Why Do People Hate One Direction

Whilst reality TV gives a lot of ordinary people their 15 minutes of fame, in a few rare cases it manages to create lasting success for the individuals concerned. One such rare case concerns UK boy band One Direction, who after finishing a creditable third in the 2010 series of The X Factor have gone on to become one of the biggest pop groups in the world; by 2012 they were worth around $50 million to their record label, and said label’s CEO expects that figure to double over the course of this year. On top of their two albums to date, they are due to release a film in the immediate future (it might already be out- I don’t keep track), and there can be doubt that their veritable army of scarily impassioned, dedicated ‘directioners’ have propelled the five young men who make up the band to unfathomable fame and prosperity.

However, it hardly needs to be said that this wave of ultra-enthusiastic support for the band has not been universal by any stretch of the imagination. Outside of their primary market of pre-teenage girls, and particularly amongst young men*, the prevailing attitude towards One Direction swings between apathy at best to vitriolic hatred at worst. In some circles, they rank second only to Justin Beiber as objects of hatred that represent, in the eyes of these people, everything that is wrong about modern music.

Why should this be? After all, whilst people all have certain types of music they like, even a hardcore heavy metal fan would not begrudge the world the existence of, say, The Pogues, and there would, from a completely neutral perspective, seem to be little reason for the open hostility that gets directed towards One Direction’s brand of pop. It certainly doesn’t get directed towards all pop acts; just for a couple of examples, Queen were a pop group a lot of the time and have been accepted into the pantheon of musical greats, and Lady Gaga, despite (and in some ways thanks to, since they give her individuality) her various theatrics and non-universal appreciation of her music, is at least afforded some respect by the majority of the musical world.

One potential theory that at least serves as a jump-off point in investigating the general ill-feeling towards one direction might be the image and behaviour of the band themselves. Much of their success, it should be noted, comes from the image the band members present; they are all well-behaved, apparently friendly, straight-laced middle class white boys, possibly the single least offensive description imaginable and one that renders them endearing to both fans and their fans’ parents. Not only that, they are all (and I mean this in the most platonic sense possible) at least reasonably good-looking young men, adding an amorous aspect to their fans’ appeal. This is not in the mould of what one would consider your typical rock band to be (images of sweaty, skinny, partially naked men with long hair bouncing around a giant heap of amps and yelling obscenities spring to mind), and an element of some people’s dislike of the band is probably rooted in their being a bit too straight-laced. Some would argue, and I kinda agree with them, that their being relatively normal teenagers (by music industry standards at least)is probably good for them as people, but their presentation of themselves fits so into the safe normality of suburban, inoffensive living that it puts them straight in the firing line of rock music’s traditional ‘escape the system’ mentality. But that’s not enough on its own; as the antics of Justin Beiber and Miley Cyrus have proved recently, pop singers often attract far more abuse when they try to play the rock ‘n’ roll bad boy(/girl) than when they stay with a ‘safer’ image.

OK, let’s tick off a few other factors. One Direction pull off that oft-hated habit in musical circles of not writing (most of) their own music, and it’s fair to say that most of the songs they do sing are pretty banal, formulaic and aimed solely at repeat-delivering the same pseudo-romantic pop ideas to their aforementioned audience of teenage girls (although a) one could think that either one of those two points partially negates the other and b) anyone who’s heard REM’s Star Me Kitten knows that writing dumb lyrics is not just the preserve of pop groups). Their habit of performing covers of more famous songs has drawn them ire from overly protective music fans who have some idea that they are ruining ‘their music’ by ‘stealing them’, but this is exactly the same logic used by opponents of gay marriage and is frankly not valid. Some dislike their manufactured, reality TV origins (all originally editioned for The X Factor as soloists, before being encouraged to re-audition as a group by a judge), which is perhaps a slightly  fairer niggle if you don’t like that sort of show than the some people’s annoyance the fact that none of them play an instrument (whilst performing that is; they include in their number a guitarist and pianist, I have discovered), but claiming that this means they have no talent is a little invalid because they are not trying to be musicians. Other people claim they have no talent because they can’t sing, but reviews of their live shows reveal that they do comprise five genuinely capable singers. The issue here is that their recorded music, the stuff that finds its way onto iPods and radios, comes sadly complete with autotune and other bits of digital trickery, making their sound unnaturally smooth and free of the blemishes that, to me at least, give music character. I profoundly dislike autotune and its ilk, if only because it shows a profound lack of respect for the performers’ skill, but even this is not, I believe, people’s biggest cause of hatred. That, I think my investigations have found, lies in the Directioners.

