Remember Boyzone & Notting Hill in the 1990s? Interview with Ronan Keating

Songs like Love Me For A Reason, No Matter What, You Needed Me, Picture of You, Baby Can I Hold You?and many other smashing hits by the Irish band Boyzone made the life soundtrack of any 1990s screaming teenager in her right mind, including those whose biggest love were Take That instead, like the one who is writing this right now.

Boyzone's fame and fortune in Ireland, the UK and everywhere else in Europe was monumental back then; each and every single they released from 1994 to 1999 - and there were 16 of them in total - went straight to the top 5 charts in the UK, which made them one of the biggest-selling singles acts in the British music chart history, as well as the first Irish entity to have four number-one hits in their neighbouring country.

Ronan Keating is probably the most recognisable icon of Boyzone, as well as one of the most successful solo artists in the continent with over 20 million records sold worldwide, plus 25 million records sold with the band. He gained global acclaim in 1999 as his debut solo single When You Say Nothing At All reached number one in the UK, Scotland, Ireland and New Zealand after being featured as a theme song for the romantic comedy film Notting Hill starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.

The next single, Life Is A Rollercoaster, released in 2000, was another big hit all across Europe, and Ronan's career has seen no setbacks ever since. What's more, the fact that at some point in life he looked equally like Chris Martin of Coldplay, David Beckham and Gary Barlow all mixed together didn't stop him from developing and maintaining a unique style and charisma which contributed to his success as a judge in The X Factor and a coach on The Voice?through his further career in British TV music shows.

In more recent times, after releasing the albums Twenty Twenty and Songs from Home in 2020 and 2021, he has been doing a variety of activities including regular live shows across Europe to perform both his solo hits and the most-loved Boyzone songs.

But not all stories have a happy ending, and it didn't work out just as well for Boyzone as a band, in the end. The group, whose original line-up included Michael Graham, Keith Duffy, Shane Lynch and Stephen Gately in addition to Ronan Keating, eventually split in 1999 after six years together, and the sudden death of Stephen Gately ten years later at age 33 not only did put an end to any remaining hope for a full band reformation but also has given the whole thing a hint of sadness that just won't go away.