Albums : One Direction : Take Me Home
Albums : One Direction : Take Me Home
Listen To One Direction : Take Me Home
Listen To One Direction : Take Me Home
Who Is One Direction?
One Direction are an English-Irish pop boy band based in London, consisting of members Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson. They signed with Simon Cowell's record label Syco Records after being formed and finishing third in the seventh series of British television singing competition The X Factor in 2010. The group subsequently signed in the United States with Columbia Records. Becoming a prominent figure in mainstream popular music and popular culture, their two albums Up All Night (2011) and Take Me Home (2012), broke several records, topped the charts of most major markets, and generated worldwide chart-topping singles, including "What Makes You Beautiful" and "Live While We're Young".
Propelled to international success by the power of social media, One Direction are often described as sparking the resurgence in the boy band concept, and of forming part of a new "British Invasion" in the United States. Their achievements include a BRIT Award and 3 MTV Video Music Awards. As of November 2012, the boy band have sold over 15 million records worldwide. According to Nick Gatfield, the chairman and chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment UK, One Direction represented a $50 million business empire by June 2012. They were proclaimed 2012's 'Top New Artist' by Billboard, while The Huffington Post named 2012 "The Year of One Direction".
In 2010, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson auditioned as solo candidates for the seventh series of British television reality singing competition The X Factor. Failing to progress to the "Boys" category at "judges' houses", after a suggestion by guest judge Nicole Scherzinger, they were put together to form a five-piece boy band at Wembley Arena, London, England, July 2010, during the "bootcamp" stage of the competition, thus qualifying for the "Groups" category. Subsequently, the group got together for two weeks to get to know each other and to practise. Styles came up with the name One Direction. For their qualifying song at "judges' houses", and their first song as a group, One Direction sang an acoustic version of "Torn". In the live shows within four weeks, they were Simon Cowell's last act in the competition. The group quickly gained popularity in the UK. One Direction finished in third place and immediately after the final, their song "Forever Young", which would have been released if they had won The X Factor, was leaked onto the internet. Shortly afterwards it was confirmed, One Direction had been signed by Cowell to a reported £2 million Syco Records record contract. Recording for their debut album began in January 2011, as they flew to Los Angeles to work with producer RedOne. A One Direction-licensed book, One Direction: Forever Young (Our Official X Factor Story), was published by HarperCollins in February 2011, subsequently topping The Sunday Times Best Seller list. The same month, the boy band and other contestants from the series participated in the X Factor Live Tour. The tour saw the group performing for 500,000 people throughout the UK. After the tour concluded in April 2011, the group continued working on their debut album. Recording took place in Stockholm, London, and Los Angeles, as One Direction worked with producers Carl Falk, Savan Kotecha, Steve Mac, and Rami Yacoub, among others.
Released in September 2011, One Direction's debut single "What Makes You Beautiful" bowed at number one on the UK Singles Chart, after becoming the most pre-ordered Sony Music Entertainment single in history. Subsequent singles "Gotta Be You" and "One Thing" both peaked within the UK Singles Chart top ten. In November 2011, they signed a record deal with Columbia Records in North America. Steve Barnett, the co-chairman of Columbia Records, said it was not a difficult decision to sign One Direction. "Other artists in that category had gotten a little older. I just thought there was a void, and maybe they could seize and hold it." "What Makes You Beautiful" was released in the United States in February 2012, where it debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 28, becoming the highest debut for a British act since 1998. It peaked at number 4 and has sold over 3 million units in the US. Upon arrival in the US in February 2012, One Direction embarked on a radio promotion spree, as well as their first North American concert tour as an opening act for Big Time Rush. They made their first television appearance in the US on The Today Show on 12 March 2012 at the Rockefeller Center, an estimated 15,000 fans descended on the plaza. Critically commended for its appeal to the teenage audience, One Direction's first studio album, Up All Night, was released globally in early 2012. It became the UK's fastest-selling debut album of 2011, and topped the charts in sixteen countries. The album bowed atop the US Billboard 200 chart, making One Direction the first British group in US chart history to enter at number one with their debut album. They were inducted into the Guinness World Records as a result. Up All Night also became the first album by a boy band to sell 500,000 digital copies in the US and as of August 2012, had sold over 3 million copies worldwide.
