I don't mind this one as a guilty pleasure, I remember enjoying it at the school discos and I don't think I've really heard it anywhere since.

28. Westlife - If I Let You Go

Rank: 6/10

Reason: On we plod back to you know who, and Westlife's second single was better than Swear It Again, straight from the Cheiron studios and, like many other big pop singles, written by a team of Swedes. With a strummed guitar intro, this track is then all about being too afraid to let somebody you have feelings for know how you feel about them. That's pretty much it but no doubt it was commercial catnip for a teenage girl audience at the time.

Lead vocals are shared by Shane, Mark and Brian this time, and it's another string laden affair but with more to it than its predecessor and complete with a beach video with horses! The best part of this track is without doubt the dramatic key change/getting up off the stools moment, and then the final minute is actually good to be fair and very classic boyband, it just takes a while to set up that payoff.

This might have been a 7/10 for me BUT for the fact that I have a bone to pick with it. The label will have no doubt expected another easy No.1 on a week with nothing happening but Alice Deejay were in the middle of a heroic should have been climb to No.1 with Better Off Alone, which had continued to increase sales week after week and was ready to complete the 4-3-2-1 move this week before Westlife got in the way. Now I COULD blame Alice Deejay's label Positiva for leaving the radio edit off the CD single, which only featured club mixes (Now 43 was the only way to get the radio edit at the time, or a 'Short Cut' mix was on the cassette single), but I'm going to blame Westlife's label for their scheming timing that we would see over and over again for the next few years. Those seven straight No.1s from debut had more than a whiff of fortunate timing to some of them, including this one. Better Off Alone ran this incredibly close and Westlife's record run almost never got off the ground, but the No.1 went to the Irish and Alice Deejay never got their moment in the sun.

This was a popular song in Europe, reaching No.1 in Ireland and Norway too, top ten in Sweden, Finland and more. And it's their second biggest song on Spotify, with 219m streams, behind My Love on 296m, which somebody will have to tell me the appeal of.

This is one of a very small handful of Westlife songs I actually quite like.

Really should not have kept 'Better Off Alone' from the top though!

Oops I'm in a minority here, I quite like the Westlife song and would rather hear it than Alice Deejay which I found too repetitive and got on my nerves after a few weeks of heavy radio airplay. My Love is huge in the Far East, a karaoke anthem apparently. Not in any Karaoke bar i've been in though. I'm practising Die With A Smile for clearing the bar just before closing time on holiday if I get drunk enough....😄

One of few Westlife songs I like. A rare thing.

I've had the opposite trajectory with "Lift Me Up", thought it was cheesy and corny at the time, now I love it. I just find her vocals so warm on the track, like a cosy blanket from the 90s, very nostalgic. The melody is super pretty too.

Agree that all the records featured so far deserve to be near the bottom. I'm not a big fan of boy bands or girl groups generally speaking but when it comes to the likes of Take That or the Spice Girls I remember all the hits and could probably hum them all beginning to end. I could also name every member and would likely recognise them all if I saw them walking down the street.

With Westlife though they had a greater chart success at least at the start of their career. Yet I'd struggle to remember most of their number ones and the only member I could name top of my head is Bryan McFadden and that's more to do with his relationship with Kerry Katona than being part of the group. At least their music wasn't annoying I suppose, just boring.

There is one boy band number one in 1999 though that I rather like but I won't mention it until it appears.

"When The Going Get's Tough" is quite a better Boyzone song as it is a bit more uptempo than their usual stuff, but this position is OK for it.

On 09/12/2025 at 15:33, Chez Wombat said:

Hot take but I actually prefer Westlife's version of I Have a Dream to ABBA's...and it's actually for backhanded reasons as the original is easily ABBA's worst song and miles below their usual genius,

Even worse than Does Your Mother Know? 🤔

Edited December 11Dec 11 by CRAZY CHRIS

I agree with the majority that If I Let You Go is better than Swear It Again. I certainly go back to it more than Swear It Again.

27. Martine McCutcheon - Perfect Moment

Rank: 6.5/10

Reason: To be fair I like everything from this point onwards up to a point so it's really difficult to rank already, but it's actress and singer Martine McCutcheon next with her Perfect Moment of two weeks at No.1 in April. Martine started her musical career as part of a female trio called Milan in the mid 90s, who managed some low top 100 success but little else of note. She also featured on a No.62 1995 hit called Are You Man Enough with Uno Clio.

Onwards she went to EastEnders where she played the iconic character of Tiffany Raymond, later Mitchell after marrying Grant. At Christmas 1998 (i.e. the period of my life I remember more vividly than any other for so many reasons) she was killed off after running into the path of a car being driven by Frank Butcher. She was later buried in a small town called Peacehaven in the south of England... which is precisely where I lived at the time so it was all very exciting to be an EastEnders fan (let's gloss over the fact that they filmed the scenes in nearby Seaford and just called it Peacehaven).

Anyway, Martine departed EastEnders to relaunch her musical career, this time solo, but it was now rather more successful. Something of a nation's sweetheart at the time, Martine debuted at No.1 with the string laden ballad Perfect Moment, a cover of a song originally by Polish singer Edyta Górniak - the same singer was responsible for the original version of One and One by Robert Miles. It was co-written by Wendy Page, who also co-wrote Billie's Because We Want To and Honey To The Bee and featured on beautiful and underrated top 30 hit Eleven To Fly by Tin Tin Out in 1999.

The track is a nice ballad, very well sung by Martine, but not exactly a classic radio staple and not one I would very often seek out to listen to either. It was also rather dated sounding on release, the production coming off more like a mid-90s production. But Martine followed this with a few more hits, the other biggest being one I really did enjoy, I'm Over You in late 2000. She also went back to acting and prominently starred in the 2003 Christmas blockbuster Love Actually. As you can imagine, with Martine's UK soap star roots, the song barely impacted outside the UK but did reach No.3 in Ireland.

Edited December 12Dec 12 by gooddelta

Hmmm, well sung but boring. Which is a shame as she’s great otherwise!

I don't mind Perfect Moment but I do prefer I'm Over You, though that does sound very 2000.

My introduction to Martine was when I saw Love Actually for the first time in 2003/4.

There's on that I'm really interested to see where you've placed. It hasn't featured yet and I thought it'd either be out early or make the top 10.

5 minutes ago, Paddington James said:

There's on that I'm really interested to see where you've placed. It hasn't featured yet and I thought it'd either be out early or make the top 10.

Intriguing. A dance song perhaps?

1 minute ago, gooddelta said:

Intriguing. A dance song perhaps?

Mmm more spoken word.

Well that's given it away.

Oh no! That’s one of my top 5 for this year :(

This song was so huge at the time, and it seems to be remembered from a cultural reference point of view but it's one I never hear anywhere these days.

2 minutes ago, Jessie Where said:

This song was so huge at the time, and it seems to be remembered from a cultural reference point of view but it's one I never hear anywhere these days.

I'm not really certain I heard it at any point later that year once it left the charts even. I can't remember it being a commercial radio staple for months like ballads tended to be at the time. Apparently it finished 80th in the end of year airplay chart, below I've Got You even.

12 hours ago, CRAZY CHRIS said:

Even worse than Does Your Mother Know? 🤔

In terms of singles the B side to DYMK is way better, but Love Isnt Easy is an early pre-hits single that I struggle with! 😄There's a couple of hilariously cheesy B sides though, King Kong Song and the medley of On Top Of Old Smokey/Pick A Bale Of Cotton which was a moment of Madness in the studio. Pretty much guaranteed it will never get a play on radio oops!