No Rock And Roll Fun

SOMETHING VAGUELY BULLYING ABOUT THIS: Back when Take That released How Deep Is Your Love, some commentators suggested that the band were issuing a direct challenge to their fanbase: do you care enough about us to make it worth or while continuing? (A song with the chorus 'buy this, or the tubby one will become Britain's most tedious superstar' might have been a more effective single.) Westlife, though, aren't trusting their constituency to be able to work out such a subtle message, and are just coming out and saying it: Buy the new single, or we'll split up. Surely the first band to use the threat of group-suicide as a marketing tool; although we quite like the idea of Ronan Keating trying to flog his next one by appearing sat in a half-lit room with three bumper boxes of Anadin and a bottle of the Famous Grouse, muttering "Prove you love me... go on, prove it."

The curious thing, though, is we'd been lead to believe that the largest consumers of Westlife singles were their manager's carboot (incidently, we never did hear back from the Chart people when we asked them if they'd be investigating the claim in that Louis Walsh biography that he was driving round with a trunk full of Westlife singles).

In half-related news, like Dennis and Sharon: Marillion are encouraging their fans to buy three copies of the new single in a bid to get it to number one. C'mon, guys, you don't have to sell many to get to number one, but it's a bit hopeful thinking twenty-one copies is going to do it. Expect to see large-ish piles of the new Marillion single down your local Oxfam Shop next Monday morning.