When Boyzone pranced awkardly around the Phoenix Park stage in their orange jumpsuits at the ill-advised and worse-attended homecoming for the Republic's USA 94 squad (which could have been a subtle reference to the fact that we'd been sent packing by Holland, but I doubt it), little more than a handful of industry pundits would have given odds on the band lasting twelve months, far less staying the course for five years and logging up six UK No.1 singles and three chart-topping albums in the process, soon to be four with the release of this 'Best Of' collection. So where did Louis Walsh's charges go right?

Even before they made the breakthrough to the real charts with a cover of 'Love Me For A Reason', they'd already reached pole position in the Irish listings with a piss-weak version of The Four Seasons' 'Working My Way Back To You' (not included here) and all manner of deluded gobshites were writing to Shooting Gallery and ringing Liveline complaining that Boyzone were manufactured product who shouldn't be given the airtime of day when there were real bands struggling in obscurity. Which, of course, missed the entire point.

Boyzone were never intended to operate at any level other than as pre-teen heart-throbs, peddling safe-as-milk MOR for the benefit of girls who thought Take That were a tad too risque. They weren't attempting to win the affections of Radiohead fans with a few spare quid in their pockets and to all intents and purposes may as well have been operating within a different industry. If you were a serious music fan, Boyzone never tried to be your friend but neither could they ever have been considered your enemy.

Undoubtedly their shelflife was extended when Take That split in 1996 (the year the Boyz had their first No.1 with The Bee Gees' 'Words') and by that stage things had slicked-up to a serious degree. The production team of Ray Hedges and Martin Brannigan brought the best out of Ronan Keating and Stephen Gately's karaoke semi-finalist vocals, and the in-house compositions 'So Good', 'Isn't It A Wonder' and, particularly, the cracking 'Picture Of You' showed definite signs of development. But yet Boyzone remained frustratingly mired by a safety first approach.

One of the great traits of any Pop group is to muck with conventions and expectations once successful (Wham! and Take That both stretched the edges of their respective envelopes), but instead of having fun with their position Boyzone seem imprisoned by it. That half the songs on By Request are covers isn't the problem (as the careers of Elvis, Frank, Dusty and Aretha have proved) - it's just that their covers are so unutterably bland and soulless. If you've scored five No.1's and almost double that in Top 5's you should be able to push the boat out a bit rather than opt for a mind-numbing version of Anne Murray's 'You Needed Me' (which didn't even reach the Top 20 when it was released back in 1978) and it's here where Boyzone's abject failure as a true Pop group becomes glaringly apparent: there's absolutely no joy in their work.

In a five-year career they've never done anything remotely daft (wearing red noses for Comic Relief's 'When The Going Gets Tough' doesn't count) or come near matching the sheer exuberance and dumb genius of B*Witched's 'C'est La Vie' which, coincidentally, Hedges and Brannigan co-wrote. Instead, Boyzone have always performed like prematurely middle-aged men, happy to don designer suits like singing squaddies. Christ lads, yere only in your early 20s! Go a bit mad, your audience demands it!

Ultimately, for all their sales and solid career base (Ronan will easily slip into sub-Cliff Richard solo mode and/or a TV career, while Broadway musicals beckon for Stephen). Boyzone have failed Pop, leaving us with the memory of nothing more than a Bachelors for the '90s. I'm only surprised they never covered 'Charmaine'.