One Direction have crossed a line.
I could handle the way they manipulate their confused audience of teenage girls by constantly singing about them and telling them they love the things they're insecure about. Take Little Things, for example, “sure, you’ve got big thighs, a dimple in your back, a squeaky voice and a bit of a moustache, but I love those little things about you”. Then there's "YOU don't know YOU'RE beautiful", "YOU'VE got that one thing“, “let me kiss YOU“. So far, its not been “her“ or “she“. No, its always been YOU, provided you buy this record, you gullible thing, you. But I could handle that, because its an old boyband trick.
And to be honest, I found the way they always end every song with the floppy haired one saying the name of the song quite funny in its sheer repetitiveness. Every single one of those songs has the one that they are quite obviously prepping for a solo career saying “you don’t know your beautiful”, “let me kiss you”, “one way or another” etc at the end.
And I could just about take it when one of them was wearing a fucking RUSH t-shirt in the video for their Comic Relief single. Although I can’t imagine any One Direction fan being into Xanadu…
But, this is also where they really started to piss me off, as opposed to just being a minor annoyance. The moment at the BRIT Awards where they “launched” into Teenage Kicks was incredible. Because if you listened carefully, you could actually hear every former punk rocker in the UK simultaneously shouting “FUCK OFF” at the screen.
And now this.
Their incredibly bland new song (ironically titled Best Song Ever, which I‘ll deal with in due course) quite clearly rips off The Who. The intro is Baba O' Riley. Even the sound of the piano is EXACTLY the same. As if we wouldn’t notice that you just pissed on a Picasso.
And this isn’t the first time they’ve done it. Live While We’re Young?
…Should I Stay Or Should I Go?…
Even their first hit, What Makes You Beautiful?
Seriously? Did nobody in the office say “I’m sure I’ve heard this before“?
So, clearly there’s a pattern emerging. One Direction’s songwriters are so lazy and know their fans will buy anything they put in front of them, that from the very beginning they’ve just been taking riffs from other songs, and REALLY famous ones too - they didn’t even bother to go for b-sides - and building an inferior song around them.
But what about this new one?
Quite frankly, the dumbest song title that has have been bestowed upon any piece of “art“, and I include Piss Christ in that. The song they refer to in the lyrics is not the song they’re singing, but the implication is clear; THIS is the best song ever. To have the sheer BALLS to claim that this is the best song ever after SIXTY fucking years of rock & roll is astoundingly arrogant.
Lyrically, as you might expect, knowing there isn’t any danger of “Directioners” moving on for another year or two means that they can come up with any old clichéd drivel, although this one stood out;
Said her name was Georgia Rose, and her daddy was a dentist
You know, Bruce Springsteen names his characters too. But, he follows his characters lives throughout his albums. They go nowhere with the "Georgia Rose" thing. Her name is Georgia Rose? Whoop-de-fucking-doo. I named my pinky toe Willbert, you don't hear me banging on about it. And the fact that her dad "was a dentist". Is there any reason that we need to know this? Is there a twist at the end where it turns out all your teeth fall out, but luckily, you're going out with a dentist's daughter and no little girl of his is going to be knocking about with a guy with no fucking teeth. Nope, it's just a bit of miscellaneous filler.
Plus, she said her dad "was" a dentist, which implies he isn't anymore. What happened? Did he leave the profession at his own will or was he barred from ever performing dentistry again?
We danced all night to the best song everYou know, the whole concept of this song sound eeringly familiar. Let me think; the best song in the world, you forget how it went, and you’re trying to figure it out. Where do I know that from?
We knew every line now I can't remember
How it goes but I know that I won't forget her '
Cause we danced all night to the best song ever
I think it went oh oh oh
I think it went yeah yeah yeah
I think it goes, oh
Ah, yes. That’ll be it. Of course, the difference here is that it’s played for laughs and not meant to be taken seriously.
Further on down the road…
You know I know you know I will remember you
I know you know I know you'll remember me
You know I know you know I'll remember you
I know you know I hope you'll remember how we danced
How we danced
What? JUST SPIT IT OUT, BITCH. What you’re trying to say is “we’ll remember each other and that we danced”. So just say that. Get to the point. Elongating it does nobody any favours; it makes you sound stupid and keeps the song going a couple of seconds longer, and there's no need for us to be punished for your stupidity.
As for the performance? Well, One Direction are sold as individual personalities; there’s the sensible one, the moody one, the cheeky one, the Irish one. Although, in reality, they are all simply “the cute one”. There is no personality in their voices at all. You can’t really tell one apart from the other. They may have distinctive personalities on stage, I wouldn’t know. But I do know that they have none in their songs. They are completely interchangeable.
So this is, basically, just another bland One Direction song. But somehow this is slightly worse. The title actually makes it sound like a parody of One Direction. There’s only so long they can continually churn out the same product, and Simon Cowell knows that, which is why they have been omnipresent for the last 18 months. They're striking while the iron is hot as often as possible.
A quick question for the One Direction fans who will likely comment underneath via the medium of death threats (as they often do on twitter); do you know who Leif Garrett is? In the late 70s he was in the teen idol position that One Direction are currently in. Look how stupid he looks...
