dark beige

By Ronan Keating

Part of being a major music star and Irish icon is often having to give media interviews, for everything from Take A Break to GMTV to the Irish Times.

One of the questions I'm often asked, being a musician and all, is what kind of music I'm into; what kind of influences I've drawn from and that kind of thing.

It might be that they go back to my youth and ask me what the first record I bought was, or who I had my first schoolboy crush on or what I listened to to escape from reality at the height of my adolescent rebellion.

I don't really mind being asked these questions, but they should all know by now that the answer I give will always be the same: I just liked whatever was in the top ten.

It didn't matter what the actual song was, as long as it had sold among the top ten highest selling singles in that calendar week, no matter what week that actually was.

For example, in June 1990 I greatly enjoyed Craig McLachlan and Check 1,2's Mona, New Order's World in Motion, and Pavarotti's Nessun Dorma. Do you see how varied that is?



Or in September 95, I enjoyed the Rembrandt's I'll Be There For You, Shaggy's Boombastic and the Outhere Brother's La La La Hey Hey, which was a little bit more "colourful" than my usual tastes, but I thought "what the hell? - the lads have come in at number 7, so give them a fair chance".




As for when I was young, yeah so I was 16 when the rave era was in its prime, or indeed that whole Nirvana and Guns N' Roses rock thing, but all I can honestly say is I only liked it if it got into the top 10, alongside acts like Mr Blobby, Let Loose and Charles and Eddie.



A happy accident in all of this whole "I can only enjoy music I hear that has reached top ten positions in the Gallup chart" thing, is that occasionally it has meant that I have enjoyed my own music.



First in Boyzone with Love Me For A Reason in November 94 (number 2), through to our first number one, Words in September 96, then with my solo hit When You Say Nothing At All in July 99, I've loved almost all of my own music - except for August 2006's Iris, which disappointingly only got to number 15, (although in my defence, David Guetta vs The Egg's Love Don't Let Me Go (Walking Away) was doing surprisingly good business that month).

I love that song. After all, it got to number 3!