Review 66: Westlife - Allow Us To Be Frank.

Frankly awful.

Here's a quick teaser for you; what's worse than something that sucks?

Answer: something that sucks that COPIED something else that sucks.

"Allow Us To Be Frank" sees Westlife clearly having ran out of ideas. Well, not they that HAD any ideas in the first place - they're an empty-headed boyband, they say and do what they're told. But the managment team, obviously horrified that their cash cows last few singles didn't (gasp!) go to number one, hit on a previously golden idea - an album of Jazz standards, once upon a time sung by a variety of recording legends (but knowing that the braindead pondlife buying this will only have HEARD of Frank Sinatra, decided to name the record after him).

Like I said earlier, it's been done (badly) before. Robbie Williams released "Swing When You're Winning" (a take on his earlier proper album, "Sing When You're Winning" - gotta love those puns in the album titles, folks. A sure fire way of saying "ah, we were only messing around anyway" if the project fails), a dire album by all accounts, but for what Williams lacked in range and style, he made up for in originality and a genuine passion for the music he was singing and the stars he was mimicking.

So, "Swing.." sold by the bucketload. It was a massive success, which of course led to an album of Pop Idol drones singing the exact same songs on a, you guessed it, album of covers by famous Jazz singers.

Which takes us to this car crash of a record. What really gets me, and this goes for Robbie's attempt as well, is the knuckle-headed notion that because you SING songs that Frank Sinatra et al sang, you have to LOOK like them as well. So cue the slicked back hair, the suits, the smokey lounge, the smug expressions... WHY? Frank Sinatra looked like that, not because the genre demanded it, not because "that's what jazz singers look like" - but because, you know, he LOOKED like that in the first place. You want to sing jazz songs? Fine. Sing them. But why dress up? What is the point?

So, third time lucky for this gimmick, and thankfully the record buying sheep decided there was something else demanding their money this time around (some reality tv star had a single out, no doubt) and the record bombed. Hopefully this is the last time we'll see this idea wheeled out, because the sight of four guys singing songs they don't know, in a style they don't know, just because their record company tells them to, is not a pretty one. A repugnant, insulting record. Pay it no further heed.