Home

Album: Back Home (2007)
Charted: 3
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Songfacts®:

  • This is a cover of a song originally recorded by Canadian jazz musician Michael Bublé on his 2005 It's Time album. Bublé's original version was released twice in the UK, the first time peaking at # 31. In December that same year it was re-released as a result of being constantly played on the easy listening radio station Magic, but only crept to #61. For over a year afterwards, it hovered in the lower reaches of the Top 200.
  • Michael Bublé's original version was featured in the Debra Messing 2005 romantic comedy The Wedding Date.
  • Shane Filan of Westlife said in the October 18, 2007 edition of The Yorkshire Evening Post that the decision to record the song was Simon Cowell's idea: "He really wanted us to record the song. It's not really a well known song, but I think we have brought it slightly more mainstream and more Pop. We will bring it to a bigger fanbase and audience as well." Simon Cowell originally signed the band to the Sony BMG record label.
  • Confusingly, this isn't the only Westlife track titled "Home." A song of the same name was a track on their 2003 album Turnaround. When the 2007 "Home" was released as a single, enough people downloaded by mistake the 2003 "Home" for it to register a place on the UK Top 200.
  • Mark Feehilly of Westlife admitted to Female First that the band weren't too happy about Simon Cowell's choice of "Home" as their first single: "Initially we weren't crazy about the idea. So before we recorded it we said we'll try it out as long as we can do our own version. As long as we can do a Westlife version and it's not a total and utter copy of the Michel Bublé version. In fairness we did do it and our version is completely different and it turned out OK."
  • Kian Egan of Westlife described their Home Again album in The Metro newspaper October 30, 2007: "The last one was a covers album of classic love songs - this is original Westlife songs. It's back to basics for us. It's good uptempo, mid tempo pop music like we would have done when we were 19."
  • Nicky Byrne of Westlife told the Daily Star that he'd always been a fan of this song. He said: "I've always thought I wanted that song to be ours."

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