Is it time for One Direction to grow up already? Well, not quite. For their third album, the X Factor ensemble have been granted greater access to the songwriting – but only as long as there are least two adult professionals on the session with them, making sure the chorus is in the right place. There are little hints of sexual shenanigans in the lyrics (what, I wonder, could young lothario Harry Styles mean when he worries about leaving “little traces” in his lover’s, er, “hair” on Happily?) but nobody is stripping off and twerking.
Frankly, there is nothing to twerk to. The rhythms are solid four to the floor flavoured pop rock, with chunky guitars and soaring anthemic choruses, like Kelly Clarkson channelling McFly (contributing to a sense of interchangeability, the McFly boys have actually collaborated on a song, Don’t Forget Where You Belong, a grown-up boyband writing for a growing up boy band).
One track, the unfortunate Diana (rude!), sounds almost close enough to the Police’s Don’t Stand So Close To Me to be legally actionable, with a melodic echo from Don Henley’s Boys Of Summer just to confuse lawyers. But part of the point of this kind of music is that it is so generic, it is always going to remind you of something else.
Essentially, Midnight Memories is all a little lustier and more tub-thumping than before, and aimed so squarely at the biggest music market in the world that Britain’s proudest pop exports sometimes lapse into fake American accents, yelp in the background and sing “awoooo” like they’re dreaming of Bon Jovi.
The most contemporary influence is actually rather old fashioned, with some of the acoustic guitars and little gypsy stylings of Mumford and Sons and The Lumineers. Elsewhere, you might detect touches of the soaring epics of Coldplay and Snow Patrol (and not just because Gary Lightbody has written a sappy ballad with the ambitious Harry). Put it all together and what you’ve got is the kind of pop rock that has been a mainstay of the American charts for decades, polished off with echoing drums and rammed home with the cheeky brio of five young men who know they are on to a winner. It is all so swaggeringly confident and honed to a perfect point, it is hard not to be caught up in its own sense of conviction.
Rating: 4/5
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