“What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction

song info

    “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction (official video) is a pop song.

    
    U.S. Billboard Hot 100: #36, 32 weeks on chart, peak #4 (four)
    Radio Songs: #32
    Digital Songs: #54
    On-Demand Songs: #29
    Ringtones: #39
    Adult Contemporary: #8 (eight)
    Japanese Hot 100: #35
     Billboard information for the week of Oct 6, 2012
     Billboard chart listings courtesy of Billboard Magazine

link to the static song information page for this song:
http://www.thissideofsanity.com/music/songs/wh/whatmakesyoubeautiful.php

    Summary quotation from Wikipedia:

    “What Makes You Beautiful” is a song performed by English-Irish boy band One Direction. It served as their debut single and lead single from their debut studio album Up All Night (2011). Written by Rami Yacoub, Carl Falk and Savan Kotecha and produced by Yacoub and Falk, it was released by Syco Records on 11 September 2011. After recording the song at Cosmos Studios and Kinglet Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, the band felt relieved to have a song that they were happy to release as their first single. The track is an uptempo song which interpolates pop genres teen pop, power pop and pop rock. It features a prominent guitar-based chorus and riff, and the middle eight consists of a “na na na” hook.

    The song was generally complimented by contemporary music critics, who highlighted its appeal to the teenage audience and pop sensibility. It debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart, after setting a Sony Music Entertainment pre-order record and selling 153,965 copies in its first week. The single also topped the Irish and Scottish Singles Charts, and reached the top ten on the Australian and New Zealand Singles Charts, Flemish Ultratop 50, Canadian Hot 100, Japan Hot 100 and the United States Billboard Hot 100. It peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 and, as of January 2013, had sold over four million copies in the US. With over 5 million copies sold worldwide, the track is the best-selling song by a boy band in digital history and among the best-selling singles of all time.

    The single’s accompanying music video was directed by John Urbano and depicts One Direction spending time on a Malibu, California beach. The video garnered the group three MTV Video Music Awards on 6 September 2012, including Best Pop Video. One Direction performed the song live on televised shows, at awards ceremonies, and on two of their major concert tours: Up All Night Tour (2011–12) and Take Me Home Tour (2013). Artists including Boyce Avenue, Parade, Rita Ora, The Piano Guys, and Josh Groban have covered “What Makes You Beautiful”, and it was performed on an episode of Glee titled “Prom-asaurus”. “What Makes You Beautiful” won the BRIT Award for Best British Single at the 2012 ceremony.

Background

    After being formed and finishing third in the seventh series of The X Factor in 2010, One Direction were signed to Syco Music. “What Makes You Beautiful” was written by Rami Yacoub, Carl Falk and Savan Kotecha, and was produced by Yacoub and Falk. Instrumentation was completed by Falk and Yacoub. Serban Ghenea handled the audio mixing, Tom Coyne the audio mastering, and John Hanes the mix engineering, for which Phil Seaford served as the assistant. After recording the song at Cosmos Studios and Kinglet Studios in Stockholm, Sweden, the band felt relieved to have a song that they were happy to release as their debut single. Band member Liam Payne called the song “perfect”, and Harry Styles said, “When we were recording in the studio we knew instantly that we wanted this track to be our first single.” Styles spoke to MTV News, “I think for us we wanted to release something that wasn’t cheesy but it was fun. It kind of represented us, I think it took us a while to find it but I think we found the right song.” Payne added, “We always wanted [the single] to be something that people didn’t expect and then when we heard it, it wasn’t what we expected either so it kind of fitted perfectly.” “What Makes You Beautiful” premiered on BBC Radio 1 on 10 August 2011, and was released by Syco Music in Europe, Australia and New Zealand via digital download on 11 September 2011. A CD single was released in the United Kingdom on 12 September 2011, and followed in Australia and Germany on 25 November 2011 and 2 December 2011, respectively.

Composition

    “What Makes You Beautiful” runs for 3:18 (3 minutes, 18 seconds). According to the sheet music published by EMI Music Publishing, the song is set in common time with a tempo of 120 beats per minute. Written in the key of E major, it follows the chord progression E–A–B; vocal elements range from the note of B₃ to G♯₅. “What Makes You Beautiful” is a teen pop, pop rock and power pop song, with electropop influences. James C. McKinley Jr. of The New York Times compared its chord progression to “La Bamba”. The opening guitar riff has been noted as similar to that of Grease single “Summer Nights”. “What Makes You Beautiful” has a guitar-based chorus; Digital Spy’s Robert Copsey likened it to a cross between Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” and McFly’s “All About You”. It also contains cowbell instrumentation, and the middle eight consists of an “oh na na na” hook.

Music video

    The music video for “What Makes You Beautiful” was directed by John Urbano. Filmed for two days in July 2011, it premiered on 19 August 2011. On each of the five days preceding the video’s premiere, One Direction posted a teaser trailer of the video online. Each teaser showed footage from the video and behind the scenes, and one member of the band announcing how many days were left until the video premiere. The video opens with One Direction spending time on a Malibu, California beach inter cut with scenes of them driving an orange campervan. During the second verse, a group of three girls joins the band at the beach; in Styles’ bridge solo, he intimately sings to one girl individually. During the final choruses the band and girls are shown sitting around a fire, lighting sparklers and taking photographs. On video sharing website MUZU TV, the video was the fourth most-watched music video of 2011 in the UK. The video won two MTV Video Music Awards for Best Pop Video and Most Share-Worthy Video, and earned the group the award for Best New Artist on 6 September 2012. As of March 2013, the music video has garnered over 350 million Vevo views. In 2012, a blogger at BuzzFeed noticed similarities between the video and pop punk band Blink-182’s video for “All the Small Things” — the video was filmed on Santa Monica Beach and is shot from the same camera angle as in “What Makes You Beautiful”, leading media outlets to joke that the band parodied One Direction eleven years prior to their formation.

—from Wikipedia (the Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License applies to Wikipedia’s block of text and possible accompanying picture, along with any alterations, transformations, and/or building upon Wikipedia’s original text that ThisSideofSanity.com applied to this block of text)

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