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Westlife: Gravity

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: RCA Records
Released: 2010.11.22
Time:
 48:05
Category: Pop, Dance-Pop
Producer(s): John Shanks
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.westlife.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2012
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Beautiful Tonight (Shanks, Barry) - 4:00
[2] Safe (Shanks, Grundler) - 3:53
[3] Chances (Pott, Willetts, Roberts, Wanstall) - 4:46
[4] I Will Reach You (Feehily, Anderson, Hartman) - 3:21
[5] Closer (Shanks, Reid, Byrne, Egan, Feehily, Filan) - 4:06
[6] The Reason (Robb, Estrin, Hesse, Lappalainen) - 3:54
[7] Tell Me It's Love (Shanks, Hector) - 4:18
[8] I Get Weak (Shanks, Kotecha) - 3:42
[9] Before It's Too Late (Anderson, Feehily, Petty) - 4:09
[10] No One's Gonna Sleep Tonight (Shanks, Hector) - 3:53
[11] Difference in Me (Shanks, Hector) - 3:29
[12] Too Hard To Say Goodbye (Shanks, Byrne, Egan, Feehily, Filan) - 4:44

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Nicky Byrne - Vocals
Kian Egan - Vocals
Mark Feehily - Vocals
Shane Filan - Vocals

John Shanks - Keyboards on [1-3,5,7,8,10,11], Guitar on [1-11], Bass on [1-7,9-11], Piano on [12], Producer
Charles Judge - Keyboards on [1-9,11,12], Strings Synthesizer on [6]
Dan Chase - Keyboards on [1,6,8-10,12], Programming on [1,8-10], Additional Engineer on [5]
Jeff Rothschild - Drums on [1-11], Programming on [1-11], Recording Engineer, Mixing
Jamie Muhoberac - Keyboards on [2,4-6], Piano on [11]
Paul Bushnell - Bass on [6]
Josh Freese - Drums on [6]
Tim Pierce - Electric Guitar on [6]
Pino Palladino - Bass on [8]
Steve Anderson - Keyboards on [9]
Eric Rigler - Uilleann Pipes, Low Whistle on [12]

Wil Malone - Strings Arrangements on [2-5,9,12]
Lars Fox - Engineer & Protools Editing
Richard Woodcraft - Strings Recording Engineer on [2,3,5]
Helen Atkinson - Assistant Engineer, Strings Recording Engineer on [4,9,12]
Nicolas Essig - Assistant Engineer
Bob Ludwig - Mastering
Shari Sutcliffe - Contractor, Production Coordinator
Mark Feehily - Art Direction
Steve Stacey - Design
Kevin McDaid - Photography
Louis Walsh - Management

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded in July - October 2010; Henson Recording Studios (Hollywood, Los Angeles); RAK Studios (St John's Wood, London).

Gravity is the tenth and final studio album by the Irish pop band Westlife. It was released on 22 November 2010 in the United Kingdom. John Shanks produced each song, barring the bonus track on the Japanese edition. The album was preceded by the lead single, "Safe", which was released at 14 November 2010. This is also the group's final album under Syco Music; Syco decided that there will be no second single from the album, which was one reason the group left Syco in March 2011. As of November 2011, the album had sold 358,943 in the UK.



Album 11 is the musical equivalent of greetings-card copy.

The run-up to Christmas has spawned yet another Westlife-shaped stocking filler, their 11th long-player in a reign which has so far spawned over 44 million album sales worldwide. Predictably, Gravity’s 12 tracks prove not timeless, but as outside of the realms of ambition, place and time as the 10 albums that have come before.
 
Gravity is the musical equivalent of greetings-card copy, and sees the four-piece attempting to break into a sentimental sweat... with a rockier edge. Or at least that’s how they’d like this album to be billed. The reality is a host of songs as predictable as Westlife have ever been, with the standard quota of covers (two), the standard quota of upbeat numbers (two) and the standard quota of ‘wholesome’ (throughout).
 
They meet their own standard, sure – but Westlife are becoming their own boilerplate so much so that the style guide has gone over word-limit. Lyrically, Gravity is full of the regular wist – “so if I’m dreaming / don’t wake me up I’m so alive,” sings Shane Filan on Beautiful Tonight. But even if there is some emotion or situation-specific context to the songs on Gravity, they’re lost in that same waterbed of cliché.
 
