Fear the wrath of Isabel in the comments…
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[4.78]
Alfred Soto: I heard plucked acoustic guitars and feared for my sanity. Once this phase passed, I heard the feeling in the right place, the notes held just so, the ways in which she registers as a human worthy of being ravished by the latest boy band scions. But I prefer being irresistible to their lips, touch and fingertips when five of these young men dance around me with ridiculous hand gestures, not in ballad form. Call it bias.
[5]
Anthony Easton: Bedroom cooings, and perfect harmonies — an almost adult ballad from a band who is at the end of their shelf life for the fickle teenage audience, the harmonics on “Irresistible” are pretty much perfect, and the rising scales in how they sing “your eyes” swoon in just the right way. I’m just not sure if I am interested.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: One Direction lend themselves amazingly to karaoke. Not the sort where you sing in front of a bar full of strangers — that’s just opening up yourself to more trouble than it’s worth — but rather for a crowded private room full of friends and smuggled-in drinks. These are scream-a-longs of the highest order. Which is why I’m always cold near their slower material — drained of their youth-octane, One Direction just become saps. “Irresistible” does very little to sway me from this stance overall, though it does do enough to be tolerable. The way they sing “lips” come the chorus is a nice surprise, and when the track finally bursts late, it feels well earned. Still reads like unexciting teenage lit, and it won’t be coming close to any Friday night outings, but it has moments where it shines.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: Every One Direction song, even the ballads, ultimately builds to a point where the kids race out sychronized and giddy into the audience, as if from a moptop clown car. I’m bored with those by now, but whether it’s because the boys have writing credits or because Savan Kotecha doesn’t, the verses at least approach actual emotional complexity: “don’t make me stay the night or ask if I’m all right — I don’t have the answer,” “I’m falling down, down, down, [and] that’s why I find your lips so kissable….” It makes the cloying fanservice of the chorus seem rather fucked-up in context; the boys are growing up into dudes. For some reason, that’s a compliment this time.
[5]
Brad Shoup: The chorus is powerful, and the bridge even more so: they sound great, and they’re using the arrangement as an enhancement for some grown-up harmonies. It’s all a bit Take That, but regular rhythmic punch does wonders for a ballad.
[5]
Scott Mildenhall: How can you sing about heartache while lacking any sign of a pulse? No hyperbole: this must be the limpest song ever released; the talk in Louis Tomlinson’s sleep after he’s had his cup of evidently weak tea. It really puts the “ack” into “region-specific bonus track”, whatever “ack” means, and yet it’s a McFly co-write! Something has gone badly wrong here. It is one of capitalism’s greatest ills that One Direction’s music has ended up this boring.
[4]
Edward Okulicz: The first few seconds of guitar on this keep confusing me — I expect the song to turn into Boom Crash Opera’s “Dancing in the Storm.” A One Direction cover of that might get a pretty decent score from me. This, no, it sounds like a dodgy (not Dodgy) fourth-single-ballad from a 90s Britpop artist. You know how the chorus goes halfway into it, which for a big crowd-pleasing pop stomper would be a plus, but for a dreary ballad it’s not. One nice melodic part (the “falling down-down” bit) shouldn’t have to do all the lifting.
[3]
Will Adams: Any douchebag in high school could play this on guitar when he asks his girlfriend to prom, but few could dress it up in such gorgeous choral harmonies and strings. The lead vocals are still a problem, but the good ekes out a victory this time.
[6]
Jonathan Bradley: For some reason there are One Direction singles not devoted to five boys battling to be brighter and peppier than the guitar chords accompanying them. Harry and pals sound appropriately sincere — at least until the arrangement fills out — but their harmonies lack the sense of gnawing emptiness required to make contemporary pop-rock balladry work as successfully as exemplars of the form like Plain White T’s’ “Hey There Delilah” or Howie Day’s “Collide.”
[4]