Speaking during the casting on Friday morning, which will be hung in the 3Arena, Shane Filan recalled when he first thought about the boyband having their own standalone show in the 3Arena. <\/p>\n
\u200a\u201dI remember one of our first shows we actually did here was with Childline,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember chatting to Louis Walsh backstage and we were saying, \u2018Do you think we’ll ever do a night here on our own?\u2019 Obviously we\u2019re looking back now 25 years later.\u201d <\/p>\n
Nicky Byrne, Kian Egan and Filan will set off on a two-year world tour after their 13 Irish gigs in September, with performances in Belfast, England, Scotland, Wales, Paris, Germany, Denmark, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and more. <\/p>\n
Fourth member Mark Feehily won\u2019t be joining the band on the tour. He took a step back from performing in 2024 due to a battle with sepsis, but was involved in the recording of the band\u2019s latest single Your Love Amazes Me. <\/p>\n
The single was released last month ahead of their new album 25 – The Ultimate Collection. It is set to include all-time favourites such as You Raise Me Up, Uptown Girl, and Flying Without Wings, along with new recordings.<\/p>\n
Asked if it was a difficult decision to go forward with the tour without Mark, Filan said they had \u201chis blessing\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cOf course it’s very disappointing he’s not here for the tour but it is a moment in our life of 25 years that we couldn’t miss,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on interactions with fans over the years, Nicky described being walked in on by Louis Walsh and a gang of fans one day while he was getting changed for a gig. <\/p>\n
\u201cI remember driving up two, three hours before the show and there was a load of Mexican fans with the Mexican flag waving as we all drove in,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThen two hours later after dinner we were getting changed and no knock on the door, Louis Walsh walks in with all the Mexican fans and I was standing there in my boxer shorts.<\/p>\n
“He said, \u2018Nicky, I just want to introduce you to these guys, they\u2019ve flown all the way from Acapulco and I went, \u2018Yeah okay, no problem. Hey guys, can I just pull up my trousers that maybe that would help?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cSo loads of great memories and fans have tried all sorts as you can imagine, but not anymore, we’re older now.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u200aFilan described the new run of shows as the biggest they\u2019ve done so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously there\u2019s things you can do that you couldn\u2019t do three or four years ago, it’s going to be very visually spectacular,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Westlife 25: The Anniversary World Tour will start in the 3Areana from Thursday, September 10 to Saturday, September 26. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking during the casting on Friday morning, which will be hung in the 3Arena, Shane Filan recalled when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[26778,18,117,19,17,337,26553],"class_list":{"0":"post-463640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-3arena","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-westlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116500707911181317","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}