4 October 2012
One Direction’s ‘Live While We’re Young’ is the track that kept ‘Gangnam Style’ off the Irish number one spot. Justice dispensed or justice denied? While K-pop would have been a welcome addition to our story of Ireland’s chart-toppers, I must admit my slight relief at not needing to engage with the global brainworm of ‘Gangnam Style’ any further than writing its title. It’s stuck in your head now, of course. No, I’m not a bit sorry.
Something of an early-era 1D tradition is the dad-rocker-baiting hint of a rock classic in intros: the opening move of ‘Live While We’re Young’ certainly splashes on plenty of their da’s eau de ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’. I like its energy; One Direction brought a welcome change for the UK-Irish boyband idiom from dreary, melodramatic Westlife ballads. However, that comes at a price. The lyrical concerns here of Harry, Niall and the other three are those of the randy teenage lad about to cross the threshold into pushy young man: “tonight let’s get some” is framed as the key takeaway. That clunky slip from youthful fun into male-pattern crassness may be small, but it clouds the overall Post-it-coloured pop bounciness for me. Perhaps I should have gone for ‘Gangnam Style’ over Styles and gang.