I am sure that, as with most large and easily generalised groups of people, the vast majority of One Direction fans are basically OK people who happen to enjoy the music produced by the band, which is hardly a war crime. They are, it is true, predominantly squealing teenage girls which can be a touch annoying to overhear, but again this is hardly their fault. However, even a little One Direction-related digging will quickly reveal the existence of hardcore ‘Directioners’, whose almost terrifying level of deification of the band is combined with an air of self-superiority to match the worst of indie-rock hipsters and an unfortunate familiarity with the internet and its ability to help deliver anonymous and astonishingly aggressive abuse. Those fans who are not privy to every minute detail of the band members’ existences, so I gather, are readily derided and put down by this hardcore group, and anyone found publically admitting they don’t particularly like their music can expect an array of abuse ranging from mere insults of their intelligence and sexual orientation to desires for the death of them and their loved ones. The irony is of course that it is this behaviour that encourages much of the abuse received by the band and their fans, and provides one of the most significant reasons for people’s dislike of One Direction.

That and the fact that the band members care for their appearance, which apparently gives material to the homophobes.

*Actually, in researching this topic I discovered that probably the biggest source of hatred for One Direction comes from fans of The Wanted. I was going to comment on this, but then realised I have better things to do with my time than read up on another band I don’t much like.

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Finding its feet

My last post on the recent history of western music took us up until the Jazz Age, which although it peaked in the 1920s, continued to occupy a position as the defining music genre of its age right up until the early 1950s. Today’s post takes up this tale for another decade and a half, beginning in 1951.

By this time, a few artists (Goree Carter and Jimmy Preston, for example) had experimented with mixing the various ‘black’ music genres (country and western, R&B and a little gospel being the main ones) to create a new, free rocking sound. However, by the 50s radio, which had been another major force for the spread of jazz, had risen to prominence enough to become a true feature of US life, so when Cleveland DJ Alan Freed first started playing R&B intentionally to a multiracial audience even his small listenership were able to make the event a significant one. Not only that, but the adolescents of the 50s were the first generation to have the free time and disposable income to control their own lives, making them a key consumer market and allowing them to latch onto and fund whatever was new and ‘cool’ to them. They were the first teenagers. These humble beginnings, spreading ‘black’ musical experiments to the masses, would later become the genre that Freed himself would coin a name for- rock and roll.

Rock and roll might have originally been named by Freed, and might have found its first star in Bill Haley (the guy wrote ‘Rock Around The Clock’ in 1955), but it became the riotous, unstoppable musical express train that it was thanks to a young man from Memphis, Tennessee, who walked into Sun Records in 1953 to record a song for personal use. His name was Elvis Presley.

’53 might have been Presley’s first recording experience, but his was not a smooth road. In eighth grade music he is reported to have only got a C and be told that he couldn’t sing, a claim that was repeated when he failed an audition for a local vocal quartet in January 1954. However, in June of that year he recorded a 1946 blues hit ‘That’s All Right’, totally altering what had been a lovelorn lament of a song into a riotous celebration. He, Winfield Moore and Bill Black (the guitarist and bassist he was recording with) had created a new, exciting, free-flowing sound based around Presley’s unique singing style. Three days later, the song aired on local radio for the first time and calls flooded in demanding to know who the new singer was. Many were even more surprised when they found out that it was a straight laced white boy playing what was previously thought of as ‘black music’.

Completely unintentionally, Elvis had rewritten the rulebook about modern music- now you didn’t have to be black, you didn’t have to play the seedy venues, you didn’t have to play slow, old, or boring music, you didn’t have to be ‘good’ by classical standards, and, most important, your real skill was your showmanship. Whilst his two co-performers in the early days were both natural showmen, Presley was a nervous performer to start with and his legs would shake during instrumental sections- the sight of a handsome young man wiggling his legs in wide-cut trousers proving somewhat hysterical for female sections of the audience, and worked the crowd into a frenzy that no previous performer had managed.

