LOUIS Walsh claims former pop protege Ronan Keating’s music career is over and believes the Irish singer will never have another hit.
The former X Factor judge was instrumental in launching Ronan‘s career through his management of Boyzone – to date, the second most commercially successful boyband in the United Kingdom behind Take That.
He would continue managing the singer, now 49, through the successful early years of his solo career, during which hit singles Life Is A Rollercoaster and When You Say Nothing At All rocketed up the charts.
But a sharp decline in popularity and ongoing disputes over Ronan’s musical direction led to a bitter parting of the ways – and persistent claims by Walsh, 74, that the singer had ‘started believing his own publicity.’
Appearing on the latest instalment of The Big Interview, Walsh reignited his feud with Ronan by claiming he will never have another hit single.
“I did all the work on Boyzone, everybody knows that,” he told host Collette Fitzpatrick on Sunday evening. “They were the puppets for Westlife, and I picked all the songs.”
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Ronan became a household name with Boyzone – earning three number one albums and a string of hit singles alongside bandmates Stephen Gately, Mikey Graham, Keith Duffy and Shane Lynch.
But he would leave the band at the height of their success in 1999, with Louis staying on as his manager during the hugely successful first decade of his solo career – before creative differences led to his sacking.
“Ronan started believing his own publicity then,” Louis recalled. “He said to me one day in the Four Seasons, ‘I don’t want to be a karaoke artist anymore.’ But that’s what he is!
“I was picking all the songs – he hasn’t had a hit since. He hasn’t! He’s singing all the old songs now, he doesn’t have a record deal. He was great to work with at the start, but then he believed it.”
He added: “He wanted to be George Michael… he was chasing around George Michael in London.
“What he didn’t know is that George Michael fancied Stephen [Gately], and George Michael was only being friendly with him to get to know Stephen. That’s the real story.”
Ronan has since returned to Boyzone, now a four-piece following the death of Stephen to an undiagnosed heart defect in 2009.
But Louis remains adamant that the singer’s music career is finished.
“It’s over – he’s never going to be a pop star now,” he said. “He’s never going to have another hit. I’m happy.
“We had great times together, we had great fun, but it was a bad divorce, and it’s fine – I’m over it. I’d say he’s happy enough in his life, because he’s always gonna be working.
“He’ll either be a DJ, or he’ll act, or he’ll dance. He can do anything.”