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Since I’m a baby boomer who primarily listens to classic rock music, the British-Irish boy band One Direction is not a band that I’d normally listen to. In fact, it’s the kind of music that my sixteen-year-old daughter likes—and I’m forever telling her to turn the volume down. For this CD, though, I’ve been finding myself turning the volume up.
One Direction consists of members Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson. Their CD, Up All Night, was released after they took their native country by storm on the British version television show, The X Factor.
The band has had over 100 million hits on YouTube for their songs, and I can see why. “What Makes You Real” is a very strong opening track. As I said before, I found myself turning the volume up, and I was hooked immediately by the band’s infectious sound. I had thought that the boy band genre of groups like *NSYNC and The Backstreet Boys had fallen by the wayside, but it quickly became apparent to me that, even if mine was an accurate assumption, One Direction has surely revitalized that bouncy pop sound with pleasant harmonies.
The title track, “Up All Night,” is surely going to be played at every middle school and high school party, dance, and cotillion over the remainder of the school year and through the summer at the beach and barbeques.
The album’s array of producers did a spot-on job of mixing piano, guitar, synthesizers, electronics, and even strings to give the CD a beefy sound to go along with the group’s smooth-as-silk vocal delivery. Although the lyrics are somewhat predictable for the age group that has been targeted, the band delivers them with such passion and enthusiasm that it’s easy to get drawn into each song and find yourself singing along. That happened to me on the song “Everything About You,” a blast of romantic bubblegum pop.
As a parent of a teenage girl, One Direction’s Up All Night is a welcome change from some of the music that my daughter has been listening to—the kind that’s risqué, vulgar, and confrontational and relies on distortion more than clarity.
The “One Direction” for this band is certainly up, up, and away to the top of the airwaves and charts. I can’t wait to review their follow-up!