Elvis’ later career speaks for itself, but he lost his focus on writing music in around 1960 as, along with the death of Buddy Holly, the golden years of rock ‘n’ roll ended. However, the 50s had thrown up another new innovation into the mix- the electric guitar. Presley and his competitors had used them in their later performances, since they were lighter and easier to manoeuvre on stage and produced a better, louder sound for recorded tracks, but they wouldn’t come to their own until ‘the golden age of rock’ hit in the mid 60s.

By then, rock n roll had softened and mellowed, descending into lighter tunes that were the ancestors of modern pop music (something I’m not sure we should be too thankful to Elvis for), and British acts had begun to be the trailblazers. British acts tended towards a harder sound, and Cliff Richard enjoyed a period of tremendous success in the USA, but even then the passage of rock had eased off slightly. It wasn’t new any more, and people were basically content to carry on listening- there wasn’t much consumer demand for a new sound. But then, the baby boomers hit. The post-war goodwill in the late 40s and early 1950s had resulted in a spike in the birth rate of the developed world, and by around 1963 that generation had began to grow up. A second wave of teenagers hit the world, all desperate to escape the dreary boredom of their parents’ existence and form their own culture, with their own clothing, film interests, and, most importantly, music. The stage was set for something new to revolutionise the world of music, and the product that did was made in Britain.

Numerous bands from all over the country made up the British rock scene of the early 1960s, but the most prolific area was Liverpool. There rock and roll once again underwent a fusion with subgenres such as doo wop, and (again) R&B, formulating itself into another new sound, this time centred around a driving, rhythmic beat based upon the electric guitar and drum kit. These beats formed a key part of the catchy, bouncy, memorable melodies that would become the staple of ‘beat’ music. This had taken over the British music scene by 1963, but by 1964 a British song had made number 1 in the US charts. It was called ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, and was written by four Liverpudlians who called themselves The Beatles.

To this day, the Beatles are the most successful musicians ever (sorry fellow Queen fans- it’s true). Their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964 set a new record for an American TV audience (over 70 million)- a show they only did because Sullivan’s plane had been forced to circle Heathrow Airport in the middle of the night so that this band he’d never heard of could land first and wade their way through their screaming fans. Sullivan decided then and there he wanted to interview them. Along with other British acts such as The Rolling Stones and The Kinks, beat took the US by storm- but they were only the first. The Beatles’ first and greatest legacy was the structure of a rock band; all band members wrote their own songs based on the drums & electric guitar. All that was left was for acts like the Stones to cement singer/lead guitarist/bassist/drummer as the classic combination and the formula was written. The music world was about to explode; again

And this story looks like taking quite a few more posts to tell…

The Great Mr Adams

As one or two of you may be aware, my very first post on this blog extolled the virtues of one man- a certain Dr M von Vogelhausen of Amazon, internet, and his truly legendary reviews. He’s still a legend, check  his stuff out. However, since then I haven’t done a one-man profile again, but today that is about to change, as I review a man once described as ‘a possible fragment of the humour singularity’. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Douglas Adams.

Now, I am quite aware that Adams, being a bestselling novelist and general public figure, is quite more well known than Dr M is, and probably doesn’t need me to add to the chorus of voices who have extolled his virtues over the years. But bring him up I nonetheless do, for three reasons- firstly, there are STILL some new people I meet who have never heard of him, despite the fact that his earliest work is now 34 years old, secondly because I would like to reintroduce those who have been put off by his odd writing style and inability to tell a straight-faced joke and labelled him ‘unfunny’ to his world, and thirdly because I had something of a Hitchiker’s refreshment course yesterday evening. It was awesome.