The songs on Gravity aren’t as de facto soppy as their previous albums, perhaps because of John Shanks (Alanis Morissette, Carlos Santana, Bon Jovi) coming on board as producer – but this isn’t a move in any direction at all, more just a marketing strategy. There’s a cover of Hoobastank’s The Reason, and another of Athlete’s Chances, and that seems enough to set Westlife’s intentions in stone. To suggest there’s any passion for rock is as ingenious as the story that the album’s one-word title came from a suggestion on Twitter, as has been played out.
 
For music made to sound so easy on the ear, Mark Feehily’s vocals often sound shrill; but such is the temporary nature of these songs that a trace of character outside of the middle-ground just slips by. Westlife aim for the real-instruments respect and songwriting nous of Gary Barlow, but fall flat on an overuse of words desperately trying to be genuine – it’s all about empathy, and familiar imagery alongside the cliché.
 
There’s not an arrangement here without lilting piano suspensions, lush strings, a windswept chorus and a defiant key change – and it’s questionable what this album has to offer to anyone other than a completist.

Natalie Shaw - 2010
BBC Review



Irish four-piece Westlife are still going strong 11 years after scoring a U.K. and U.S. hit with debut single "Swear It Again," having avoided the usual "three albums, greatest hits, breakup" career trajectory of most boy bands. But while their chart statistics remain impressive on paper (the previous year's Where We Are and lead single both reached number two), they have been pretty much irrelevant since 2005's Face to Face. Content to release a new album every November, just in time for an X-Factor performance to boost Christmas present-led sales, and then disappear for the following ten months, they've become a seasonal act in the vein of Cliff Richard and Daniel O'Donnell, rather than a contemporary pop presence. But having had the festive period sewn up for the past decade, they now face their toughest test yet, with boy bands both older (the revitalized Take That) and younger (the chart-topping JLS and the Wanted) all releasing albums off the back of huge number ones and airplay staples. But despite claims that Gravity, incredibly their tenth studio album, is the best and most varied of their career, its 12 tracks produced by John Shanks (Bon Jovi) aren't exactly a huge departure from their late-noughties output. Indeed, the likes of lead single "Safe" and "Closer" are the kind of epic Take That-esque pop/rock ballads that they've attempted on their last two releases. And while the first half of their career saw them rely heavily on covers of distinctly easy listening favorites Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, and Brian Kennedy, Gravity continues their more recent tradition of reworking U.S. soft rock anthems, with Hoobastank's "The Reason" given the same MOR polish as previous renditions of tracks by Lonestar and Daughtry. Apart from the minor flashes of electro on opener "Beautiful Tonight" and "No One's Gonna Sleep Tonight," the rest of the album is filled with the same kind of clichéd "stand up for the key change" ballads they are notoriously famous for. The only surprise appears with a faithful cover version of "Chances," the string-led epic from Brit-pop also-rans Athlete, a rather offbeat inclusion considering their predictable and unadventurous history. However, Westlife aren't exactly well known for their original streak, so hardcore fans are unlikely to be disappointed with its safe and familiar sound. But with far more exciting and inventive material from their contemporaries, it could struggle to match the success of their other multi-platinum releases.

Jon O'Brien - All Music Guide



Was Westlife können, können nur Westlife. Seit mehr als zwölf Jahren liefert die irische Formation einen Gänsehaut-Pop-Klassiker nach dem anderen ab und standen damit unglaubliche 14 Mal an der Spitze der britischen Single-Charts: acht ihrer bis dato zehn Alben schafften ebenfalls den Spring auf Platz eins in Großbritannien, die beiden anderen erreichten Position zwei. Anfang Dezember veröffentlichen Shane Filan, Kian Egen, Nicky Byrne und Mark Feehily, deren Tonträger weltweit bislang mehr als 43 Millionen Käufer fanden, ihr elftes Album.

Als Produzenten verpflichtete das Quartett diesmal keinen Geringeren als Grammy-Preisträger John Shanks, der in seiner Karriere seinerseits bereits an 47 US-Nummer-Hits entscheidend mitgewirkt hatte. U.a. arbeitete er bislang mit Bands und Künstlern wie Take That, Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette, Bon Jovi, Kelly Clarkson, Anastacia, Santana und den Backstreet Boys. Die erste Single-Auskopplung ist die traumhafte High-Class-Ballade Safe , mit der die Iren ihre atemberaubende Serie von 24 Hitsingles in Großbritannien in Kürze fortsetzen werden und ihren Ausnahmestatus als die Könige des Stadion-Pop auch im neuen Jahrzehnt unterstreichen. Co-Autor des Songs war u.a. James Grunder, Frontmann der amerikanischen Rockband Golden State. Die Aufnahmen zum neuen Album fanden in London und Los Angeles statt.

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