one direction

i don’t really have opinions on larry anymore. it feels like a thing of the past. they all seem to be living their own lives now.

was doing some thinking about made in the A.M. vs. purpose and more than ever, i feel like pitting the two albums against each other is an impossible thing to do. (maybe being #2 is making me biased, whatever whatever.)

i saw a tweet yesterday that MITAM won’t make it to #1 because “it's not made for the radio, it’s made for us” and i think there’s validity to that. i think it’s also important to think of what success means to 1D and justin because they’re really going for two different things.

justin was always the underdog when it came to pop music. stuff from my world and believe was played on the radio, but there was always that ‘ew...justin bieber’ tint to it. he wants to label himself as the ‘prince of pop’, so for him to produce an album that is taken so well by the mainstream is a really good thing in his terms.

on the other hand, 1D’s stuff was radio-centric from day 1, WMYB popped on the charts. but the music that 1D wants to make, the music that pushes their sound to something more than just the typical boyband’s, is music that isn’t meant for the radio. it’s not going to be blasted in between ‘what do you mean?’ and ‘hotline bling’ and that’s okay. it’s the oldies vibe of ‘olivia’ and the fleetwood mac feel on ‘what a feeling’. it’s four-chord campfire songs and cool, electronic-y coldplay pop. it’s the music that’s on MITAM. 

which means that it is literally impossible to compare the two, because for both justin and 1D, these albums do what they’ve always set out to do. it just means different things for them and pitting them against each other does a terrible job of recognizing that. what justin seeks is precisely what 1D is looking to give up.

and in the end, numbers and rankings and awards are fun and great, but what makes loving 1D so good are the 1AM dance parties around your family room when they’re on SNL and the fireworks going off over your head in the stadiums and the late nights clacking away on the keyboard to get that trending topic. if it doesn’t work out to be a #1 album, it’ll hurt, but i can’t even be sad when this entire experience has been so happy.