Songfacts®:

• This was performed by the band on a trip to Uganda, Africa, in aid of the televised Idol Gives Back charity event. Thanks to the sale of downloads via Apple's iTunes Music Store, this acoustic version became a Top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100.
• This was written by Ben Moody and David Hodges, both former members of Evanescence, plus New York therapist Josh Hartzler, who was Amy Lee's friend and later became her husband. Hartzler inspired Evanescence's songs "Bring Me To Life" and "Good Enough."
• They lyrics sound like they could be about a lover, but the video makes it clear that the song is a plea for compassion and a call to take action to combat destitution. The video shows stark scenes of homeless people, hurricane victims and others in need. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bertrand - Paris, France
• The song finally reached the Top 20 of the UK singles charts in October 2009, thanks to its use as a suitably emotive backing track on the X Factor TV series.
• A version by Irish boy band Westlife peaked at #2 in the UK chart in November 2009 at a time when Daughtry's original was still in the Top 75 after its exposure on X-Factor. The band explained why they decided to record it on publicity materials:
  Nicky Byrne: "I think what it's done for us as well is the confidence in ourselves performing the song. Even performing the song on TV shows we know we're coming back with something really really strong regardless of how we're gonna perform on that particular night the song itself is big, it's epic, it's catchy and it's a great pop song. It's a song that we recorded with Steve Robson here in the UK. How the song came about was when we first met up with Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh talking about where we needed to go with this album. We flew out to Los Angeles and met up with Simon in Beverly Hills. He played us that track as a song that he felt in his eyes was the kind of direction that he thought Westlife maybe could go, maybe should go."
  Shane Filan: "We went to his house with the big meeting that we've in the year over what album we're gonna do, what we think and he basically played the song and said to us 'If I had an original song like this for you guys, if I had a song like this for you it would be your first single.' And we were like 'Alright, ok - brilliant.' You know, we were surprised by the song cause it was a bit rocky and very hard too."
  Kian Egan: "'What About Now' ain't typical Westlife fans would actually love song we recorded for the album, em, simply because it's the only cover - the only song that that is a cover on this album. And it got to the point where it was like 'Look, this song is completely unknown song aside of, you know, America.' Why wouldn't we do it? It's a pop song, we're a pop band, we're singers, let's sing great pop songs. And you know, when we suggested it to Simon he jumped out of the skin. And you know, that was it. All of a sudden we had an album, all of a sudden it was full systems goer, it was like 'Wow', you know, they put the foot on the gas and there we were, we haven't stopped since."