There are some things which Max Clifford just cannot do for Brian McFadden. The showbiz spinner may be able to provide his client with expert advice on how to deal with media queries about marital strife and lyrics alleging he got a few clouts from his teachers, but Clifford will never be able to separate McFadden from The Jacket.
Indeed, no matter how much McFadden wants to morph into a hybrid of Keane, Maroon 5 and The Libertines, the singer will always be associated for a long time to come, in many, many nightmares with The Jacket.
It truly was a thing of wonder. Each member of Westlife wore one of these white leather numbers with one green sleeve and one gold sleeve when they performed at the homecoming concert in the Phoenix Park for the Irish football team in June 2002. While they may have intended to look patriotic and fly the flag, they merely succeeded in looking like five wibbly-wobbly blocks of Neapolitan ice-cream.
While The Jacket has probably been consigned to the deepest, darkest recesses of his wardrobe (you couldn't give something like that away), it symbolises the many problems McFadden faces as he hits the solo road. He may now look like he auditioning for a part on Hollyoaks, but the Westlife days will always be there in the background until McFadden does a Robbie Williams.
The credibility McFadden so obviously and desperately craves will not come just because he's now wearing a pair of distressed jeans, has lost a few pounds and hasn't shaved in a few months. Telling interviewers that he's listening to Snow Patrol or that he empathises with the troubles of Libertines' lightweight Pete Doherty does not mean people will listen to Irish Son any differently.
When you put away the Heat cover stories and news pieces on his personal life, you're left with the CD and, boy, it's an ugly brute. McFadden may have brought in Guy Chambers to help out with the songwriting, but there are no Angels here. Instead, it's one patchy, hastily-written dirge after another coated in the sort of sterile adult-pop which even Bryan Adams or, worse, Ronan Keating would consider unadventurous.
Given the opportunity to exorcise his boy-band past and express those things he was restrained from saying while living the Westlife, McFadden can find absolutely nothing to say. Sure, there's some huffing and puffing, but it sounds not so much the work of a tortured soulmore as a father of two driven demented trying to find the paint aisle in B&Q. Worse, seeing as McFadden appears to view embracing indie music as a way to be taken seriously, he produces one of the dullest and most lacklustre releases of the year.
It's ironic, then, that the pop world which McFadden so obviously dislikes with a passion is where you have to go to find some of the most thrilling albums of the year. There's Gwen Stefani showing you how to really shake off your past with the head- spinning, freaky-deaky Love Angel Music Baby, an album where every single track will have you shaking your tush.
There's The 411, the new En Vogue, with their dramatically plush and poised Between the Sheets album, which shows what you can do with a bit of imagination and a few sweet voices. There are tracks on the new Girls Aloud album which demonstrate that TV-produced pop may have its moments. There's even hardy pop survivor Kylie Minogue, whose Ultimate Kylie album and sell-out Dublin shows next year demonstrate just how far you can travel from Ramsey Street with some decent songs and a pair of stretchy hot pants.
Yet for many, pop is the p-word, up there with the c-word and the f-word as one of the unutterables. Yes, pop music is often frivolous, disposable and more pap than pop, but in the right hands, it can be scintillating and mesmeric. A good workman never blames his or her tools, and McFadden's bleatings would sound ridiculous in any musical language. Still, he has plenty more styles to pick from. Next up, McFadden goes country and Irish.
