy when Mariah covered that song on her 'Rainbow' album because it was a favourite of mine when it came out the first time. Her version of it blew me away.

Have you got any other collaborations or covers in mind?
Shane: No, not at the moment
Mark: Eminem keeps on ringing us up!
Shane: Yeah, I wish he'd stop ringing! No, I think we've done the best duet we can do artist wise, with a female singer anyway. We just want to concentrate on Westlife, do our world tour and maybe on the third or fourth album we might do something.

Are you planning any uptempo numbers soon?
Kian: For our new album, 'Coast to Coast' we've recorded four to five uptempo songs and we're very happy about that because on the last album we didn't really have any uptempo songs. There are definitely two uptempo songs that we are considering for singles so we're very happy about that too!

Looks like the 'My Love' video is shot in Ireland - do you find Ireland a very romantic place?
Mark: It was shot in Ireland in a place called the Cliffs of Mohar, which are beautiful cliffs on the coast of Ireland and also on a beach and a railway station in Limerick and Shannon airport, so it's all shot in Ireland.
Shane: It's our favourite place in the world and it's definitely a great place to take a girl. There are so many beaches and private places you can go...
Mark: Woods and stuff!

Will you be releasing a record hoping for a xmas number one?
Kian: Yes we are going to relase a record around Christmas. It's not really about going for Christmas Number One, we just want Westlife to be on the radio at Christmas time. We've got some beautiful songs that we're talking about releasing: 'Angels Wings', 'What Makes A Man', 'Soledad' - but we're not sure which one yet -we'll have to make a decision soon!

Where will you be at Christmas?
Kian: At Christmas we'll probably be around the UK and then we'll probably go home for a few days and spend some time with our families.

article © CapitalFM.com