If you listen
to the radio, watch T.V. or have friends who do those things you will have
heard by now of a teen pop sensation boy band called One Direction. They are most well-known for their chart-topping
single What Makes You Beautiful which
most people enjoyed until they saw the music video for it and realized that it
was a boy band song.
The band itself
is made up of five young men between the ages of 18 and 20 and was formed on
the UK television show The X Factor.
The five boys auditioned individually and didn’t know each other before they
met on the show. Celebrity judge and mentor Simon Cowell put them into One Direction guessing that their voices
would sound good together.
They were a hit
before the series finished, causing mass hysteria among tween/teen girls. And although the finished only third they have become one of the biggest boy bands around and setting Sony Entertainments record for pre-order sales selling 153 965 in the first week
While I don’t
understand the mania that this boy band causes where ever they go, I do
understand their appeal. They sing songs that a designed to charm and they have
very endearing accents. Added to this they are cute, but ‘cute’ is as far as
I’d be willing to take it. They look young for their age and although I would
be the first person to agree that they have talent and have worked hard to get
where they are, I would say that they don’t act like the most mature 16-18 year
olds I know.
As for their
music, I find it concerning. They know that they are a boy band and that their
target audience is made up of girls aged 12-16, possibly even younger, and yet
the lyrics of their songs just don’t reflect this.
Their song Moments is a prime example of their
thinly-veiled sexual implications. It begins Shut the door/Turn the light off/I wanna be with you/ I wanna feel your
love/I wanna lay beside you/I cannot hide this/Even though I tried/Heart beats
harder/Time escapes me/Trembling hands touch skin…
More Than This is another good
illustration. The chorus goes with When
he opens his arms/And holds you close tonight/It just won’t feel right/’cause I
can love you more than this/When he lays you down/I might just die inside/It
just don’t feel right/’cause I can love you more than this
Other songs
also house these inappropriate references, another bad one being Up All Night. With lyrics saying …people going all the way…I wanna stay up
all night and do it all with you…don’t even care about the table breaking/we
only wanna have a laugh…
These are they
kind of lyrics that were they in a Bruno Mars or Gavin DeGraw song, I wouldn’t
even blink at; in fact I’ve come to expect them. However coming from such a
young band and being aimed at such a young audience I find these sorts of
implications worrying.
Fortunately
some of their songs are dirt free and still have very catching hooks. These
include:
