Feehily: Westlife didn't want to release 'Rat Pack' album

Mark Feehily wants to "forget" about Westlife's ‘Rat Pack’ album 'Allow Us To Be Frank'.

The 29-year-old singer admits the band didn’t want to release the LP – featuring covers of classic swing tracks – but insists their record company thought it would be a good idea after seeing the success of Robbie Williams’ ‘Swing when You’re Winning’.

He said: “That was a weird time in our career, really. I’m not making excuses for it, but Brian McFadden had just left. We kind of didn’t know what to do… Everyone was a bit like, ‘Well this can’t be some kind of mediocre pop album’, and you know Robbie had just gone out with his and when we heard the idea first, we were just like, ‘Well Robbie’s just done this, why don’t we just come up with our own little twist instead of doing something like that?’ "

Mark said by the time they'd spent six months promoting the album, he was completely sick of it.

He said: "We eventually bought into it... but obviously you have to promote for six months and then you tour and stuff, so by the end of the tour we were ready to put that one behind us."