By Jamie ’13
Like many of you, I am usually the one to snub teen pop music and, for no obvious reason, desire to strangle the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. But recently, one group has pushed me into the teeny-bopper abyss, and try as I may to push away my secret inclination or hide it in shame, I can’t turn back. The case in question is One Direction, and I swear that that rhyme was first discovered upon reading this aloud.
When I first heard of this band, I thought, “Please, a boy band that looks like it’s made of 12 year olds? The ’90s called, and they want their token musical group back.” But when these pocket-sized hipsters performed on SNL, I decided to not fast-forward through the musical performance as I usually do when I don’t know or like the performer so that I could see what all this hubbub was about. Well it turns out, much to my dismay, that they are just goofy people with toe-tapping tunes, X-Factor-finalist voices and cherubic faces.
And once you get past the fact that the beginning of “What Makes You Beautiful” IS the introduction of “Summer Lovin’” from Grease, the harder it is to resist their inevitable charm. I like to think that I can appease my waning self-respect with the idea that One Direction fills the profound void left by The Backstreet Boys and *NSync, but really I’ve just rediscovered the shameful part of me that has been lying dormant since the Jonas Brothers that enjoys nice-looking people singing catchy songs.
Okay haters, if you seriously oppose their music, and I respect your opinion if you do, watch their music videos with the sound off and try to resist five well-dressed lads grooving (not step-touching, I might add) on the beach with the wind blowing through their meticulously kept hair, at a bonfire forest party with fireworks in the starry sky and through the streets of London at night on a double-decker bus.
Oh yes, did I mention that they’re British, which makes it 78% harder to dislike them? I know I should be better than this and that I am completely living up to the teenage girl stereotype (that pink fluffy Professor Umbridge sweater hanging in my closet is not helping my case), but I have decided it is pointless to dislike One Direction just because they are a boy band and I feel like I should.
You don’t have to be an autograph-hungry fangirl wielding a sharpie like it’s a pitchfork, spending your time sharing your erotic One Direction fan-fiction with your Tumblr friends and plotting the “accidental death” of Harry Styles’ girlfriend (Damn you, Emma Ostilly!). In fact, please don’t be that person. My advice is this: stop resisting. Make your little sister play DJ in the car if you have to, roll down the windows and admit to One Direction that “BABY, YOU LIGHT UP MY WORLD LIKE NOBODY ELSE” because I know you know all the words anyway.
