Apple Music Festival 2015: One Direction at The Roundhouse

Apple Music Festival continued its third day of festivities with headline act One Direction playing to a more intimate audience at The Roundhouse. One Direction played a compendium from their recent albums, bulldozing through 15 hits in just over an hour’s performance. Classics such as Best Song Ever and What Makes You Beautiful energised the audience who, for a crowd of 1000, sang along with an impressively loud, united voice. Against these fan favourites the boys continued to please with hits from their 2014 album. Where Do Broken Hearts Go and Midnight Memories had the crowd dancing, the latter adding a rockier vibe that was eerily reminiscent of Def Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar on Me. Their audience’s dedication is a tribute to their fame, recognised by Liam Payne: “you guys really are the best fans in the world.” The vocals were at times a little off, but One Direction can rest on the popularity of their songs to carry their performance.

This was a good performance but it is fair to say that it remained just that – they played their songs, punctuated by snippets of interaction with the audience that didn’t stray too much from the polite confines of the age-old classics (“Are you having a good time, Roundhouse?”). As Liam said, this was the first time they had played to a smaller audience; perhaps the fact they’d, “never been this nervous” had an effect.  

As Niall took a brief  departure off-stage, the boys joked in characteristic good humour that they lost another: “we are dropping like flies”. Post  Zayn’s departure, it is worth praising the band’s ability to reformulate their work  in such a short space of time.

The boys never fail to put energy behind their songs, however, as this performance hinted, perhaps they are in great need of the “hiatus” they will take after this tour.  It will be interesting to see how the new foursome allows their look and music to develop now that they have matured from boyband to men.

Melissa Hoban

For further information about One Direction and future events visit here.

Apple Music Festival 2015 is on at The Roundhouse until 28^th September 2015, for further information visit here.

Watch a live performance of No Control here: