In honor of my daughter Sophia’s 16th birthday, which falls in the middle of this week, I’m offering up five songs by one of her favorite bands, One Direction.
Sophia has many favorite artists, some of which are my favorites too, but this is one that I would almost certainly have never heard in depth were it not for her. And as I’ve discovered, that would have been a shame.
The ’31 Numbered Songs’ series reaches adulthood with ’18,’ a 2014 track from One Direction’s fourth album, appropriately titled Four. How many numbers can I get in one sentence?!
This song was written by Ed Sheeran (with Oliver Frank) for the band at the request of Simon Cowell. It wasn’t released as a single, but Niall Horan’s pronunciation of “chance” as “chonce” launched a thousand fan memes.
I always had visions of indoctrinating my children in my cultural ways, raising fans of the same music, television and movies that have moved me over the years.
That has happened, to some extent. My daughters enjoy some of my favorites, and we’ve discovered new favorites together.
But the vision of young Elvis Costello and Bob Dylan fans running around the house… it was clearly never meant to be.
At lucky number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 is One Direction, with ‘Steal My Girl,’ a power pop ballad that shamelessly steals its opening piano riff from Journey’s ‘Faithfully.’
Or if you grew up in the 00s and not the 80s, you might think they shamelessly ripped off the opening riff of New Found Glory’s ‘It’s Not Your Fault,’ blissfully unaware that NFG ripped it off from Journey first.
Right up until I was about to listen to this song for the first time, I had it in my head that it was by One Republic, not One Direction. I was thinking that they’d made quite a splash in recent months, with ‘Counting Stars’ still in the top ten and another track at #16.
But alas, ‘Story of My Life’ is by the British boy band, and is one of the first of their songs I’ve heard all the way through (knowingly, anyway).
Meet Me In Montauk 