Hi, my name is Lainey Holland and I am the Editor-in-Chief of On the Record. Today, I wanted to do a fun, themed Music Monday.  I present to you Music Monday #28: One Direction Edition. Call me basic (I really won’t care), but I still rock out to One Direction like I did in 3rd grade. Don’t worry though, I’m not a crazy boy-band obsessed girl. I like to balance my “One Direction infection” with some John Mayer or the Lumineers. I’ve compiled a very short list of my current favorite One Direction songs. It was pretty hard to do this because, in my very unbiased opinion, they’ve never released a bad track 😉 Enjoy! 

#1 “Steal My Girl”

Taking the cake for #1 is “Steal My Girl.” Y’all. THIS SONG. It epitomizes the feeling of driving with your best friends, windows down, blasting music and shouting the lyrics. It’s extremely upbeat with lyrics I don’t know how to describe other than cute. The chorus goes, “Everybody wanna steal my girl, Everybody wanna take her heart away, Couple billion in the whole wide world, Find another one ’cause she belongs to me.” You throw in some of the “Na na na’s” after that and it is the most catchy tune. 

#2 “Drag Me Down”

If you’ve seen the One Direction Carpool Karaoke with James Corden, you’ll know why I love this song. It has the perfect balance of the roughness of rock coupled with the upbeat nature of pop. I especially love this song because of Harry Styles’s iconic high note run at the end. Listen to this song to bless your ears. 

*Songs #3-4 are fall under the category “Makes Me Shed A Tear”* 

#3 “18”

I used to never listen to the sad or slower One Direction songs because I didn’t want to feel gloomy and I never really connected with the songs. And, I still don’t relate to this song at all. I mean, it says, “I have loved you since we were 18, Long before we both thought the same thing.” That’s awkward, because I’m 17 and have never dated anyone! Despite this, “18” is a favorite of mine; I’ve realized sometimes I need a slower-paced song because I don’t feel upbeat and chipper all the time. 

#4 “Over Again” 

This song makes me sad, but, again, I can’t relate to it at all. That’s the cool thing about music, though. You connect deeply with a song either because you personally resonate with it or because the artists do a great job of conveying their own emotions. I like “Over Again” because it’s full of decrescendos and little softer moments. 

#5 “Na Na Na”

When you examine the lyrics of this song, I feel like a lot of people might wonder why it’s even a song. For starters, here’s a few lines, “We’re like na, na, na, Then we’re like yeah, yeah, yeah, Always like na, na, na, Then we’re like yeah, yeah, yeah.” This song has recently come to the top of my list because it’s so dang catchy. I mean, a lot of the songs popularized on the radio are composed the same way. When I just want to dance around, I play this song.