Sad song

Ronan Keating has fond memories of recording with Stephen Gately on his latest album. Photo / Supplied

With the death of Stephen Gately in October, 2009 was far from a vintage year for Ronan Keating. Indeed, the loss of his Boyzone bandmate seems to be reflected in the sombre mood of the 32-year-old Dubliner's latest solo effort Stay. However, the album was finished several months before the untimely passing of Gately, who contributed backing vocals to a cover of the Christmas carol, Little Drummer Boy.

"Thank God he's on it," Keating says with a heavy sigh when I meet him on the eve of the festive season in his dressing room at ITV's This Morning programme, which is co-hosted by expat Kiwi Philip Schofield. "It gives me a reason to work on this record. I want people to hear him. He sounds beautiful on it. It is very much a melancholy album but this time of year is like that generally. It's a tough time for people. Everybody has lost someone or is missing someone at this time of year."

Keating has fond memories of recording Little Drummer Boy with Gately last July. "I remember him slagging me off, saying 'what are you doing mate? It's 50 degrees outside and we're singing Christmas songs. Are you crazy?"' he recalls ruefully. Stay's downbeat tone is better represented by the album's British title Winter Songs, which is indicative of the season in which it was released. "It's summer Downunder so we had to change it for you guys so that it makes sense," laughs Keating. "It's a bunch of songs that I grew up listening to every year at Christmas, as we all do. Some are more obscure than others, like Ring Them Bells by Bob Dylan and River by Joni Mitchell, which people won't remember so well. But I know them all so I recorded them. You try and make them your own as best you can. It's always close but I think we got it right."

Keating hopes the album's diverse range of festive favourites, popular standards and original numbers will strike a poignant note during the holiday season no matter the hemisphere. "It's a tough time for people right now," he says. "The songs are all about coming home and spending time with your loved ones. With all these songs, I've tried to encapsulate a kind of homecoming feeling."

He also teamed up with Hayley Westenra on It's Only Christmas, which appears exclusively on the Australasian edition. "I wanted to do something specific for New Zealand and Australia," he says. "I didn't do duets anywhere else in the world, just on that song. I asked the local record company to recommend some people I could work with and they came back with Hayley. I thought she had a great voice and she was a great girl."

Although Stay has a solemn edge to it, Keating insists that it is not a depressing record. "I tend to go that way myself," he says. "I tend to write melancholic songs and listen to other people's. I love them. I don't know what it is in our human DNA but we tend to want to hear melancholic songs when we're sad. But whether it's to feel more sad or not, I don't know."

Keating is careful to separate his solo work from the music he makes with Boyzone. "It's very important that it's like black and white otherwise why do it?" he says, describing March's first new Boyzone album in over a decade as the polar opposite of Stay.

"I'm not just saying it but it's going to be the best record hands down that we've ever made," says Keating of the boy band who split in 2000 before embarking on a lucrative reunion tour in 2007. "What we tried to do was think 'what if Boyzone never broke up? If we were still together 16 years later, what sort of music would we be making?' We were very aware that we had a blank canvas and could do whatever we wanted, to be any band that we wanted to be. So we've made a pop record, an adult pop record. "They're beautiful, brilliant, up-tempo, uplifting songs. There's probably only one ballad on the whole album. It's very up."

Gately appears on two songs, including first single Gave It All Away, which is written by Mika. "He on the first stanza, which is absolutely amazing," says Keating, who thrived on the group's lively dynamic after the solitary experience of working on his own. "Any moment the five of us were together was like a carnival, a circus. We have our own little bubble and our own sense of humour. I love it and I miss them in my life when they're not around."

But before that, Keating will return to New Zealand, which he last visited in April last year for the Dancing With the Stars finale. "I did the show and went off to bed and when I came back to do the breakfast show the next morning the guy who won it was still there in his outfit," he laughs, referring to weather presenter Tamati Coffey. "He was hung over because he'd been partying all night. He had a big smile on his face and was doing interviews on the phone. I remember thinking 'your life's changing, mate'."

Instead of the usual theatres, Keating and his seven-piece band will be performing in the more scenic surrounds of the country's best vineyards including Auckland's Villa Maria Estate. " I'm a fan of red wine so that should be interesting. New Zealand produces a lot of good wine like Villa Maria; I've drunk it myself plenty of times. I'm looking forward to going down and to being under the stars at night with a string quartet. It will be a beautiful, romantic setting."

* Stay is out now in stores. A Day On The Green: Ronan Keating takes place February 5 at Mud House Winery, Waipara; February 6 at Church Road Winery, Napier; and February 7 at Villa Maria Winery in Mangere, Auckland.