Turnaround

On the Westlife shore of soft and sappy love, Turnaround involves a pebble toss toward rock, and it's all the better for it. If it had gone all the way, if it had found a producer willing to risk fortunes on morphing a pop group into a rock group, something remarkable may have happened. As it stands, it is a notch above typical, but only a notch. It is also the final album before the great turnover, in which lead vocalist Brian McFadden fled the group, stating that, "It's hard to juggle two lives when you've got a family." He subsequently reemerged as a solo artist and professed disgruntlement over the requirements associated with boy band captivity, which included shaving every day. When interviewed by Wil Marlow of The Journal, McFadden said, "I was standing there trying to sing a song like "Mandy" and be all emotional when I've never even met a Mandy." Surely he had met a Mandy, among the legions of fans the group had collected by this, their fourth original album. But having an artistic and independent view on a group's output would definitely cause friction when the producer is American Idol's stubborn Simon Cowell, who insisted the song be included. Ironically, Barry Manilow …