Louis Walsh: Press puppet master or pop kingmaker?

From Boyzone, to Westlife, to The X Factor and beyond, Louis Walsh is undoubtedly one of Irelands most successful music moguls of all time. In a career spanning nearly 50 years, the Mayo native had an ear for talent and an eye for a story, helping him shape pop music history—one headline at a time. But Walsh was no stranger to bending the rules to get his acts noticed and has come under renewed flack after his appearance on a new docuseries ‘Boyzone: No Matter What’ chronicling the rise of one of Irelands greatest pop exports, and for better or worse, his hand in their success. Walsh also seemed to be a master at drumming up publicity: in the documentary, he reveals that he fed stories about Boyzone to tabloids to keep them in the public eye – including rumours, such as one that Baby Spice and Stephen Gately were dating. If they “got the front page,” he said, he was happy. "Most of the time Louis said 'write what you want', there were times when he said 'don't write certain stuff' but 99% of the time he said 'do what you want',” former journalist Rav Singh added. "He needed stories, I needed press, it worked for both of us,” Walsh said. “He would call me up and I would give him things on the group, we kept the band in the papers basically." Was his puppeteering of the press a necessary evil, or can the highs and lows of Boyzone act as a cautionary tale to a music industry still under scrutiny for how it treats its young stars. Today on the Indo Daily Fionnán Sheahan is joined by journalist Ann Marie Hourihane and culture writer Louise Bruton, to discuss how a small-town manager built a global sensation, and ask: would it have worked any other way? *This article was updated at 12.50pm on July 28th 2025 . A previous version included: "“In the documentary, [Mr Walsh] reveals that he used to sell stories about Boyzone to tabloids to keep them in the public eye, including ­rumours, such as one that Baby Spice and Stephen Gately were dating. If they “got the front page”, he said, he was happy.” The Irish Independent is happy to confirm that Mr Walsh did not seek payment from journalists for these stories, but was instead seeking to persuade the journalists to publish his stories in the interests of his clients. The Irish Independent apologies for any confusion caused.*See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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