This past Thursday marked 16 years since the formation of one of the greatest boy bands of all time, One Direction. Being a twelve year old girl experiencing the peak of One Direction is something you can never live through again, but it was wonderful! Not just because they were cute, but because the music was genuinely fantastic. I know you’re thinking, “Olivia, you work at a country music station, One Direction has nothing to do with country music”, and to that I say, “Au contraire!” One Direction definitely has connections to country music. Shania Twain and Harry Styles are basically besties and have sung together on multiple occasions, with Shania even being his opener for all the Wembley dates for Harry’s latest tour. Same with Thomas Rhett and Niall Horan. It’s also rumoured that Liam Payne (RIP) had written some country songs planned for his solo career back in 2015.
Here are five One Direction songs with some country in it:
5. “They Don’t Know About Us” & “Loved You First” (Tie)
You can’t have one without the other. Why? Because both of these songs from One Direction’s second album, Take Me Home, were co-written by Canadian country artist Tebey. I secretly keep hoping that Tebey will one day release his version of the songs. When you really listen to the lyrics of both, you hear his unmistakable writing style.
4. “Ready to Run”
Yes, yes, I know they didn’t intend to record this as a country song but if you switched out the One Direction boys for someone like Luke Bryan or Brett Kissel, you wouldn’t even question if it was a country song or not. You got to v i s u a l i z e. Come on, “There’s a devil in your smile that’s chasing me” and “Escape from the city and follow the sun” are very country lyrics.
3. “Night Changes”
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While never officially recorded, (Yet! I’m still holding out hope) self-proclaimed One Direction fan, Waylon Wyatt’s cover of “Night Changes” proves what a little country twang can do to One Direction’s songs, even just acoustically. (You might remember Waylon Wyatt from recent country news. He had his debut album, Dustpiles, come out this month. However, he wasn’t able to celebrate properly as he was in the hospital with sepsis. Luckily, he is now on the mend and out of the hospital!)
2. “Steal My Girl”
Off of his most recent album, Do It Anyway, Jade Eagleson proves that this song was meant to be countrified. The original and the cover have recently gotten some attention thanks to the show Off Campus, in which “Steal My Girl” became the unofficial anthem of the show, being sung frequently after filming and in press junkets.
1. “Story of My Life”
The very first artists to countrify a One Direction song, Jordan McIntosh and George Canyon gave the song a strong country roots vibe. Even though the cover came out over 10 years ago, we still have the song in our rotation and it does get played occasionally during the GX94 Request Show as well.
One Direction have a lot of great songs in their catalogue just waiting to be countrified. Sure, there are several AI covers all over YouTube and TikTok already, but I hope more real, human artists realize that they have the power to do a country cover better than AI ever could.
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