A fab four that aren’t quite a screaming success
One Direction O2 Arena, London Hysterical screaming fills the air. One Direction haven’t made it on to the stage yet – they have another good 20 minutes. But their opener, Ed Sheeran’s signing Jamie Lawson, has just said their name.
When the band do come on, the screaming jumps up a good few decibels and is sustained for the rest of the night. This is the first UK date of One Direction’s continued tour following Zayn Malik’s departure, and their audience are determined to welcome them back.
Only something is wrong. Maybe the fans don’t notice, busy as they are waving their hands, or screaming, or trying to get Harry Styles to throw them one of his used towels.
Styles only has to raise his arms to make the screams rise again, but otherwise he is decidedly limp: stumbling around the stage. Is he chewing gum? On more than one occasion it looks like he is.
Niall Horan appears to bump into Louis Tomlinson. Styles is perpetually reaching for another water bottle, often not bothering to finish the line of a song and leaving the others to pick it up instead. All of them seem tense: it’s hard to hide your emotions when your face is plastered across a 30ft screen.
Certain songs seem to engage them, such as Four’s undeniably catchy lead single “Steal My Girl”, or the euphoric “Best Song Ever”, which upset fans of The Who over apparent similarities to “Baba O’Riley”.
This set is stripped down compared to previous tours: there are no fireworks or thick clouds of smoke, and usually it would be cited as a smart move to best showcase their new material. But what this really means is that there’s very little to distract from whatever it is going wrong on that stage.
Disaster finally strikes when the setlist reaches “Night Changes”. Horan and Tomlinson have been fidgeting with their earpieces on and off but now it seems the entire group are getting feedback, until one of them finally calls a halt to the song and they ask to start again.
And again… and again. Liam Payne and Horan, who has been experiencing difficulties with his guitar, in particular are visibly frustrated, although they do their best to keep spirits up.
Finally the problem is fixed and, stumbling, they pick up and gain momentum, gradually going on to show more enthusiasm than they had at any point before now, singing tracks with a supposedly “darker” sound heard on 2014 album Four and continued in the singles released from forthcoming fifth album, Made in the A.M., which owe a lot to the sound of the Eighties.
“Where Do Broken Hearts Go” is indebted to Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark”, while the intro for closer “Drag Me Down” is strongly reminiscent of The Police’s “Message in a Bottle”.
The band did very well to recover from such a huge technical error, but tonight, the cracks were showing.
It’s hard to hide your emotions when your face is on a 30ft screen