One Direction attended the 2012 Brit Awards at which "What Makes You Beautiful" won the BRIT Award for Best British Single. In April 2012, an American band who went by the same name, filed a trademark infringement lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, the US band had been using the name since 2009, recorded two albums and filed an application to register the trademark name in the US in February 2011. The US band said they were entitled to three times the profits made by the UK band, as well as compensatory damages in excess of US$1million. The lawsuit claimed that Syco and Sony Music "chose to ignore the plaintiff's rights and wilfully infringed them" after they realised in early 2011 that the two bands shared the same name. Syco Records subsequently counter-sued, suggesting the US group was trying to make money from One Direction's success and that the boy band was the first to use the name in US interstate commerce. The BBC reported in September 2012 that the UK group won the legal dispute over the right to keep using their band name; the US band changed its name to Uncharted Shores. The name change was announced in a joint statement that also noted both groups were happy with the outcome.
In December 2011, One Direction embarked on their first headlining UK concert tour, the Up All Night Tour. In early 2012, they announced Australasian and North American legs of the concert tour, with dates from April to July 2012. The tour, resulting in 62 shows, was met with positivity both critically and commercially. A recording of a concert from the tour, Up All Night: The Live Tour, was released in May 2012. In addition to the DVD topping the charts in twenty-five countries, as of August 2012, its global sales had exceeded 1 million copies. One Direction's first-licensed American book, Dare to Dream: Life as One Direction, was published in the United States on 22 May 2012, subsequently topping The New York Times Best Seller list. In June 2012, Nick Gatfield, chairman and chief executive officer of Sony Music Entertainment UK, stated how he expects One Direction to represent a $100 million business empire over 2013. "What you might not know about One Direction is that they already represent a $50 million business and that's a figure we expect to double next year". In August 2012, the group's record sales exceeded 8 million singles, 3 million albums, and 1 million DVDs, and they performed "What Makes You Beautiful" at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony in London, which represented the handover to Rio de Janeiro as the host of the 2016 Summer Olympics. One Direction were the biggest winners of the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards winning their three nominations on 6 September 2012, including Best New Artist. (Read More)
Take Me Home Review
The boy band’s sophomore album is pop candy in the purest sense — sweet, colorful, and unlike so many releases aimed at ticklish tweenage hearts, consistent. There’s no filler in a bag of Skittles, right? Just Skittles.
That makes Simon Cowell the Willy Wonka of this group’s success story, which goes like so: Back in 2010, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson crossed paths on the set of “The X Factor,” the British singing contest that Cowell imported to American television just last year. Each entered the ring as a solo act but the five emerged as One Direction (and finished in third place).
Two years later, the lads have racked up worldwide sales of more than 3 million for their debut album “Up All Night” and have joined Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson in the sparsely populated column of not-horrible reality singing show graduates.
Will the fame last? One Direction doesn’t seem to care too much about that. The new album’s first single, “Live While We’re Young,” is a battle cry for the YOLO generation, a giddy ode to seizing the day and “doing what we do, just pretending that we’re cool.”
Catch that? They’re just pretending that they’re cool, exuding a sly self-awareness that actually makes them seem wise and, in turn, pretty cool. The rest of the song zips along at the tempo of a fluttering heart until all five cannonball into the big, walloping chorus: “Let’s go crazy, crazy, crazy ’til we see the sun!” It’s a contagious singalong, with no one voice leading the charge, no frontman, no star. They harmonize like the world’s first socialist boy band.
Something else that sets One Direction apart from ’N Sync, the Backstreet Boys and generations of chart-topping heartthrobs before them: They appear immune to outside contemporary influences. There’s no tip-toeing toward R&B radio, no whiplashing dubstep breakdowns, no compromises.
Instead, these uptempo love songs bounce around in their own dreamy, vacuum-sealed universe, quietly snatching spare parts from rock hits that might be too old for their young fans to recognize. The intro of “Live Like We’re Young” echoes the Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” while “Rock Me” is a sanitized mash of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So.”
The group’s best songs are dazzlingly efficient. “Heart Attack” finds them rebounding from a set of broken hearts in less than three minutes while “Last First Kiss” squeezes a lifelong romance into a seven-word pickup line: “Let me be your last first kiss.”
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Sources : One Direction Photo | Listen To Take Me Home Night | One Direction Biography | Take Me Home Review
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