Spectrum

“We think it's our best work in a very, very long time,” Kian Egan of Irish pop legends Westlife tells Apple Music. Nine years after their last studio album, Gravity, Egan, Nicky Byrne, Mark Feehily and Shane Filan have reunited. “We met as a band and said, ‘What should Westlife sound like in 2019?’” Filan says. “A lot has happened in music since our last tour.” They’re right that pop has moved in many directions since those 2012 “farewell” shows in Europe and China—and especially since their 1999 breakout hit “Flying Without Wings”—but Spectrum absorbs those changes into their sound. The 11 tracks showcase the quartet’s enduring chemistry through irresistible harmonies. “The Westlife sound is based on us as singers more than a type of song or a tempo,” says Egan. “We've managed to create a really cool new uptempo sound, but it still sounds like us, because at the end of the day, it's us singing that makes it a Westlife song.” Let Filan and Egan guide you through their 11th album, track by track. Hello My Love Shane Filan: “When we were coming back as a band, it was very important that Steve [Mac, their long-standing producer and collaborator] was involved. He wrote our first single and some of our biggest hits. There's a lot of history and a lot of friendship that we had for 20 years, so I think it was a passion project for him. He was going back to where he started as well. This first song is a perfect example of the sound that we found together. It's very unique to us, and I don't think it's like anybody else on the radio at the moment.” Better Man SF: “Steve Mac was working with Ed Sheeran for a few years after they wrote ‘Shape of You’. Ed was coming in the studio to write songs and was like, ‘I want to write a Westlife song.’ So they were writing for us and we weren't even together at the time. When we came back, they had already written two songs! An amazing start to the album, because we had ‘Hello My Love’ and this song as the first two. Ed’s a Westlife