It’s simply not possible to separate the mega-phenomenal, recordbreaking worldwide success of One Direction from their music. Nor should it be, especially if the point of the exercise is to gather a troupe of goodlooking, personable young males who together can make a decent enough noise whilst appealing to the adolescent masses – and their mothers, of course! But now that the fi ve lads who emerged fully formed from the X Factor factory are older, if not quite all grown up, and on their third album, it’s time to get serious.
Or at least a little more serious. While the production sheen is intact, the songs formulaic and blemish-free, there are more guitars, both acoustic and electric, and a slightly fatter drum sound. That said, Midnight Memories is more a transition record than a change of, er, direction: it’s been cleverly designed to grow with their audience rather than grow on them.
Naming a tune ‘Best Song Ever’ takes a certain audaciousness. While the results certainly don’t warrant the title, it’s a clever opening call to arms with a bobbing melody and enough soaring “oh oh ohs” and “yeah yeah yeahs” to keep them screaming along in the stadiums next summer.
The mid-tempo ‘The Story Of My Life’ is typical boy band fare but ‘Diana’ is more complex – like late period Hall and Oates, with a touch of The Police (Think ‘Private Eyes’ meets ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’). The title-track has already been described as a wrong-headed attempt to move into the Def Leppard/Bon Jovi domain and the song does bear a particular similarity to the former’s ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ anthem.
Elsewhere, ‘Little Black Dress’ is a distant cousin of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ while ‘You And I’ is a decent Elton John-ish ballad that serves their combined voices well. And if ‘Something Great’ sounds like the kind of thing Snow Patrol might easily have come up with on a wet weekend – well, that’ll be down to the fact that one Gary Lightbody had a hand in its construction. Snow Patrol producer Jackknife Lee was at the engineer’s console. Of the rest, ‘Don’t Forget Where You Belong’ blends soft rock textures with homely lyrics and the slightly risqué, but otherwise successful, pop rocker ‘Why Don’t We Go There’ veers into Killers territory It will, of course, sell in the multi-millions.

Key Track: 'Something Great'