One Direction - Up All Night
One Direction have a couple of tough weeks to follow, including new albums from boy-band rivals JLS and The Wanted, as they release their debut record.
Up All Night, made up of some brilliantly produced power-pop numbers, will take the former X Factor competitors even further into the mainstream.
As mainstream music, and newer boybands in particular, are seeing a shift towards a manufactured, club-influenced sound, Up All Night doesn't suffer from these problems.
Yes, it has such moments - the title track is the worst on the record, but the likes of 'What Makes You Beautiful' and 'One Thing' will bring in fans of Jonas Brothers with nice harmonies and crisp melodies.
Whilst the lyrics are as predictable as we've come to expect from this kind of act, the music allows their vocals to show surprising maturity.
This isn't reinventing the wheel by any stretch of the imagination - the main hook of "One Thing" bares a certain uncanny similarity to "I Want It That Way" by Backstreet Boys, for a start.
However, their fanbase aren't interested in what came before them - in One Direction, Simon Cowell's Syco label may have found its teen heroes.
Parents will be able to enjoy the Take That-esque sounds of ballad 'Taken', and the album has a whole has a diverse sound that lends itself well to a wider mainstream appeal.
The writing credits are impressive, with the likes of Kelly Clarkson ('Tell Me A Lie') contributing to the record.
A highlight is 'I Want' - immediately recognisable as a Tom Fletcher-written song, it would be perfectly at home on a McFly record.
One Direction perform the song well, and Up All Night is helped by having such a strong track - that said, it brings up concerns of a musical identity crisis when the songwriters can let their own voices be heard to this extent.
For all its highlights, the likes of 'Save You Tonight' (as catchy as it is) and 'Everything About You' feel a little too cliched and void of character.
As a whole, Up All Night struggles to find a consistency in quality, but One Direction do well enough on the record (with some great moment littered throughout) to make it a strong debut.
Female First - Alistair McGeorge (Follow me on Twitter @AlistairMcG)
Tagged in One Direction