One Direction’s Sept. 9 concert at the Canadian Tire Centre proved that with legions of diehard fans, you can get away with putting very little effort into your nightly performance.
This isn’t to say that One Direction performed poorly. On the contrary, they sounded great—but besides standing around and singing, they didn’t do very much at all.
The show openers, Swedish dance-pop duo Icona Pop, got the energy up in the crowded arena. Their performance hit all the right notes. They sounded good, they looked good, they engaged the audience, kept them entertained, and above all got them pumped up for One Direction.
Icona Pop’s set had props, backup dancers, and the duo led the crowd into a chant of the tour’s name, On The Road Again, before launching into a slightly altered version of their song “On A Roll,” substituting the line “On a roll again” for the tour name, helping the unfamiliar audience sing along.
All in all, they had all the elements of a true pop performance, and in some ways, they were more impressive than the main act.
After Icona Pop’s 11-song set and a brief intermission, One Direction took the stage.
One Direction’s 25-song set was filled with hits both old and new, though the majority of songs were off of their most recent album, Four.
Harry Styles took on most of the audience interaction, sounding the most genuine as he poked fun of individuals in the crowd, and talked about Ottawa and Canada. He was the best all-around showman—never sounding scripted, but always keeping the crowd laughing and entertained. At one point, he mistakenly referred to the Ottawa Senators as the “Saints,” leading to a chorus of boos that had him faux-annoyed with the crowd.
Vocally, the four boys held up remarkably well despite the loss of former bandmate Zayn Malik, who used to carry the majority of their high notes and riffs. Styles and bandmate Liam Payne picked up his parts with the most ease. Louis Tomlinson, arguably the band’s weakest vocalist, struggled at times to stay on pitch even for his own solos.
One Direction has never been a band that relied on anything other than their voices and their inter-band interactions to keep their fans entertained. In the beginning, it was part of their adorable charm. Four world tours in, it’s becoming a tired, less convincing routine. One Direction needs to put some actual work into their tours. Showing up, singing, and joking around with each other still sells out stadiums, but for many fans, it just isn’t cutting it anymore.
Styles, so focused on the audience, hardly ever interacted or even stood in the same section of the stage as his bandmates. Payne, on the other hand, balanced interactions with the crowd and his bandmates the best, often pulling Tomlinson out of his shell as well. Tomlinson mainly stuck to messing with Payne and bandmate Niall Horan between songs, usually only speaking to the audience during his scripted segment or when Payne drew him out, while Horan, hidden behind a guitar, almost faded into the background at times.
It wasn’t all lows, though. One high point of the show was when Payne and Horan teased their new album, as Horan played a bit of a new song on his guitar as Styles struggled to recognize which song he was playing.
The band repeatedly thanked their fans for giving them the opportunity to play shows, always reminding their supporters that they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without them.
The highlight songs of the night were the arena-shaking “Where Do Broken Hearts Go,” fan-favourite “18,” newest single “Drag Me Down,” and the closing song “Best Song Ever.”
All in all, for fans of One Direction, their show hit all of the right buttons, but to a casual attendee, they could do with putting a little more of a performance into, well, their performance.
