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'A Different Beat' was the boys' 7th Top 5 smash in a row and second chart-topper... It stormed straight in at No. 1 in December '96.
A strange one this - I remember listening to the chart rundown where it entered at the top (and probably at least some of the other five weeks it was in the Top 40) and I even remember Mark Goodier congratulating one of the band down the phoneline. And yet I don't remember the song at all. So here goes...
Ah yes, it's their "ethnic" one, complete with African children in the video, although Boyzone themselves clearly went nowhere south of Clapham to film their part. Although musically not quite at the level of inspid balladry the band would soon descend to, it's obvious that the group was already being run as a showcase for Ronan Keating and Stephen Gately - you can see in this TotP clip (from the days when they tried to pretend the bands weren't miming by playing the crowd noise very loud) that the other three aren't sure what to do with themselves when the song isn't especially danceable. Oddly enough, four band members have writing credits, I don't know whether that's just a misprint. Were it not for their apparent involvement, I'd have suspected that somebody wrote this as a potential charity single and dumped it on Boyzone when it was rejected. Certainly the sentimental lyric points in that direction but also lends itself well to the Christmas market and promotion of their second album, to which this was the title track.
Also appearing on: 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 71
Available on: A Different Beat
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