Ronan Keating: 'We're all scarred by what we went through in the 90s'

Ronan Keating was born on 3 March 1977 in Dublin, Ireland. In 1993, he became the youngest member of Irish pop group Boyzone, who went on to have 21 UK top 40 singles including six number ones. In 1999, Keating released his first solo single, “When You Say Nothing At All”, which became the first of three UK number one singles. He went on to release 12 solo albums, selling 20 million records.

Keating has had a parallel career in TV and radio, hosting the Australian X Factor and hosting a breakfast show on Magic Radio in the UK for several years. He also co-founded The Marie Keating Foundation, a cancer charity set up in memory of his mother.

In his Letter to My Younger Self, Ronan Keating looks back at his time in Boyzone, going solo and being a grandad.

When I was 16, I was into music and athletics. I was a sprinter and I was in school bands. George Michael was my musical hero – I would stand in front of the mirror with a hairbrush singing “Faith”. School was tough. I didn’t really listen to what the teacher was saying when I was about eight years of age, and you spend the rest of your life trying to catch up. That’s what happens to kids in school like me. Sometimes when you don’t understand, you’re afraid to put your hand up and say you don’t understand. Then it’s difficult, and you end up falling behind and then you never catch up. So you find other ways to be creative. Then, when I was 16, I joined Boyzone.

I was a total dreamer, but I worked hard. I was a grafter. I was into athletics so I always believed you had to train the hardest to win. So I trained twice a day as a kid, I was always working on a path. I didn’t sit in front of a TV screen or anything like that. I was a very active kid. I think if you met the younger me you’d think he was a lovely fella, really. I hope so. I was always mannerly. My mum brought me up to have manners and treat people with respect. So I hope that I was always that way. 

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We were a very, very, very close-knit family. Mum and dad were a typical Irish mammy and daddy. My older brothers and sister emigrated to America on scholarships when I was young, so I ended up on my own at 14, in the house with my mum and dad. That was quite a difficult thing for me, to go from this bustling, great, energetic household, and then all of a sudden it was empty and just me on my own. 

I had to audition for Boyzone. There was an article in the newspaper saying there was an audition and I went for it. There were 300 guys there. I got put in the final 50. Came back a week later, did another audition, I’m in the final 10, and then another audition, and then I got in the band. It was basically that straightforward. I had to pick songs and sing them so I picked “Father and Son” by Cat Stevens and “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor. In the band I always thought everybody looked better than me. I just thought everybody looked like pop stars. Everybody else looked like they could all be famous, and I never saw myself as that.

I remember we were all sitting in the car doing a radio tour of Ireland. We were being driven around doing radio station after radio station all across the country, and our first single “Working My Way Back to You” got played on the car radio. I remember we all jumped out of the car in the middle of the countryside and turned up the radio and just stood there and couldn’t believe it.

Peak Boyzone was the white suits, and “No Matter What”. Peak Boyzone, right there. That song was a combination of all the places we’d been. It just translated across genres. It was one of those songs that just, you know, it’ll be there forever. 

I don’t comment [on his relationship with manager Louis Walsh, whom Ronan Keating once claimed tried to ruin him] on these things, really, to be honest. People will say what they’ve said, and it’s all there, documented in the documentary. I said my piece, I told my truth. And yes, there are moments that are heartbreaking and shocking, but I guess everybody knows what they said at the time. I mean, we’re all scarred by what we went through in the 90s. I don’t think we’ve even started to deal with the things that we’ve been through as human beings. But you know what? We keep going.

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I don’t remember seeing [the 1999 front page of The Sun announcing that Stephen Gately was gay]. I mean, we knew what was going on, but I wouldn’t have seen the newspaper. We were on a plane to Asia or somewhere, god knows where. Walls got built around the band so that people couldn’t look in but also so the band couldn’t look out. We were shielded from it all for more reasons than just protection. We were totally oblivious. We were just delighted that things were working and we were successful. You don’t think about anything else when you’re 16, 17, 18.

This is crazy, I’m just driving by the President Hotel [in London] right now as I’m talking to you. This is the first hotel Boyzone ever stayed in, and I’m driving by it right now. Oh, wow. We ran up a phone bill that none of us could afford. Then we threw our bags out the window because we couldn’t pay the bill. 

It took years to decide to go solo. It was not an overnight decision. No, not at all. In the end, everybody wanted to take a break. Was I nervous? 100%, absolutely. I had looked to my left and looked to my right for all those years, and the boys were there, and then all of a sudden I was on my own, and I was scared stiff. Luckily, I had the kind of stepping stone of the film, [“When You Say Nothing At All” was on the soundtrack of Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill] and I knew what he’d done with Wet Wet Wet’s “Love is All Around” so he knew what he was doing, I felt like I was in good hands. 

My younger self wouldn’t believe that this career lasted so long. To think 30 years later, I’m still doing the same thing is amazing. I just never imagined this was going to be the life I’d end up having forever. It’s remarkable. It’s a real blessing.

I travelled a lot. The family spent time in Dubai and in Australia and in London. Australia is wonderful, my wife’s Australian so we wanted the children to be around their grandparents. My own dear mum died in 1998 at home in Ireland. She was everything to me. She was a pillar of strength. She guided me. But more than anything, she showed me love. She showed all of us love. And that’s really the lesson I learned from my mum. Show your kids love. That is the greatest gift you can give them.

Success and celebrity was just different in the 90s. We didn’t have social media. The world was a very different place. Fame was being on MTV, being on Top of the Pops, that was the dream. Or to be on the cover of Smash Hits. My 16-year-old self would be over the moon with how it’s worked out. We strived, we worked so hard for all of those accolades. 

I’ve got five incredible children [three with his first wife Yvonne Connolly and two with his second wife Storm Keating] and a great, incredible, wonderful relationship with them all. Am I a good dad? Yeah, I think I’m doing OK. I’m a grandfather now as well. It’s wonderful. My boys are legends. I have a great relationship with my son Jack, and he’s a great dad. It’s great to see him as a dad, totally embracing it. She’s a beautiful little girl.

You’ve got to look after yourself. That’s for sure. Your health is your wealth. I’ve lost incredible people in my life, very important people to me. I want to be around my children. I want to be around all of their memorable moments in their life, so I make sure that I’m fit and healthy. I train most days. I try to eat well, and I think that’s all I can do.

If I could have one moment in my life back again I’d be on my BMX, about 14 years of age, flying down Bayside Walk [in Dublin]. That was just… I’ll never forget it. The wind is in your hair. Everything’s simple – there’s magic to being a kid. And at 16, I lost all of that. I just couldn’t do it any more at all. It just changed. 

The 25th anniversary edition of Ronan Keating’s eponymous debut album, Ronan25, is out on 5 September and features the original 15 tracks plus his 2000 Royal Albert Hall concert.

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