One Direction "Up All Night" Album Review

Artist/Band/Group: One Direction

Album Title: Up All Night

Album #1 (debut/freshman)

Released November 18, 2011

Peaked At #2 on Irish/UK Albums Chart

Record Label: Syco; Columbia

Country of Origin: Ireland, United Kingdom

Genre: Pop-rock dance

Overall Reaction/Grade: A




The debut album of the British/Irish boy band One Direction surprisingly delivered more than expected. While their single "What Makes You Beautiful" was catchy, many still had doubts that the five X Factor contestants could deliver a successful album without skating by on overproduction and their appearances. Proving many wrong, Up All Night is filled with wonderfully sung toe-tappers and ballads; a perfect fit for both their fans and One Direction's distinct voices.

The leading singles "What Makes You Beautiful", "Gotta Be You", and "One Thing" display the boy's voices and give you an inside look into the album, no surprises guaranteed except that it's really good. While "Gotta Be You" is a nice slow song, it's not the best ballad on the album compared to "I Wish", "Same Mistakes", or "Taken" which also feature the theme of heartbreak but are more unexpected lyrically and feature the boy's voices better. Following the trend of Europop is "Stole My Heart" which is not necessarily a bad song, but just too overproduced, masking the bands vocals too much to be taken seriously after they've managed to convince everyone that they can sing, which they can. Other less notable songs include "Up All Night" (good but not great), "Save You Tonight" (overproduction similar to "Stole My Heart"), and "Everything About You" (good song but it's very repetitive and quite common).

"One Thing" which has been said to resemble The Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way". But who really cares what it resembles when the song is that good? The vocals, the lyrics, and even the music video. Let's just agree that both bands are good and so are the songs. I digress...

Zayn, Niall, Harry, Louis, Liam, and their production team give the fans what they want and then some from the love songs and tales of heartbreak to their party anthems. The polish of their songs is enough for fans to hopefully ignore some of the repetition and expected themes common in the boy band genre. Many of us do wish that Louis and Niall would get their vocals featured more often; Liam is featured most often and Harry and Zayn sort of follow. But even with that said, this is definitely an album that'll have you singing around the house.

Notable Tracks: "I Wish", "I Want", "Tell Me A Lie"