Midnight Memories

Let’s get one thing out of the way: One Direction make pop music. Fluffy, airy, sparkly, teen-oriented Pop Music (with great big capital letters). Not only do they make pop, but they make it with very clear aims in mind; like floppy-haired snipers, they identify their target, take aim and fire.

Their first album – the record-breaking Up All Night – was meant to establish them as the perfect boyfriends for teenage girls everywhere. Target Achieved. The boys’ second effort – the playfully titled Take Me Home – was a blatant effort to establish them as a global phenomenon under their new contract with Columbia Records. Target Achieved. Finally, in a recent interview, the boys’ writers admitted that when writing their latest effort, they did so with their upcoming stadium tour in mind. They and their team were on the lookout for songs that would make equal sense when played in Madison Square Garden and teenage bedrooms alike.

Listening to Midnight Memories with this in mind provides a bit of context for the constant appearance of huge drums, guitar riffs and shouted choruses. At times, these tactics are wildly successful, but, even here, the victory feels a little hollow, since the techniques are borrowed from some of stadium rock’s most loved and practised stalwarts. In particular, the lead single, ‘Best Song Ever’, is a carbon copy of The Who‘s ‘Baba O’Riley’, while ‘Midnight Memories’ sneakily pinches the immortal boom-boom-clap rhythm of Queen‘s ‘We Will Rock You’. The songs are great, but they’re certainly not original.

This may sound quite disparaging, but I must confess that I have become quite the One Direction fan over the past few months. Thanks to the catchy new singles, the witty Morgan Spurlock documentary and their relentless media presence, they’ve somehow managed to win me over. All of this considered, prior to this review I was tempted to buy this album and add it to my ‘Bubblegum Pop’ playlist. Now, having taken a few listens, I would be less inclined to fork out for the collection, mostly because the singles are by far the best aspects of the album.

The group’s populist tactics are wildly successful at times, but even here, the victory feels a little hollow, since the techniques are borrowed from some of stadium rock’s most loved and practised stalwarts.

Syco and Columbia Records’ tactic here appears to be to catch the audience with flashy performances of the singles, and then to simply sit back and wait for them to buy the album in record numbers (which, of course, they have done). Then, they just stick the best songs at the beginning of the tracklist, hoping that the fans whip themselves into such a frenzy over the first few cuts that by the time they reach the mushy filler at the centre of the album, they either won’t notice or won’t care. Having clocked on to this cheeky tactic, I was ready to turn the album off and apologise to my ears for subjecting them to such mediocrity for three tracks.

Before I could reach the stop button, though, the day (and the record) was saved by the late-in-the-game addition of ‘Little White Lies’. This little gem is definitely the best thing about Midnight Memories: the instrumentation jumps unpredictably (a word rarely applied to these five boys) between muted guitars, huge drum fills and dubstep-lite choruses. ‘Little White Lies’ is shout-a-long stadium pop at its best and most teenaged.

Overall, the album has achieved its primary goal of giving fans something to sing along to at their overpriced Wembley gigs, but there are very few surprises and a lack of real soul-searching or emotion. But if we wanted to have a good cry, we’d whack on ‘The Power of Love’, wouldn’t we?

Similar To: The Wanted, Union J

MP3: ‘Midnight Memories’, ‘You & I’, ‘Little White Lies’