One Direction - Four Review

Label: Columbia and SyCo Records
Producers: Julian Bunetta, Pär Westerlund and John Ryan
Tracks: 12 (16 with deluxe edition)


While all of our comedic actors are rustling up their best performances for Oscar season, our favourite pop acts are putting material together to try and get a few Christmas bonuses. Step in One Direction, going for their fourth album in four years, aptly titled Four.

Four offers a music experience that can only be described as a coming of age record. Clearly taking its influences from time on the road (where the album was also recorded), we have tracks about love, lust, and loss, and all those little moments in between. While their previous albums might have had a collective taste of genre, Four is sticking to its guns, going with a clear pop rock influence that takes the good parts of Journey (The singalong anthem Steal My Girl) , Tears For Fears (Stockholm Syndrome, which might sound a little familiar to people who watched that infamous video of Zayn and Louis) and dare we say even Oasis (Spaces) to create a new sound that will surely get the masses going.

Sadly none of the the collaboration projects that have been incredibly hyped up through out the year made the album, including the much talked about Zayn Malik/Naughty Boy/Emelie Sande production, and it really could have done with a big collaborative track to get the tongues going. The collaborative projects from Midnight Memories were easily the top tracks (don't even get us started on the Ryan Teddler co-written Right Now)... but we can forgive them for that. When you see the songwriting credits, all but three tracks (one if you don't have the deluxe album) have a credit from a 1D member, and that is something to be proud of.

And it looks like One Direction have found their dream team in the form of Julian Bunetta, Jamie Scott and John Ryan. They have given the One Direction sound a chance to mature properly without throwing sex, drugs and rock and roll in there (ok, maybe No Control does all that debauchery for the album itself...but we'll welcome it with open arms) and it really progresses nicely from the sound they had created with Midnight Memories.

Though disappointed that we have not got our Zayn/Naughty Boy collaboration, Four has proven that the world's biggest boyband have a reason to claim that title. They have clearly taken a risk with this new sound, and hopefully it will give them the chance to be appreciated by critics and new fans alike, because it bloody deserves to be.

Four is released 17th November 2014.