Welcome to New Retro Week, a celebration of the most important artists, hits, and cultural moments that made 2012 a seminal yr in pop. MTV Information is trying again to see what lies forward: These essays showcase how in the present day’s blueprint was laid a decade in the past. Step into our time machine.
By Larisha Paul
There was no blueprint for One Route. Earlier than their formation in 2010, the panorama of competing boy bands whose mere title evoked hundreds of screaming followers was barren. Predecessors like Backstreet Boys and NSYNC had been both previous their peak or already damaged up — and none of them had been unexpectedly thrown collectively on a singing competitors present. Throughout their stint on The X Issue (U.Okay.), Harry Types, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, and Liam Payne had been tasked with performing covers week after week whereas studying the way to carry out in a bunch that shared the highlight, fairly than crafting particular person sounds as solo artists like that they had hoped when auditioning. All of the whereas, they attracted an viewers of tens of millions in a matter of months.
Simon Cowell, who orchestrated One Route’s formation, signed the group to Syco Data and set them — or extra precisely, a crew of pop producers and songwriters — to work on their debut album, 2011’s Up All Evening. The anticipation was excessive, and so they needed to get it proper. Songs for the album had been sourced from huge hitters like Kelly Clarkson, Jamie Scott, Steve Mac, and extra, however its trajectory-changing hit “What Makes You Lovely” got here from Savan Kotecha, Rami Yacoub, and Carl Falk. The trio had a historical past of working with boy bands, with credit for Backstreet Boys, Westlife, and NSYNC bolstering their resumes. However there was no formulation for capturing that lightning-in-a-bottle second that might elevate them into the higher echelons of pop historical past.
“From the primary tune, you could possibly inform that it was going. It was working. We had been form of excited to [say]: OK, so let’s do it once more,” Falk tells MTV Information on Zoom from the identical studio in Sweden the place One Route recorded their earliest hits. “Let’s not lose the DNA of the group or the DNA that we thought we had been nonetheless molding. We had one thing.”
The label noticed it, too, inviting these producers and writers again for album quantity two, Take Me Residence, in 2012. Through the making of that report, Horan, Types, Payne, Tomlinson, and Malik’s curiosity concerning the manufacturing and writing course of grew as they discovered to play devices and provide melodies of their very own, contributing to the band’s budding, guitar-based pop sound. This was all new to them, and it may have been fleeting, however the alternative to be within the studio with the most important hitmakers introduced with it an opportunity to check the craft of pop musicianship, setting the stage each for One Route’s work on their remaining albums as a band and, seen 10 years after the album’s launch, for every member’s subsequent solo data after they cut up up in 2016.
“We needed to contain them simply because you find yourself all the time recording one man for a few hours and the opposite ones play FIFA or watch Netflix,” Yacoub explains of the Take Me Residence periods. “To have a extra artistic atmosphere, we had a few studios and we had them begin writing stuff and simply form of getting the grasp of it.” Across the similar time, Yacoub and Falk had signed Kristoffer Fogelmark and Albin Nedler, two songwriters from a music faculty in Sweden. Whereas the previous pair labored on sprucing songs like lead single “Reside Whereas We’re Younger,” the latter locked down with One Route to attempt their hand at crafting a success. “I believe that kicked off their starvation to write down songs themselves,” Yacoub says.
“You may inform they needed to discover that entire factor of not simply sitting, to do one thing else than simply vocals,” Falk says. “[We told them] be at liberty to attempt no matter. And so they are available in like, ‘Yeah, I believe we’ve got a refrain.’” It was the hook for “Kiss You,” the gold-certified third single from Take Me Residence. Kotecha, who had been linked with One Route since working as a vocal coach on The X Issue, helped to deliver the tune throughout the end line, but it surely marked Fogelmark and Nedler’s first writing credit on the album. Their subsequent two got here on the boy band-core cuts “Last First Kiss” and “Back for You,” the place Horan, Types, Payne, Tomlinson, and Malik every scored writing credit of their very own. Of the 5 Take Me Residence songs with One Route co-writing credit, three got here beneath the steering of Falk, Yacoub, and Kotecha, together with “Still the One.”
