One Direction

Live Nation presents… One Direction headlining the Up All Night world tour with guest, Olly Murs on June 16, 2012 at the Gibson Amphitheater in Los Angeles, California.

Boy bands are not dead. Despite the popular belief that the phenomenon of boy bands has passed, that past boy bands such as Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, New Kids On The Block are no more, was apparently just a lie, or better yet a wide-spread rumor.

One Direction, a boy band out of the United Kingdom, consists of singers Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, and Liam Payne out of England, and Niall Horan out of Ireland. Aged between 18 and 20, these boys are the biggest world wide heartthrob to strike the teenage female population.

A product of Simon Cowell, One Direction were formed on the UK’s version of The X Factor and have had record breaking success since. Debuting their album at Number 1 on the Billboard Charts, One Direction is also selling out arena’s 18 months in advance to a show. I was lucky enough to catch their shows in Los Angeles as their current tour, the Up All Night tour, played 2 back to back shows on June 16 - a matinee and an evening show.

Their show started off with a summer clip projected on the screens of the boys driving a classic VW van down a beach lined highway, counting down 60 seconds. 60 seconds later, out came all 5 members of One Direction to blood curdling, window smashing screams of the sold out crowd at the Gibson Amphitheater. Never have I heard screams like this, and a few days later, my ears are still paying for it.

They started with catchy track, ‘Na Na Na’, led to another catch tune (who am I kidding, every song of theirs is slightly repetitive and overly catchy) ‘Stand Up’. With the next up being the slower, ‘I wish’. After the opening trio of songs, Harry took the mic talking about the moments when the five first got together, and the group took a seat with Niall on the guitar, and each sang an acoustic spin on a chart topping pop song. Zayn sang a verse and chorus of Black Eyed Pea’s ‘I Gotta Feeling’ and Niall sang “Stereo Hearts” of Gym Class Heroes. Louis took the mic next to sing the classic ‘Valerie’, and ending of the acoustic session was Liam and Harry singing Torn by Natalie Imbruglia.

The concert was separated into four main components and themes; Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. In between each was a video clip, and an outfit change for the boys, each time coming out with well styled, matching and complimenting outfits which commonly consisted of colorful blazers, dress pants and dress shows, and suspenders and ties.

The first section, concluded with Moments (which was written by another UK pop artist, Ed Sheeran). The fall video clip played with a video of the five going off to college, before they came out for ‘It’s Gotta Be You’. Up next was ‘More Than This‘ before they stopped to read and answer a few tweets from the crowd. Continuing on with the album titled (and tour titled) track, ‘Up All Night‘ and went onto ‘Tell Me A Lie’, and ‘Everything About You’.

A winter video of the band up at their ski cottage played before they re-entered with synthetic snow falling from the ceiling as the band played their current single (and my favorite), ‘One Thing’, with ‘Saviour’ and their first chart-topping single “What Makes You Beautiful”.

The final section of the show started inviting the crowd to a “celebration dinner” and One Direction entered with their final number ‘I Want’ before saying their good-byes.

After the conclusion of the concert it left me amazed at the fact that not only did the band be the first to presently bring back the boy band epidemic, but that they’ve only been together for approximately 2 years, yet have the stage pressense and band chemistry as if they’ve been together a decade. One Direction evidently had an abundance of fun on stage, which transfers right over to the crowd, many having the night of their life, and I’m sure many it was their first concert.

I’m hoping One Direction can continue to succeed at the level and pace they are doing it now, and I’ll definitely be planning to catch them next time around, as you should be too!