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By now, I'm beginning to wonder if Westlife's extraordinary over-reliance on the truck driver's gear change is actually an elaborate joke on the part of the group or their producers. Does every Westlife song have a gear change? Finding out isn't going to be pleasant.

In this particular case, they've gone for the textbook "cut-back-on-the-rhythm-section-then-have-an-abrupt-stop-before-it-goes-up" manoeuvre. (The textbook will be available from all good bookshops as soon as I've written it.) "Abrupt" is perhaps an understatement: the break before the gear change is like a sledgehammer to the head, second only to Michael Bolton's cover of "When A Man Loves A Woman".

No doubt this ubiquitous song (a 2001 album track but released as a single the following year) sold a kajillion copies and was number 1 in 176 countries, yadda yadda yadda. None of which is going to convince me that it's any good.

Listen!

Related stuff

You can never accuse Westlife of lack of effort: they obviously put in a lot of time, money and hard work promoting themselves, to make up for lack of talent, and their official website is no exception. It's full of nifty Flash animations, a detailed discography, and hey, even a clock so that you can see how much time you waste waiting for everything to load. There's also a link marked "Westlife Platinum", but I couldn't bring myself to click on it. It's probably a Visa card with which you earn Points each time you sink further into debt.