Westlife was formed in 1998 with 5 members including Mark Feehily, Shane Filan, Kian Egan, Nicky Byrne and Brian McFadden. The group’s boss is Louis Walsh, who once led and brought success to another boy band – Boyzone.
The group first performed officially on Boyzone’s tour in Dublin (Ireland) in 1998. In March of the following year, they released the single Swear It Again and quickly beat other competitors to take the number 1 position on the Billboard music chart in the UK.
At the time of Westlife’s debut, the world’s youth music scene already had 2 famous boy bands from the US, Backstreet Boys and NSYNC. However, the romantic and elegant appearance in the performance style and the heart-wrenching love songs of Westlife still “drove crazy” female audiences worldwide.
The group’s first album, named after the group, Westlife, achieved great success when it ranked 2nd on the Billboard chart in the UK. The group’s second album, Coast To Coast, also quickly climbed to the number 1 position on the Billboard chart in the UK and entered the Top 10 best-selling albums in 2000 in the UK.
In 2001, Westlife had their first world tour called Where Dreams Come True.
After Westlife released 5 albums, member Brian decided to leave the group to develop his own career in 2004. With the remaining 4 members, Westlife continued to record the sixth album Allow Us To Be Frank with Swing and Jazz music styles.
A year later, they released their seventh album Face To Face. Their lyrical songs such as You Raise Me Up, When You Tell Me That You Love Me, Amazing, I Have A Dream, Seasons In The Sun, My Love, If I Let You Go, Flying Without Wings, Soledad, I Lay My Love On You… became familiar, reminding the romantic youth of the 8X and 9X generations of Vietnamese audiences.
In 2007, Westlife released the album Back Home with successful singles Home, Us Against The World and Something Right. At the end of 2008, the group organized a tour to celebrate their 10th anniversary called 10 Years of Westlife.
But just 3 years later, the group announced their disbandment and stopped working for a few years. In 2018, they unexpectedly announced a reunion with 4 members, released the album Spectrum and started The Twenty tour around the UK and Southeast Asia to celebrate 20 years of singing.
To date, Westlife have sold over 55 million records and have been streamed over 1 billion times on YouTube. They have also had 14 number one singles in the UK, the third most of any act or group in the UK (after Elvis Presley and The Beatles).
For nearly two decades, Westlife, along with Backstreet Boys, Boyzone, Nsync, have contributed to the dominance of all-boy bands.
In 2021, Westlife announced they had signed with Warner Music UK’s East West Records, after leaving EMI Records. They also released the album Wild Dreams and embarked on The Wild Dreams world tour in the UK and Ireland.
The Wild Dreams is the 14th tour of Westlife’s career with a total of 91 shows lasting from 2022 to 2024. The legendary band will perform all of their immortal songs such as Flying Without Wings, World of our Own… as well as new songs from the Wild Dreams album.
In Westlife’s global tour The Wild Dreams, Vietnam is also one of the destinations. Specifically, on November 22, the 4 members of Westlife will perform at Thong Nhat Stadium, Ho Chi Minh City.
This is not the first time the legendary Irish band has come to Vietnam. In 2011, they performed in Hanoi as part of the Westlife Gravity tour. Shane, the band’s member, has performed twice in Ho Chi Minh City in 2014 and 2017.
