#3 Westlife, "Something Right"

I got nothing left to prove
And it's all because of you

(Yes, it got radio airplay in some countries in 2007 and I loved it then, but with no proper promotion of it, I decided not to count it as a single; in 2008, with a music video--which I'm choosing not to embed because it includes the inferior single mix--and single cover art released for it [and some consultation], it counts as an actual "single" according to my definition.)

Early into my time in Sweden, I found myself stuck on a bus miles and miles away from a very important place I was supposed to be at with absolutely no chance of making it there by the time I was supposed to. I was, to say the least, a bundle of nerves struggling to keep down the slowly rising panic.

I'd been in Sweden long enough at this point that, though the joy of hearing Swedish radio stations in the real world and not through headphones plugged into a computer was still present, it was no longer a novelty. Stuck in the middle of nowhere-near-where-I-was-supposed-to-be, I was barely even conscious of the fact that, as always, the bus had the radio playing, probably tuned to Rix FM or something like that.

Three minutes later, my heart had slowed to a normal level, a smile had crossed my face, and I was no longer clenching the handrail quite so tightly. I hadn't forgotten everything that had gone wrong, but it no longer seemed like such a big deal.

That's the power of "Something Right." This past year, I could count on no other song to make me feel like, even if everything wasn't right in the world, everything was survivable. As someone living in a country where Westlife have never made it big, I've always been free to cherrypick the good songs of theirs and avoid the ones I don't like, so consequently it's probably been easier for me to have a gently positive attitude towards their existence; if they've only averaged one song I return to over the past three albums, that's fine with me--no one else would have given me those three songs. "Something Right," a Swedish creation, is a mid-tempo boy band pop song, not edgy by any definition, and with a light percussion beat and piano part behind its perfect uplifting pop melody (avoid the single mix which strengthens the drums, though), but that in no way gets across the simple magic of this song. A better classic boy band sound from the past five years you'd be hard pressed to find.

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