Following their international breakout in 2012, One Route discovered themselves rewriting the script for boy bands to return — and so they couldn’t have been in higher palms. “It’s a distinct craft to write down songs for bands like this,” Falk says, highlighting the collaborative union he’d shaped with Yacoub and Kotecha. “We had all achieved that. All of us knew what it takes.” Whereas all of them had a pure knack for pop — excelling at recording and comping vocals in addition to crafting thrilling melodies and chord progressions — that they had the added component of Max Martin-taught experience by way of Yacoub and Kotecha. The previous’s earliest credit appeared on Britney Spears’s “…Child, One Extra Time,” NSYNC’s “It’s Gonna Be Me,” and the Backstreet Boys’s “Bigger Than Life.” Falk had even pulled manufacturing inspiration straight from the three artists, dashing up piano stabs from the NSYNC hit to mildew “Kiss You.”
The depth of the 2 boy bands’s fanbases had been comparable, with some 4,000 younger ladies displaying as much as the studio at one level. However inside, the motion was much less hectic. Horan would spend almost every single day studying One Route’s songs on guitar beneath Falk’s steering, whereas Payne studied the creation course of from a seat subsequent to the pc monitor and Types shaped a bond with the producers by means of his curiosity in songwriting. All through the creation of Take Me Residence, the puzzle items slid into place as every member got here to higher perceive his position within the band. “‘Kiss You’ was truly the primary tune that Niall discovered his method of singing,” Falk recollects. “We tried to attempt completely different folks, after which he simply went for it and did it with a little bit of a raspy rock voice, like, that’s your factor.” Tomlinson had the identical eureka second on “Change My Mind.”
Yacoub not too long ago reconnected with Horan to work on his upcoming third studio album. “He walked in, and I used to be like, dude, you’re a person now. I met him when he was a boy. He couldn’t even play the guitar once we began working collectively … Now he’s nice at guitar and his vocals have enhanced 10 instances over. And I may inform, from even the instances in One Route, he actually needed it.” When Falk teamed up with Payne earlier this yr for the one “Sunshine,” it marked their first time working collectively since Take Me Residence, too. A decade in the past, songs had been being dropped at them marked with distorted guitars and a palette of signature sounds influenced by Bon Jovi, the Seaside Boys, Mumford & Sons, and extra. Now, the band’s former members can stroll right into a studio with a transparent understanding of their very own musical visions.
Toni Anne Barson/WireImageOn his first two solo albums, 2017’s Flicker and 2020’s Heartbreak Climate, Horan constructed on these formative early studio classes, forming his particular person creative identification by embracing his singer-songwriter roots. A pupil of R&B at coronary heart, Malik discovered himself in collaboration with the likes of Kehlani and Timbaland throughout his data 2016’s Thoughts of Mine and 2018’s Icarus Falls, bringing to fruition the imaginative and prescient he left One Route to meet. For Tomlinson and Payne, it took a number of years to lock in a transparent sonic aesthetic. The previous’s 2020 debut Partitions carved out an area in indie rock and Britpop, whereas the latter’s 2019 launch LP1 straddled the strains of pop and R&B by means of main collaborations with Quavo, Zedd, and extra. In the meantime, Types in the end grew to become the breakout star of One Route – one thing Falk recollects half-jokingly predicting early on. The pop-meets-Laurel Canyon folk-rock sound launched on his 2017 solo debut Harry Types constructed the inspiration that later knowledgeable its Grammy-nominated observe up Tremendous Line, shared in 2019.
“I do keep in mind when One Route blew up that individuals had been simply reaching out, forwards and backwards, beginning boy bands, and reaching out to me,” Yacoub stated with fun. “I didn’t leap on any. I don’t assume any band got here shut. I imply, they had been so huge.” Take Me Residence debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in November 2012 with 540,000 items moved in its first week. It bought greater than 1.4 million data in a single month and has since been licensed 3x platinum along with yielding two platinum singles. The band’s indefinite hiatus started lower than 4 full years later, however the legacy of One Route’s reign lives on by means of their endeavors as solo artists and the followers nonetheless supporting all of it.
“It is much more impactful to see it now than once we had been in the midst of it. There have been no Grammy nominations, you already know. You may inform it was working as a result of all over the place they went, the group was insane. Followers had been all over the place,” Falk says. “As recognition, it seems like that is come at a later stage nearly. Like, shit, how huge was this band? And people songs which might be nonetheless going to be performed in I do not know what number of years. Their legacy is wonderful, but it surely was laborious to know that after they had been truly a band.”
