Fridae

Openly gay Stephen Gately and a male actor play a couple in a music video for Boyzone's new single "Better". The track also appears on Back Again... No Matter What - The Greatest Hits which was released in October.

Gately, who is in a civil partnership with businessman Andrew Cowles, was quoted by the BBC's Radio 1 as saying that the decision to include a gay couple in the black and white video was one made jointly by the whole band.

In the video, four of the other members are partnered with a female partner while Gately is shown with a man. Radio 1 reported that the group originally planned to have their own partners in the video for "Better" but none of them would appear in it.

He said, "I came out in 1999 and it was a big issue at the time and I don't think I could have done this video without having a guy in the video.

"I think it's important for me to be true to myself. The lads were saying, 'You've got to do this'. They were pushing saying, 'This would be fantastic'. It's the first of its kind. That's why I went for it."



Caroline Sullivan wrote in The Guardian that while Boyzone's Better "may be a sign of how far we've come since the days when Elton John had to cast a woman as his love interest in the Nikita video," "don't expect it to be widely emulated."

"With less to lose than an ascendant new band, it was easy for Boyzone to do the right thing by Gately. The few other established groups with openly gay members tend to tread lightly around the subject. Westlife, whose Mark Feehily came out a couple of years ago, get around the issue by not showing the band in romantic situations. For the reputed handful of closeted pop stars who are still weighing up the idea of coming out, that may also be the happiest compromise."