As a Band Member
Before Westlife, Egan and Feehily were with Filan in a band known as I.O.U. with other Sligonians Derrick Lacey, Graham Keighron and Michael "Miggles" Garrett. He partly wrote the IOYOU's song Together Girl Forever. For 6 months, Shane's mother, Mae Filan, tried to phone Louis Walsh (who is also the manager of Boyzone). Eventually, she was able to speak to him and talked about her son's band. 3 of them were dropped and the other 3, Shane, Kian and Mark, joined ventures to finding 2 more slots for the band. Then they were joined by nicky Byrne and Brian McFadden to form Westside. The name of the band then changed to Westlife as there were already a number of bands with the name Westside.
Filan, along with Mark Feehily, was the lead singer in Westlife. Their first album was released in November, 1999, titled Westlife. With Westlife, Filan has received twenty-eight platinum discs and sold 40 million records worldwide.
- Fragile Heart
- Bop Bop Baby (Became a hit single and made it into #5 in U.K. singles charts)
- Don´t Say It´s Too Late
- I Wanna Grow Old With You
- I'm Missing Loving You
- Singing Forever
- Where We Belong
- Never Knew I Was Losing You
- Love Crime
- How Does It Feel
- Crying Girl
- Reason For Living
- Miss You When I'm Dreaming
- A Little Part of Me / Little Part of Me / Extraordinary Love
- Love Ain't War
- This Life
- Closer
- Too Hard to Say Goodbye
- Last Mile Of The Way
Songs were found to be Filan's co-written songs. No other details whether it's for Westlife or not.
He has also written songs for other artists, (together with his former bandmate McFadden):
- Listen Girl sung by John Ostberg
- Let Me Be The One sung by Simon Casey (the song written by Shane, Gary Barlow)
- Sei Parte Ormai Di Me sung by II Divo
- The Music Won't Last / Music Won't Last by Jerry Given
In the week beginning 26 April 2010, an unreleased solo song by Filan called "Beautiful In White" leaked onto the Internet, but it was credited as being recorded by Shayne Ward instead of Filan.