My Favourite Album of 2014!

My dear friend Joe nominated me to do this blog (Check out his blog!), and even though I hate him for putting me through the agony of picking my favourite album of 2014, I think it is such a good idea! Well done Joe 😉

The reason why I said it was agony of picking my favourite album is because this year has been an incredible year for some musicians, producing some top quality albums.  2014 was the year for newcomers and these newcomers certainly put their stamp on the music world. Sam Smith, who was announced the winner of the Brits 2014 Critics’ Choice award for 2014, released his debut album ‘In The Lonely Hour’ in May this year. ‘Lay Me Down’ is my favourite track on his album. Ariana Grande’s second studio album ‘My Everything’ came out in August and established Ariana as a major force in the music industry. Without a doubt, ‘Just A Little Bit Of Your Heart’ is my favourite song , which was penned by One Direction’s Harry Styles. It’s been two years since Ella Henderson appeared on the UK X Factor and many critics had questioned if the two year gap would be a good decision for her career, but Ella proved them wrong with her debut album ‘Chapter One‘, with every song written or co-written by Ella herself. In the first week, her album went straight into number one, making Simon Cowell a very happy man! Remember her arena audition where she sang her own song that took everyone’s breath away? Well Ella recorded that beautiful song and put it on the album and ‘Missed’ is undeniably my favourite track of hers. The treasured artists of the music industry also made sure they were heard this year with their outstanding albums. Ed Sheeran released his highly anticipated second album ‘X’ in June, and to date, it has been the most streamed album on Spotify of 2014, with over 400 million streams. Apart from ‘Thinking Out Loud’, my favourite song is ‘Tenerife Sea’. One of my queens Jessie J dropped her third studio album ‘Sweet Talker’. The leading single of the album, ‘Bang Bang’, made Jessie world renowned and is her most successful single to date. The success of this hit single made her album a chart topping album. Although ‘Bang Bang’ is the tune that has me running to the dance floor, my stand out song on the album is ‘Sweet Talker’. Many would say that 2014 was the year of Taylor Swift and her fifth studio album, ‘1989‘. This album is her first official pop album, having been a country-pop crossover artist on her previous albums. The stats establish that Swift done right by making this album as it is the best selling album of 2014. I have two favourite songs from ‘1989‘, they are ‘Wildest Dreams’ and ‘Wonderland’.

One Direction’s fourth consecutive album ‘Four’ is an extremely close runner up to my favourite album of the year (I mean it, the only difference is like 0.01%). Personally, I believe ‘Four’ is their best album. Like many of the critics, I believe this album shows maturity (apart from ‘Act My Age’, but we ALL secretly love that tune!!) and growth for the band, with a more rockier sound. The boys wrote 9 of the songs on the album, and even got Ed Sheeran to pen another song for them. Cosmopolitan clearly agree with me as they have named it number eleven on the 20 Best Album’s for 2014 list! Once again, stats confirm that One Direction aren’t going to be disappearing any time soon, as the album went straight in at number one in over 100 countries!! The song that gets me feeling warm and fuzzy is ‘Night Changes’, it is such a beautiful song and shows off everyone’s vocals.

But my album of the year goes to the real breakthrough artists of the year, 5 Seconds of Summer! It was probably obvious I was going to chose them, I never shut up about them and have been promoting them for nearly 3 years to everyone! If you don’t already know, I adore these guys a crazy amount (I have travelled more times to see them live than any other band to date!). If you’ve been hiding under a rock and have no idea who they are or want to refresh your memory of who they are, check out my previous blog on them!

