Can Nicky bring back the glory days?
…and sway European hearts
It should come as little surprise that Nicky Byrne has quickly established himself as a star of morning radio schedules. He and Kian Egan always appeared the most genial members of Westlife and the most likely to pursue a career on radio and television after the boyband split up for good in 2012.
Byrne is also the last of the group to make a bid for solo chart stardom. It comes in the wake of his somewhat controversial selection as Ireland’s representative at the Eurovision Song Contest. There was no national song contest, no mentoring system, no public vote just a declaration that Byrne would be our entrant in Stockholm in May with the song Sunlight.
Notwithstanding the fact it is arguably the strongest Irish entry since Mickey Harte sang We Got The World Tonight in 2003, Byrne, a former footballer, has little truck with those crying foul at the manner of his choosing.
‘I am a Eurovision fan. I have presented the results segment from Dublin for the past three years. I understand that some people’s noses were put out of joint because they could not submit their songs,’ he says.
‘But when I looked back over previous years the mentoring system took away from the idea of the public submitting songs anyway. Those mentors can only cast their nets so wide; they have only the contacts on their phone or diaries or whatever, so in that sense it wasn’t an open contest in those years. Last year they had an open submission system but only 300 or 400 people entered. I thought there would be 10,000. The fairytale idea of the public just picking a song and an artist that we like in this country, regardless of what the rest of Europe is doing, and winning – it is gone.’
Byrne co-wrote the song with Ronan Hardiman and Wayne Hector who have worked with Westlife over the years. His debut album is complete and is set for release around the time of his Eurovision date. He describes the record as ‘a cheeky pop-rock album’. ‘Think of Robbie Williams and Ollie Murs,’ he says.
I met him in the RTÉ canteen recently just after his morning show had aired. At 37, he looks like a mid-career Bryan Adams and brings a little of the Groover from Vancouver’s vocal rasp to the songs on his album. But rather than think of a solo musical career, he says he was formulating the idea of going into broadcasting well before Westlife ended.
‘I knew that I didn’t want to wake up on the morning after the last Croke Park gig and think, “right, what now?”’ he says.
‘I found a good agent in Britain and one in Ireland. I was asked to host the Childline concert. I’ve done the results section on Eurovision for three years. I did bits for FM104. If there was radio or TV that only needed one of us to do, I would put my hand up for it. I was building all the time towards the future. I was asked to do every reality show under the sun. I did Strictly Come Dancing [in 2012] because I thought it was the best of them.’
He doesn’t term himself as a ‘singer’ or ‘broadcaster’ but as ‘a family man’. That strong sense of family, he says, has been instilled in him since childhood.
‘When I was young we got up as a family together and saw my father off to work,’ he says.
‘He was a painter and decorator by day and a cabaret singer at night. We’d go past buildings together when I was a child and he would tell me the ones he’d painted. He painted the Dublin Bus garage in Donnybrook ( just around the corner), many times.’
As a youth Byrne was tipped to make the grade as a goalkeeper and was signed by Leeds United in the mid-Nineties. His father Nicky Sr, clearly an enormous influence, died in 2009 aged just 60.
‘My father passed on his two great loves to me; football and music,’ he says.
‘The proudest moment in my life, and I still say this, is playing for Ireland U-18s at a tournament in Portugal.
‘I felt like I was playing in a World Cup final. Unfortunately my mum and dad weren’t able to travel to see it. I remember tears rolling down my face as they played Amhrán na bhFiann. I made my debut in a match in Switzerland, we won 4-0 and Damien Duff was playing.
‘My dad did see me playing for Ireland in Northern Ireland though. He didn’t live to see the end of Westlife but he saw the best of us. I don’t go to Mass but I have a faith. I carry a little stone from his grave at all the big events in my life. I feel he is there.’