Beautiful In White

Shane Filan first recorded this song as a demo at Abbey Road during his Westlife days. He recalled to HMV.com: "I had producers and songwriter friends phoning me up at the time going 'look, I'm in London, do you want to pop in and do a demo vocal on this, see what you think?' and I'd be like 'yeah sure, whatever.' So anyway I got a call from Savan (Kotecha), this guy based in Sweden, he's an amazing songwriter, he did loads of stuff for Westlife and he's written for loads of artists around the world. So he's in London, he rings me and goes 'will you come in and demo this for me? I've got this song, it's like a wedding song, I think it'd be perfect for you guys'. So I came in on my own and did the demo, it was put forward to the band when we were doing the next album, and the A&R team were like 'yeah, it's a lovely song, but I don't think it's right for the band'. And that was it, the last I heard of it was back in about 2006 or whatever it was."

Around half a dozen years after he'd recorded the demo, the song went viral in Asia, with the lyric video being viewed over 70 million times on YouTube. Filan recalled how he learnt of the track's popularity in the Far East: "I'm on tour in China, I was in Beijing. I'll never forget it, I was on stage on the first night of the tour and all the fans kept shouting out the same thing, but I couldn't make it out. In the end I actually stopped the show and I said to a girl 'look, what song are you asking for?' because they kept shouting it all night, and she said 'Beautiful in White'. I was literally like 'wait, how do you even know about that?!' That last time I'd sang that song was once, in a studio like six or seven years ago. So I basically sang the chorus of it, I got the guitarist Ben and said 'look, play along with me here, I'm just going to start singing, find the chords'. So he started playing with me, and the place just erupted, it was like I was singing 'Flying Without Wings' or something. I'm not joking, it was the best reaction of the whole night, and I'm thinking 'what the hell is going on with this?!'"

Did you know that Queen Victoria has been credited with starting the western tradition of white bridal gowns by wearing one at her 1840 wedding? When the British queen married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe- Coburg and Gotha, brides of the time preferred bright colours, so Victoria surprised everyone when she tied the knot in white lace - and began a tradition which continues to this day.