One Direction - Take Me Home
Artist - One Direction
Album - Take Me Home
Label - Syco, Columbia
Rating - 2/5
One Direction have found themselves on the crest of a new boy band wave, taking their podium finishing success on The X Factor and running with it, taking over the charts with their single What Makes You Beautiful and recruiting an army of fans so devoted they don’t even mind when certain members of the group call them “A shower of c***s”.
Now they’re back in the charts with Take Me Home, their follow up album that’s sprinted its way to the top of charts in the UK and has since climbed to the top spot in 32 different countries.
I think it’s been rather clear that we’re not the biggest fans of One Direction, in fact we’ve been rather critical of them, but this album isn’t anything like as bad as we feared it might be.
The overriding feeling throughout the album is one of safety. Every single song feels tailor made for the teenage girl audience, full of sappy sentimentality and more promises of everlasting love than a Twilight marathon. They even sneak in one or two more fruity requests that really should have parents wondering if their twelve year olds should be calling themselves Ms Zayn Malik.
While bands have always targeted their albums to their audience, they also usually have some sort of personal artistic edge. Take Me Home feels as manufactured as One Direction themselves, despite the boys having writing credits on most of the album’s tracks.
It also makes the album rather repetitive after a while, with one high tempo swoon inducing pop track from the baby faced lotharios sounding almost exactly like the other half dozen that litter the album. Ground breaking it isn’t but at least Rock Me tries to sound a little different from the rest and automatically becomes the album’s standout track.
The real trouble comes when the tempo drops though, with the slower ballads exposing the group’s fairly ordinary vocal ability, feeling as if they’d need a much more characterful set of voices to make them work.
It’s not terrible, even describing it as anything other than merely average and bland does it a disservice, but it’s quite some way away from good and feels as rushed onto the store shelves as it clearly is.
One Direction - Take Me Home is out now (but you already knew that)
Click here to buy One Direction - Take Me Home
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith