Liam Payne review – LP1: From One Direction to One Dimensional
The IndependentSign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Seeing black and white photos of Liam Payne in his pants plastered across billboards across London while listening to LP1, I began to think of the former One Direction star as a “Torso Voice”: smooth, muscular and generically sexy, but pretty headless. He told Sky One’s Ant Middleton that the loneliness of fame had “almost killed him”. His response: “I don’t know!” He still want to be a pop star but lacked… well… direction. There’s a little rote anguish on songs such as “Heart Meet Break”, “Weekend” and “Live Forever”; a little emoting-by-numbers in search of a melody on the seasonal ballad “All I Want ” ; and a little raunch on “Both Ways”, about a lover who “switches lanes like a Bugatti Sport”.