So, Douglas Adams: born in Cambridge in 1952, his story really comes to be of interest in 1971, whilst hitch-hiking around Europe. Lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria, with his copy of ‘The Hitchiker’s Guide to Europe’ beside him and staring up at the Milky Way above him, he thought that somebody really ought to make a Hitchiker’s guide to the Galaxy as well, showing the sparks of offbeat, eccentric genius that would typify his later work. After graduating from Cambridge University he headed to London to try and break into radio & TV as a writer, following his English degree and a passion for creative writing. Despite working with Monty Python’s Graham Chapman for a while and even appearing in a couple of sketches, he struggled to fit in with writing for his chosen media, and work was slow for much of the seventies. Then, in 1978, he began working on a six-part radio series called ‘The Ends of the Earth’, the idea being that each episode would end with the world being destroyed in a different way. Working on the first episode, Adams realised he had a problem. To make his story work, he needed there to be an alien of some sort on Earth, and more importantly a reason for him to be there. Eventually, his piece of 7 year-old inspiration came back to him, and his character became a roving researcher for a wholly remarkable book: The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The character became Ford Prefect (so named because, having not done his research properly, he thought that the name would be nicely inconspicuous) and, along with the tea-obsessed, dressing gown-wearing and very English main character Arthur Dent, would become a central feature of both that episode and, as Adams quickly changed tack to follow this new story instead of writing 5 new ones, the rest of the series of The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.

That radio series was broadcast in 1978, and catapulted Adams to fame. It was something of a love/hate thing- some thought Adams quirky, offbeat sense of humour was weird and unfunny, whilst others declared him a comic genius for the invention of, say, the Babel fish:

The Babel Fish is small, yellow, leech like, and possibly the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brainwave energy, absorbing unconscious frequencies and then excreting a complex matrix formed from the concious frequencies picked up from the speech centres of the brain- the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear you can instantly understand everything said to you in any form of language. The speech you here decodes the brainwave matrix.

Now, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could evolve purely by chance that many races have chosen to use it as final clinching proof of the nonexistence of God*. The argument goes something like this:

“I refuse to prove that I exist” says God, “for proof denies faith and without faith I am nothing”

“BUT” says man “the Babel Fish is a dead giveaway isn’t it? It proves you exist and so therefore you don’t, QED”

“Oh dear” says God “I hadn’t thought of that”, and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

“Oh that was easy” says man, and for an encore he goes on to prove that black is white and get’s killed on the next zebra crossing.

Meanwhile the poor Babel fish, having effectively removed all barriers of communication between species, has caused more and bloodier wars than any race in the history of the galaxy.

*It is worth mentioning that Adams was a staunch atheist

So… yeah, that’s Douglas Adams humour- my unfortunate friends have to put up with me spouting that kind of stuff a lot. That’s hardly an isolated example either, for Adams has proposed, explained or made mention of the concepts of spaceships powered by improbability (and, indirectly, tea), restaurant mathematics and bad news, exactly how to throw oneself at the ground and miss, custom-made luxury planet building, a restaurant at the end of the universe that works by being impossible in at least 6 ways, the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster (the effect of which is like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick) the unimaginable usefulness of a towel, the Somebody Else’s Problem field, Vogon Poetry (and that of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings, a corruption of the name of someone Adams went to university with) and the Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe, And Everything (42, in case you’re interested- they just keep having problems finding the Ultimate Question). To name but a few. You get the general picture.

After the success of the first radio series, the BBC commissioned a second. Between and after this, Adams turned his attention to novel writing, and began a tradition of substantially rewriting the storyline with each new incarnation of it to, among other things, ‘annoy the fans’. The first part of what would later become his famous ‘trilogy in five parts’ was published in 1979, and was later followed by The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life the Universe and Everything, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless (all of which are references to parts of the first book). He also produced a 1981 TV adaptation, and a few other projects including the novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, the little joke dictionary The Meaning of Liff, and a radio series and book entitled Last Chance to See, about endangered species.

But… what is it that makes him so special? Why the cult following? Why national towel day? Why do I know that Babel Fish quote above by heart? Well… I really don’t know. I can’t quantify the quirkiness, the jokes, the flashes of abstract genius that none bar perhaps Terry Pratchett have ever emulated, the way that every successive adaptation is sufficiently different that every fan’s experience is a little difference. I was indoctrinated through the radio series, think the TV adaptation is rubbish and that the books can’t quite capture the humour as well- but other people I know insist that the literary form is the greatest piece of writing in the universe. As for the film, I think it’s… different and not quite as amazing, but for some of my friends it’s their only dip in the ocean of Adams, and they loved every minute. Others thought it was terrible. It’s a funny old thing.

Adams died in 2002, long before his time. As Richard Dawkins said, in his passing “science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender”. But his stories will never die, so long as there are people willing to enjoy and remember them. They are not stories for everyone, but they’re something everyone should try, just in case they’re perfect for you. And remember, on May 25th: everyone should know where his towel is.