Brian McFadden seems a much more contented person these days than the last time Hot Press interviewed him, at the end of 2004.

Then, following the revelation that the singer had been on the receiving end of a blow-job from a lap-dancer on his stag night, his marriage to Kerry Katona had just collapsed, and he both looked and spoke like a man at the end of his tether.
Now in a relationship with Australian singer Delta Goodrem, who inspired his new single ‘Like Only A Woman Can’, McFadden appears a lot more comfortable in his own skin. Although of course he has a nasty surprise in store: a few days after this interview, McFadden will be dropped by his label.
“I’m much, much happier,” he affirms, sitting in a quiet spot in the garden of the Merrion Hotel. “I wake up in the morning now and I wanna do things, I wanna write songs. I think I had a real grudge when I was doing the first album; I had a very negative attitude towards everything. Subconsciously, I felt I had to distance myself from what I was doing in Westlife, and I think I also got caught up in wanting to be taken seriously as an artist. Now all I want to do is write the kind of pop songs that people will listen to and think, ‘That’s good’.”
In fairness, McFadden, despite his rough patch a few years back, has survived pop stardom better than many others. Has he been keeping an eye on Robbie Williams’ recent travails?
“I know Robbie,” says McFadden. “I feel sorry for him, I think he’s a bit of a lost soul really. I think he’s got a really big hole in his life and needs something to fill it, whether it’s a partner or what have you. He got so big so soon that he didn’t bring anything real with him. I think he got caught up in being a superstar without having any of the foundations that you need. That’s one thing I’ve never done.
“I’ve still got all my old friends and I’m still very close to my family, and I brought that all with me, I didn’t distance myself from that. Whereas, I think Robbie might have distanced himself a little bit. That’s a problem, because it’s hard to bridge that gap back. And I think it’s very important for anyone in this industry, whether it’s actors or writers or whoever, that you don’t alter your home base. You can have stardom, you can have all the funny bits that go with it, but you should always make sure that behind the scenes it’s still very solid and very normal.”
What’s extraordinary is that so many people don’t do that, as evidenced in recent times by all those Britney Strips Naked And Declares Eternal Love For Ted Kennedy-type headlines.
“The one thing I have to say is that it very, very rarely happens to Irish people,” observes McFadden. “Even Colin Farrell, who occasionally you’d look at and say ‘He has problems’, still has a really solid foundation, with friends of his and people from home. I think it’s just the way we’re raised and the way Irish culture is. It’s very family-based and nearly everyone has old friends. I suppose new friends aren’t a big thing in Ireland.”
McFadden’s latest single was written with renowned producer Phil Thornalley, who has enjoyed a remarkably varied career. In the early ’80s he co-produced The Cure’s Pornography, probably one of the darkest albums in rock history, while in recent times he's had a hand in making hugely successful pop singles like Natalie Imbruglia’s ‘Torn’. The first song he wrote with McFadden, conceived during the darkest moments of the singer’s personal torment, perhaps lacked a certain subtlety and finesse in the lyrical department.
“It was called ‘I’m A Walking Disaster’,” he chuckles. “Then the second one was ‘Like Only A Woman Can’, so it was two completely different ends of the spectrum. I enjoyed writing the first song with him, but it was strange when we went in the second time, because it didn’t work. Me and Phil don’t work well together. Some writers you sit down with and the collaboration is very easy, but it was tough writing with Phil. The first and second days we were in the studio, we got fuckin’ nothing, which was unusual for me, because normally I’m able to write a song a day.
“The third day, which was actually scheduled to be the last, I rang my manager to cancel. But he said, ‘Look, Phil’s excited about it, just go in.’ So I had this idea to write a song about Delta, but I was very self-conscious about writing a love song, because it was something I was trying to get away from. But I started playing it in the studio, Phil put down some guitar tracks, I jotted down the lyrics, and it almost kind of wrote itself. And that’s pretty much how the song sounds at the moment, it hasn’t changed too much from the demo.”
McFadden has decided to give the single an Ireland-only release for the moment, before deciding on whether or not he should put it out in other territories. Is he worried about facing a similar scenario to Samantha Mumba’s recent Vicar St. cancellation?
“That's so bizarre,” he proffers. “Samantha’s a friend of mine, but it’s like, how can you try and sell-out a gig when you’ve had no new material for two or three years? It’s hard enough to sell-out a gig when you’ve got an album high in the charts. I’m sure people couldn’t even name one of her hits offhand at the moment. But all she needs is to come back with one hit song and then she’ll sell out Vicar St. no problem.”
McFadden seemed to endure another difficult time last summer, when there were numerous newspaper reports of a bitter custody battle with Kerry Katona. Was that a tough period for him?
“I lived in New York for a year, and I was getting phone calls everyday, with people saying, ‘I read this, I read that,’ but I knew nothing about it. I wasn’t doing interviews with people, I wasn’t in the public eye, but there were still all these stories. I could sit here all day telling you about stories that aren’t true, since it’s pretty much all of them from the past two years. It wasn’t really tough for me, because I was just reading it like you, and saying, ‘That’s interesting. It’s didn’t happen, but it’s interesting.’”
What are relations like with Katona at the moment?
“We don’t have a relationship,” states McFadden. “She’s married and she has her new baby. She’s got her life, I’ve got my life, and the common ground is the children. We speak about the kids, like, ‘I’ll pick them up at whatever time’, and so on, but we’re not friends. How many people are with their bloody ex-wives?”
Do you think the Boyzone reunion will happen?
“I think it’s going to be down to the music,” responds McFadden. “If Louis and the A&R team at Polydor come up with some great songs, I reckon it probably will happen. They’re not just going to get back together for the sake of it, they’d have to come back on a high. They’ve all got individual careers now; Ronan’s flying and Keith’s doing his presenting and stuff, so if they reformed they’d have to get something special from it.”
Will McFadden be doing the Westlife reunion in 2020?
“They’ll still be together in 2020!” he laughs. “I don’t think I’ll perform with them again. Our personal relationships are great, but professionally, I don’t think it would ever be right for us to perform together again. It took them a long time to establish themselves as a four-piece, so to throw it all together again would be silly. I think it would be a step back for them, and it would be weird for me as well. With the material I’m doing now, to go back to singing cover songs wouldn’t make sense.
“The only reason to do it would be for the money, but I’m not doing this for the money. I’d do this for free, I really would. I don’t have as much money as Westlife do, they make millions every year, and I make very little money in comparison. I only do music because I enjoy it, and I wouldn’t enjoy going back to being in a band. I’m really pleased with the way things are happening for me right now, and I plan on keeping that going.”