We had dream for our album
WESTLIFE WILD ON NEW MUSIC
WESTLIFE dreamed up their new album, quite literally.
Wild Dreams, out today, was born during the pandemic when the lads had to live separate lives, and it encouraged them to make music in entirely new ways.
Shane Filan told me: “Wild Dreams is literally a mad idea we had at the start of lockdown. Mark (Feehily) said, ‘I’ve been having mental f***ing dreams, I don’t know if I’m nervous about the pandemic or what’s going on.’
“He said these crazy dreams are taking over.” After landing the idea for a title track the lads decided to have a go at writing the rest of the album themselves.
Shane continued: “We were all in different places mentally and physically.
“It was personally a tough year for me because I lost both my parents and I felt like singing some songs, so I learned to play the guitar on Zoom, which I’d always wanted to do my whole life.
“The music is quite contemporary, more modern, it’s definitely very true to how we are feeling. Song titles like Alone Again and Alive were genuinely how we were feeling. Look to the future, maybe things will start opening up. We can all be happy if we want to be, we just need to get out of this s**t we are in. It really is a great album and one of our best because we got involved so much.”
Big ballad My Hero, however, was written by Ed Sheeran, who had contributed a lot of tunes to their previous LP.
Shane said: “He had done five songs on the last album, including All My Love, which had been a big song for us and helped made us current again. He was happy to help again. This album is an evolution from that album, keeping the happiness positivity.
“We have been in touch with Ed via email but never actually been together, so hopefully that can happen when we tour.”
The I Have A Dream hitmakers are accustomed to No1 albums but that could be tricky this time as Adele’s 30 will still be selling bucketloads next week.
Shane said: “We have had a lot of No1 albums so if this one is No2 to Adele then that’s as good as No1 to another artist, because everybody is a fan of Adele. And we all love listening to her.”