I’ve been given many reasons, repeatedly, from many sources, to listen to Harry Styles. This is part of that, of the investigation into him. The completionist way I do things means I’m listening to 1D, then Harry Styles solo stuff, then the rest of the 1D members solo stuff, to really get a handle on it all. So, 1D. Pretty meh, overall. There are lots of songs I might sing along to, but that’s because they were huge on the radio at some point. Throughout their five albums, there’s nothing bad, it’s just so… corporate. It’s the epitome of pop music, yknow? And of course it is, that’s what it is, that’s always what it was designed to be.
I think I forget that this type of pop exists. I tend to think of pop as whatever is current, as an evolving, living, breathing, dynamic genre that is characterized by it’s appeal more than any specific genre conventions. I do think there is truth to that, there is a real set of pop music that is that, but there’s also pop music that’s pop music in the same way country music can be country music. Songs are about x thing, songs have x kinds of melodies and harmonies, songs use x rhythms, songs are song in x accent. That’s more of what I get from 1D. The other big connection I felt was to Stray Kids, was to K-Pop. That’s not surprising, right, that connection is pretty obvious, but it did stand out to me. I can taste in 1D the same kind of… industrialization, the same machinery as Stray Kids, only worse. 1D is less interesting, less dynamic, less pretty. It really does feel like K-Pop saw this kind of corporate-produced popstar music and made it its own, decided to do it and do it better.
It’s also more like country in the extreme in the sense that the band doesn’t write their own music. They’ll occasionally have writing credits on songs, but it’s far more common for them to not. Basically what I’m getting at is I’m not a huge fan of the boy band trappings in general, and I don’t think 1D escapes any of those at all. They’re performers and they’re designed to be popstars, but as far as the individuals’ involvement with the band goes, there’s nothing about them that indicates they’re at all noteworthy as artists and musicians. Another thing K-Pop does better— the American boy band presents presentable people as popstars, puts them in the popstar position. K-Pop produces (and then kinda owns and manages) popstars, and I think that’s a big difference.
The 1D boys’ve all got solo stuff, so I’m willing to take more serious consideration for them there, see how they used 1D as a launching pad for their own stuff, but 1D as a project is not super interesting to me. I don’t dislike it, there are parts that I like that make me want to look into Julian Bunetta, John Ryan, and Jamie Scott (the three primary songwriters), but there’s also just a ton of and about this music that feels like that wrong kind of pop, and I’m not super interested in that.
I’m gonna give a low B-, and I think a big reason that’s not a D+ is FOUR (and to some extent, Made In The A.M.). Those albums aren’t not the wrong pop that I was complaining about for their earlier stuff, but it’s starting to think about moving forward away from that. There’s more involvement from the 1D boys themselves in the songwriting process— at least at a glance checking through the writing credits for stuff, at least one of them had a part in most of those songs. I do think that makes a difference. When someone is making something for themselves, when they become artists of their own image, it changes things. It’s hard to participate closely with something without wanting to take ownership, and it’s hard to take ownership of something so broadly formulaic, so publicly targeted as pure “wrong” pop. The ownership is going to make it different. Art is better when it’s owned by the artist. I don’t just mean that in a definitional or political way, either, I mean it in a very functional way. I think anytime anyone takes ownership of what they do they’re more likely to just do a better job in general. And I do feel that the 1D boys started to get some of that a little bit toward the end of the band, so, B-
tunafruitsandwitch 
BOYBAND! What an odd phenomenon is the boy band. So consistently powerful through all generations of time, so it keeps being a thing. I was too old to ride the One Direction train, but I am familiar with a few of their songs and they do get me smiling and dancing! I had no idea they wrote 5 albums. 5!!! From a musical perspective, they didn’t really need 5 albums. And each album had toooo many songs. Instead of music I just kept hearing – hmmmm, how can we make more money off of these handsome fellas? All of that being said, Kiss Me made it onto my permanent play list. What a bop! It is about as perfect as a boy band song can be. And when a boy band song is perfect it instantly transports you back to the time of crushes and cuteness and magic and endless possibility. I, for one, loved taking the dancing journey. That song, and a few others, get a full A from me. But overall, because it mostly felt like dentist background music, I give One Direction a C+. Ok. B- 🙂
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