Blunt(s) Of The Week

This week... Westlife!There's only been two blunt of the week 'awards' given out and already it feels as though these boys have had one coming for a good few months.

But their fate was sealed Sunday Night when they became number one AGAIN! With yet another rubbishey cover version funeral song.

Normally, a well groomed boy band wearing suits would get a big thumbs up from me because, well, being smartly-dressed is ace. However, I still can't think of one single nice thing to say about this band other than possibly "well, at least they didn't ruin this song as much as they ruined the last one". Even the suits look cheap.

And now, I'm going to try (not very hard at all) to convince you that they are blunts of the highest order. Firstly they've had 17 singles out. Twelve of those have gone to number one. Which is pretty impressive, let's be honest. Four of those have been covers. And that's four too many. Surely you'd take a hint when people said you'd ruined a Barry Manilow song and just give up singing or better yet, just stop breathing. If I'm honest, I think they crossed a line when then covered ABBA, who do they fucking think they are? The A*Teens? Ha! They wish.

I understand of course that no version of Josh Groban's 'You Raise Me Up' was ever going to be euphoric or danceable (prove me wrong 'Loife) but the 'Loife could've at least tried to put some amount of emotion into their vocals that might have transformed the 'song' from a monotone drone to an actual song.

Everyone outside of the Westlife's murderously loyal fan base knows full well that Westlife have little to no relevance to music 2005 and they are still bashing out (at best) mediocre pop ballads like it's 1999. I'm all for keeping it old skool, but I think it's much more of a case of laziness than some ironic self-parody. And even if it is, no-one's laughing. Louis Walsh/the people in charge of X Factor's insistance on playing the song at every opportunity throughout the show and as many of the acts performing Westlife songs as possible is NOT subtle but effective marketing. It's a disgustingly obvious attempt to sell records and make 'Loife relevant. Stop! Now! They're not relevant. Even now they've got a gay one, they're still not relevant to today's music scene (irrelevant and about 18 months late on that trend to cause any controversy or interest at all).

Westlife are releasing a Christmas single duet with Diana Ross, and in doing so will tarnish her reputation. I've heard it, and it does make me want to cry (and no, I'm not caught up in the emotion and beauty of all, they were tears of pain). Christmas is ruined.