It’s no coincidence that synth heavy 1980s AOR is one of the first genres to generate significant online hits. Not just because its structures are formulaic – every genre is to one degree or another – but because its textures are so slick, even down to the multitracked vocals, that sounding synthetic is a feature not a bug. One has to wonder if this means that it is a threat to some of the biggest stars: after all, in the post-Taylor Swift world, that tidily arranged soft rock vibe is very much the chassis of so much. Indeed, when I first put this album on, flicking through opening tracks “Lemonade” and “On Fire,” my 15-year-old asked, in all sincerity, “is this AI?”
It’s not, thankfully. As soon as Louis Tomlinson starts singing, there’s a pleasing roughness to his delivery – unlike his fellow One Directioner Harry Styles he doesn’t over egg Being A Real Singer, but leans into his limitations – that straight away acts like the grit in the oyster, making the songs just that little bit more convincingly human. There’s no great push to be original: as well as the continual 1980s influence, you have songs like the ballad “Dark to Light” that do the phone-screens-aloft Coldplay via Take That say-along thing, there’s a stab at Northern indie lad authenticity in the overt Stone Roses tribute of the chorus to “Palaces,” and so on. But there is personality here.
The lyrics certainly help with that; they’re a little clunky, but something about that makes them feel more authentic to a guy in his 30s struggling with imposter syndrome, dark moods, trying to keep enthusiastic. This isn’t poor-me, pressures-of-fame stuff, it’s genuinely relatable. It’s easy to warm to Tomlinson here. The big problem is the melodic writing. One Direction were one of the biggest pioneers of a chanted pop style, hooks of three, two or even just one note, heavy use of a particular “woah-oh” that became known as “the millennial whoop” – and that’s overwhelmingly the case here. It’s those off-the-peg blunderbuss tunes as much as any of the generic stylistic aspects that stop the personality from really coming to the fore. Maybe it’s the nature of the beast, but in the subtler moments of a song like the sparse groover “Sanity” you get hints of how much more of a personal album Tomlinson has in him, and you might start to wonder why the so easily replicable tropes are allowed to overwhelm that.
