Westlife’s Nicky Byrne on Touring New Markets and Returning to India

When Irish pop group Westlife last came to India in 2003, singer Nicky Byrne recalls they went to Goa after performing in Mumbai and took jet skis out on the water. They even ended up shooting a music video for the song “Obvious,” a typical pop-rock tune from their album Turnaround.

A quintet back then, the four-member group – now comprising Byrne, Shane Filan, Mark Feehily and Kian Egan – say they had “lots of very vivid memories” from being in India 20 years ago. Now, they return to India as part of their Westlife: Wild Dreams Tour put together by BookMyShow Live. Byrne says over a call from Vietnam about their return, “Now we’re coming back, we’re different men; all married.”

Westlife will perform all their hits across decades this week, kicking off the tour in Mumbai on November 24th, followed by a Bengaluru concert on November 25th and in New Delhi on November 26th. Ahead of their India concerts, Byrne spoke to Rolling Stone India about their last time in the country, how the Wild Dreams tour has gone so far, the rise of K-pop boy bands and more. Excerpts:

Rolling Stone India: What is it like coming by to India for a tour, as part of a larger tour that you’ve been taking around the world? Of the places you’ve played so far, what’s been different, if anything?

Nicky Byrne: Obviously, we’re a little older. So that brings its differences. [laughs] A little bit more tiring on the body. So it’s important to look after ourselves. And but this tour as it’s going to be, by the time it finishes next June, our biggest tour ever. And I guess if you were to ask me through our whole career, that our biggest tour ever would be 23 years into the band, I wouldn’t have thought that would have been the case. You know, we’re hitting new markets, like the United States, Canada, and we’re taking it to markets that we’ve never heard before, like Brazil, Mexico, and of course, there’s India. So we have been in India but we’ve never taken our big concert tours there. So this is a very exciting tour and a very exciting week.

Your last time in India was in 2003, right? What kind of memories do you have from back then, even with where Westlife was at in their career?

Yeah, 2003 was our last time to be in India and we were five members back then. We also shot a video to a song called ‘Obvious.’ We traveled from Mumbai to Goa. I do remember renting some jet skis and traveling out around in Goa and having some fun and also then shooting the video. We also performed at the MTV Indian Music Awards. Yeah, so lots of very vivid memories. Now we’re coming back, we’re different men now. We’re all married. We’ve all got children. And I think we we’ve grown up and we now look at our career a lot differently. And I think we can enjoy it. Ironically, we can enjoy it a little bit better.

What kind of setlist do you have planned in India, how do you change things up when you move along a massive tour with different sectors like The Wild Dreams tour?

A really good question and this is the first tour where we really have focused on changing up our setlist and costumes for certain territories. So you know for Asia and India, we were doing songs like ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You,’ which is a song that was a big hit internationally. Like ‘I Lay My Love On You,’ the song was not a big hit back in Ireland where we’re from or England or anywhere like that. Probably, when we go to the USA, we won’t include it there either. But we look we look at Spotify and a couple of different fan forums and try to listen to what the fans want. I mean obviously, you’re not gonna keep everybody happy. Not always is every song that people want going to be on there. But we do look at stuff, we do listen, and we do try to put songs in and take songs out as we go.

You’re rounding off what’s been a pretty cool year for pop artists from the 2000s in India —  Backstreet Boys came in May and Ronan Keating is in town right now. Have you always seen love from India right from the start? What do you chalk it down to?

Absolutely. I have a small disk on my wall in my house. And it’s a Silver Disco from India. I’m not sure how many record sales it’s for, but I know it’s for our second album [Coast to Coast, 2000]. I’m back as far as then which was ’99, 2000 – so like 23 to 24 years ago. I remember always knowing where India is and it’s mostly big for Westlife and then we did get there in 2003, I have a memory of lots of fans at the airport. When social media became big, we’d have lots of people following you on X or Instagram, and so on.

So we always know how strong India’s been and maybe two years ago, when this tour was being created and put together, I think that’s when the conversation started about venturing to new territories. India was mentioned. I showed the lads a couple of concerts from Justin Bieber, although he is considerably younger than us, I knew that there was a considerable touring market there and they also knew that, you know, there was a big Westlife fan base there, so it felt right. We were all on this tour really open to the idea of looking into new markets and that’s when our agents started to correspond with the Indian agents and now the tour’s been born. We will look to the more cities it depends on the successes we how the shows in future. We could make it a tour of just India, which will be pretty impressive.

The idea of a pop group and boy bands mean something slightly different today, especially culturally since we’re seeing so many K-pop groups take over the narrative. Do you like any? What do you think of that movement?

I mean, it’s hard not to hear about the success of K-pop. It’s pretty impressive. I can’t say I follow it daily but I obviously have seen… particularly the duet with Coldplay most recently, which I think is a brilliant song. The world is a big place – 8 billion people on the planet. There is room for everybody.

It would be great if Westlife could do some duets as well with some of these guys and some Indian artists as well. The recent success of the Bollywood industry internationally has been huge. It’d be great to get the actors and actresses down to the shows. This is the start of a new beginning – we feel Westlife in India, it can get bigger and better. We can keep coming back in various different ways.

Do you have any other plans outside of the shows while you’re in India?

We’re concentrating on Vietnam at the moment because we’ve got two shows and as soon as we wrap up those two shows, and we’ve got a travel day to India. And although we’ve got three shows, it’s two shows back to back and then a travel day. So you know, when we get time we’d love to go out, but even if we didn’t get the time, you still experience [the country]. For example, I’m now taking in all the interesting sights of millions of people on the road at the moment, on motorbikes and mopeds. That’s all difference to where I’m from, in Dublin, Ireland. So even though I’m on the phone with you, and I’m looking around going, ‘Well, this is so different to what I’m used to.’

I think that’s the same as when we get to India, you take it all in, you don’t always get a chance to walk around. But if we do get that opportunity, we’ll grab it with both hands. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, touring India but hopefully it’s the first of many.

Get tickets for Westlife: Wild Dreams Tour here.