Does date night really also have to mean ballad night?
[Video][Website]
[5.25]
Iain Mew: You know, I kind of liked Smith & Burrows’ recasting of the Yazoo-via-Flying Pickets “Only You” as soft-rock Christmas ballad, too.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: “i know i’m getting old when my first reaction to seeing one direction is basically marina and the diamonds” —@oliviataters. “at least marina’s filler wasn’t ballads” –@me.
[3]
Will Adams: Were their ballads always this plain? Unctuous, sure. Abhorrent, hell yes. But this is so nondescript that even when the key changes, it still isn’t interesting.
[3]
Alfred Soto: The harmonies and chorus melody do sound bittersweet, no question; these dudes have honed their schtick. Reminding their girlfriends that at their backs they always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near, they put their heads on the girls’ hearts and their hands up their dresses. Which is to say, they’re the last people who should sing about the “missing innocence that she loves.”
[5]
David Moore: There’s just no graceful way to say that the new album is a panty-dropper — but here, the video has to do heavy lifting in that department, because against the half-formed sacrilege of “Girl Almighty” and the gleeful, fully-formed filth of “No Control,” this one’s positively doe-eyed: the short dress and cigarette signifying plain melancholy, the first inkling of fading youth. Live while you’re young, to paraphrase the poets.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: Lyrically, an explicit realisation of “Story Of My Life”‘s vague “getting older” air, something also a year more appropriate. Atmospherically, quite similar; maybe more relaxed. Generally, however, not as good, a weaker turn of an inexorable cycle of market-enforced wintry ballads. Well, not enforced, not like that mini key change is, but still, maybe if people bought more records in the summer One Direction would cheer up a bit. Granted there are audible smiles in their voices here, but they’re not grins — they’re a half-mouth lilt at hearing Lady Antebellum come on the radio and thinking “that’s our song.” Which, once you listen past the intro, it may well be.
[6]
Brad Shoup: It’s so trad, from the seen-you-before vocal rasp to the drums ticking like the guest room clock. Adult Contemporary adoption is the ultimate chart prize, as these dudes know. Everyone takes a verse, and they’re all on one wavelength. Niall and Liam each get to sing about driving too fast, but the track creeps along with keyboard spangle and a dirt-caked drumtrack.
[5]
Anthony Easton: With a slightly shifted production, this low-key ballad could be a single for a D-list late-’70s LA singer-songwriter. It could also be, with added pedal steel or banjo, some distaff Nashville scrap. It almost sounds like something that Swift jettisoned, except Swift is all about change, and this is just floating, with little energy and less purpose.
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: Not a whole lot removed from that new Sam Hunt record, curiously enough, which makes a certain kind of sense: the small details — cigarettes and moonlit skin — and the ache for moments lost even as they’re being lived are very country. The title could be a deliberate Seger nod; the phrasing is quietly unsettled in the same way as Bob’s “woke last night to the sound of thunder.” One-D’s easy resolution of that uncertainty, however, the reassurance that “even when the night changes, it will never change me and you” is a swerve back towards Take That territory, and this band is better than that. Far more interesting is the shifting perspective across the course of the lyric: the verses are delivered in third person, but the viewpoint limits itself to the girl’s thoughts: she’s the protagonist, not the object, though that rule slips a bit when Niall Horan starts omniscing about things she “doesn’t even know” yet. Harry Styles switches to first person for the hook, but it’s unclear whom he’s voicing. The girl, still? The boy? Or the liminal emotional space between them that could contain neither or both?
[6]
Mark Sinker: TOTAL ERECTION OF THE HEART moar laik. What? Oh it’s a lester bangs/death of elvis/”we will never agree on anything”/”goodbye to you” joke, do keep up. Also a bonnie tyler joke yes but that has never been of less consequence. The song? The song is amiably goofy pop. Also amazing: see start of review.
[9]
Thomas Inskeep: “Night Changes” is a great title; I wish this ballad could back it up and weren’t quite so limp. It’s not bad by any means, it’s perfectly serviceable, but it’s also completely unremarkable. Their fanbase will likely love it, and no one else will (or need) care.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: I’ve come to the realization that there is only one realm where One Direction means anything to me, a person who falls well outside of the group’s main demographic. That place is karaoke, wherein their best pop moments (“What Makes You Beautiful,” “Kiss You”) turn into throat-crushin’ yell-alongs, and most of the songs I thought I didn’t like through this here site take on new life. “Night Changes” sounds boring right now, but I thought the same thing about “Story Of My Life” until belting it out in a tiny room. So [5] seems about right until LIVE DAM adds it to their system.
[5]