Album Review: Blue – Reflections

For anyone who lived through the 2000s, you know who Blue are – for those who didn’t, think smooth harmonies, R&B-leaning pop, and chart-dominating singles that seemed to be everywhere all at once. After initially splitting in 2005, the band reunited in 2009, experienced a quiet run through the 2010s, and have been fully active again since lockdown ended. Reflections, released via EMI, leans into that shared history – shaped by nostalgia, longevity, and the reality of still creating together decades on. Let’s see if the album is reflective of their 2000’s sounds rather than chasing modern trends.

Greeted with a mix of violins and synth beats, The Vow is a classic boyband track – each member having a verse, inoffensive, largely non-substantive. First single release One Last Time follows, with a rockier edge and Ryan showing he still has the voice that carried the group twenty five years ago. You Should Know feels the most like an OG Blue track, while Look What You Started sounds like they borrowed the synths straight from the 1990s (not a good thing, btw), and Candlelight Fades (their most recent release) is a slow mover in typical 2000s boyband vein. The Day the Earth Stood Still is all about the acoustic guitar melody and typical boyband pre-chorus break, while we return to another slow mover with Where I Came From – though this time we begin more stripped back and feels somewhat more dramatic.

Kicking off the second half of the album, Waste My Love which has some great harmonies in this moody number, while All About Us feels like it’s come straight out of the earlier stuff. Electric guitars meet you in Neon Honey, which has an exotic Latin feel, whilst Lee Ryan’s vocals stand out in Beautiful Spiritual in another ‘Old Blue’ sounding track, and then penultimate track Souls of the Underground feels like they ripped the Girls Aloud melody on harmonising the title Sound of the Underground, but otherwise a totally different track. Rounding off proceedings we have Find That Feeling which begins superbly – simple acoustic guitars and harmonies – somewhat spoiled by the extra syths and beats… sometimes less is more and this would have been more with far less ‘noise’.

Reflections, as you may be able to tell, is not for me. I liked some of Blue’s old tracks (All Rise, for example), but this feels like nostalgia bait to me – music in the same vein as 25 years ago, but not of the same quality or feel to it. My two issues are, firstly (and unfortunately, for Blue), boyband music has moved on (see One Direction), and secondly, they’re in their mid-forties, and this genre is generally not a friend to band members aging – especially when tracks released don’t give anything more or (even worse) give less, from their earlier catalogue – sadly I don’t think Blue escaped this trap – better luck next time.

Graeme R