Westlife breaking records

WESTLIFE are back - for the umpteenth time - at Newcastle’s Metro Radio Arena next week, as Entertainment Editor GORDON BARR reports.
FORGET Take That, the newly-reformed Boyzone and even young pretenders McFly - none can compare to Irish pop stars Westlife when it comes to performing in Newcastle.
That has nothing to do with actual performance or material, though - rather it is based solely on the number of appearances and the number of people who have seen the chart-toppers at the city’s Metro Radio Arena.
When Westlife take to the arena’s stage on Tuesday it will mark their 26th concert at the venue - and you can add one more, when they return the following day too.
Love them or loathe them, that means more than a quarter of a million people will have seen Shane, Kian, Mark and Nicky there – a record that will be hard to beat.
The latest tour is called Back Home, and Westlife must feel that the Metro Radio Arena is, indeed, a home from home these days.
The shows follow the release on Monday of their latest single Us Against The World, from their Back Home album.
"Us Against The World is our favourite track on the album and one of our best songs ever,” says Nicky. “It has a beautiful melody and as soon as we recorded it we knew it just had to be a single.”
Mark adds: “This song is a symbol of Westlife recording the kind of songs we really believe in.
"Good quality well produced pop music, which is exactly what our loyal fans deserve. It’s a taste of what’s to come in the future.
"In my eyes it’s also one of our best vocal performances ever.”
Few pop bands can compare to Westlife’s remarkable success. In their nine and a half years on top they have sold over 40 million records globally.
In the UK alone they have scored nine multi-platinum albums and a record breaking 14 No.1 hits (behind only Elvis and The Beatles).
Westlife have also picked up innumerable awards and appeared on hundreds of magazine covers around the world.
They are the only recording artists to win the Record Of The Year four times and other top awards include two Brits and an MTV Europe Award.
2008 is a special year for Westlife as it marks the 10th anniversary of their career and will celebrate this fact in spectacular style with a huge concert at Dublin’s Croke Park in June in front of more than 80,000 fans. The album Back Home has to date sold more than a million copies in just eight weeks.
Westlife are at the Metro Radio Arena in Newcastle on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.