"Better" is a 2007 single by British singer-songwriter,

Tom Baxter Thomas Baxter Gleave (born 29 October 1973) is a British singer-songwriter based in London. He was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, and grew up in Camborne, Cornwall, with his four siblings. The second son of Jeff and Julie Gleave (who were regulars ...

, co-written with Sam Semple. It was released on 3 December 2007, reaching a peak of No. 10 in the

Irish Singles Chart The Irish Singles Chart is the Republic of Ireland's music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) and compiled on their behalf by the Official Charts Company. Chart rankings are ...

and No. 67 in the UK Singles Chart in 2008.

Track listing

#"Better" #"Too Far Gone" #Love Is Not Enough

Chart positions

Boyzone cover

The first version of the song to chart was a cover by

Boyzone Boyzone were an Irish boy band created in 1993 by the talent manager Louis Walsh. Before even recording any material, Boyzone made an appearance on RTÉ's ''The Late Late Show (Ireland), The Late Late Show''. Its most successful line-up was co ...

, released in December 2008 as the second and final single from their second greatest hits compilation, '' Back Again... No Matter What''. It became their final single released before the death of band member

Stephen Gately Stephen Patrick David Gately (17 March 197610 October 2009) was an Irish singer who, with Ronan Keating, was co-lead singer of the pop group Boyzone. All of Boyzone's studio albums during Gately's lifetime hit number one in the United Kingdom, ...

in 2009.

Background

Boyzone's version of the song features both

Ronan Keating Ronan Patrick John Keating (born 3 March 1977) is an Irish singer, songwriter, actor and presenter. He debuted in 1993 alongside Keith Duffy, Michael Graham, Shane Lynch, and Stephen Gately, as the co-lead singer (with Gately) of Irish pop g ...

and

on lead vocals. The single received less promotion than ''Love You Anyway'', due to the band's tour commitments, and charted much lower, selling 30,000 copies and becoming Boyzone's first single to miss the top 3 in Ireland and the first to miss the top 5 in the UK.

Music video

The music video for "Better" premiered on 14 October 2008. The entire video was shot in black and white, with each member of the group singing to a woman he is holding – with the exception of Stephen Gately, who is shown singing to a man – the only time a Boyzone video has depicted a same-sex

love interest (; ) were stock characters within the theatre style known as commedia dell'arte, who appeared in 16th-century Italy. In the plays, everything revolved around the lovers in some regard. These dramatic and posh characters were present within pl ...

. The video marks the last appearance for Gately in a

video, due to his death in October 2009.

Track listing

* Digital download # "Better" – 3:36 # "Coming Home Now" – 3:46

Chart positions

References

{{authority control 2008 singles 2007 songs Boyzone songs Polydor Records singles Pop ballads LGBTQ-related songs Song recordings produced by Stephen Lipson