After the disastrous “Story Of My Life” proved One Direction may very well have a shelf life if they can’t do grown-up better than this, here comes the second (third? “Best song Ever”?) track off the November 25th launching Midnight Memories (already leaked though I haven’t heard it and it is much much better.
“Diana” is 1D one oh one, with Liam taking the lead, followed by Louis and the other band members, all of whom get their job at harmonizing. While the song itself has uplift, the lyric is a downer, the boys taking their turns in helping this girl who has fallen down in the past four months. The Diana in question seems to be using Diana Spencer as a reference for a person’s more general breakdown and the song does what “Story Of My Life” fails to, it is touching but it also moves.
The question of Lady Di’s fate must hang heavy on the paparazzi magnet 1D, certainly the biggest band in the world today, and that they get it enough to reference it on their third album, shows the band are attempting to grow old without necessarily changing, it feels like a connection to the movie, as if the band were seeing their life through a prism and every time they try and reflect on it, it reflects backwards.
Both songs have a weariness to them that 1D can’t hide any longer: it has been years of it now and all the weirdness of major league celebrity hood would seem to bite itself into its own normality; the jangle of superstardom is the tanginess of real life as lead and normality as you and I know it moves further and further away!
“Diana” is a good song, so the fame monster will live to kill another day.
Grade: B+
