1998 Boyzone: All That I Need

Mention 'Boyzone' to me and my mind wanders to a picture of a furrowed brow of worry and a face of studious intensity on a person too busy brooding to ever loosen up and crack a smile. Maybe that’s a bit harsh on my part (and probably a bit deluded too), but there’s no doubt it played at least a part of an image that, with the Irish charm of course, set them apart from the 'lads in a gang' antics of Take That. These boyz were their own men and, along with the 'smouldering glances' they were wont to give the camera in their videos, it helped give the band a semblance of maturity that added some friction to the Kinder Egg trinkets and cover versions they were called on to sing.

Just like this really - an original song, 'All That I Need' is the familiar, soft shoe, slow dance shuffle that tip toes around Ronan Keating's vocal without ever breaking into the sort of sweat that would get in his way and spoil the furrowed-ness. With the surface class of a designer label knock off from a market stall rail, 'All That I Need' hangs together with just enough robustness of fabric and strength of thread to give it shape and to get it home. But from the avalanche of cliché's ("I was lost and alone, trying to grow, making my way down that long winding road") to a main melody lifted straight from Richard Marx's 1989 hit 'Right Here Waiting' and picked out on a nylon guitar, there's nothing here that's going to survive the boil wash of repeated listens intact before it's packed off to Oxfam in a recycling sack. On whose selves, incidentally, I saw a copy this very day. And when Richard Marx is used as a benchmark, then such paucity of ambition deserves no better fate.*

* Funnily enough, one of his CDs was in the rack too. Sic vita est boyz.