The Australian pop punk band (NOT A BOYBAND) released their self titled debut album  ‘5 Seconds of Summer’  in June and within one week of it’s release in America, it charted in the number one spot in the Billboard 200, selling over 260,000 copies. 5 Seconds of Summer proved they were to be taken seriously in the music industry and soon became one of the most sought after bands at all music award ceremonies such as the MTV Music Awards and the ARIA Awards, entitling them to perform in front of some of the mega stars in the music industry. But it was them touring with One Direction on their tours ‘Take Me Home’ in 2013 and ‘Where We Are’ in 2014 that gave the platform for the Aussies to make a name for themselves. They soon became pals with All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth and co-wrote a few songs with him. ‘She Looks So Perfect‘ was the lead single of the album and no doubt was one of the songs of 2014! The boys wrote the majority of the songs on the album, all bar two in fact, with ‘Amnesia’ wrote by the Madden Brothers and their cover of The Romantic’s ‘What I Like About You’.  With songs like ‘Don’t Stop‘, ‘Good Girls‘, ‘18‘ and ‘End Up Here‘ proving their little cheeky personalities in their song writing and showing they are more All Time Low than One Direction. But these four pretty boys have an emotional side too, and this is evident in their tunes like ‘Long Way Home‘, ‘Beside You‘ and ‘Everything I Didn’t Say’. While writing this blog, I asked my mum what my favourite 5 Seconds of Summer song was (thinking it would make it easier for me) but she had them same answer as I first came up with and that is that I actually like them all and can’t choose a favourite. Although, after two consecutive listens to the album, I came to the conclusion that my top five favorite songs are ‘End Up Here’, ‘Good Girls’, ‘Long Way Home’, ‘Heartbreak Girl’ and ‘Beside You’ (Can I just say I absolutely love every 5 Seconds of Summer song on this album? Because I do!!)

Image from 5SOS-official.tumblr.com

If there is one thing I love more than lots of 5 Seconds of Summer songs, it’s hearing 5 Seconds of Summer live and they answered all my dreams in December this year when they released ‘LIVESOS’. This is their first live album and contains 14 songs, including ‘Disconnected‘, ‘Out of My Limit‘ and their cover of Green Day’s ‘American Idiot‘.

Image from http://www.5sos.com

So there you have it, my favourite album of 2014 belongs to 5 Seconds of Summer. In my eyes, 2014 belonged to those guys!

So, what was your favourite album of 2014? Comment below 🙂

My weekend at One Direction’s Where We Are Tour in Croke Park!

So one of the most highly anticipated weekends of the year for an Irish fangirl has been and gone and what a weekend it was! The biggest selling band in the world, One Direction, launched their biggest tour to date, the Where We Are Tour, with three sold out nights in Dublin’s Croker with the general capacity of 82,000 people, meaning over 240,000 people watching on over the three nights! I was one of the lucky few people that managed to go all 3 nights to Croke Park and I am so glad I did! Each night got better and better and for me personally, Sunday’s show was without a doubt the best night of the weekend! I managed to Live While I’m Young, I came away with some incredible Midnight Memories, I danced all night to some of The Best Song(s) Ever, I Happily enjoyed the Little Things One Direction joked about on stage all weekend and found out how Strong I am after surviving standing on Sunday by not getting killed by the younger, crazier fangirls! (Did you see what I done there  with the songs? I am a genius aren’t I?! Okay, Okay I know it was cringey but just giggle anyway!) One Direction performed a set list of 23 songs each night to the thousands of adoring fans who, despite the lashing rain, enjoyed every minute the 5 young lads were on stage.

Croke Park was a huge gig for Mullingar native, Niall Horan as 4 years ago, he auditioned for X Factor in Croke Park and hoped his dreams would all work out for him.

Niall’s Tweet 4 years ago.

I decided to grab a flag and remind Niall that his dream has all worked out and to show him I am so extremely proud of him.

My flag on Sunday Night.

From almost not making it through X Factor to selling out his home stadium 4 years later!

During Friday night’s show, Niall took a selfie with the 83,000 fans and posted it to Twitter a few hours later, showing his appreciation, still in disbelief that he was playing Ireland’s biggest stage!

Niall’s tweet after Friday’s show

 

Although the boys said it was Niall’s weekend, Croke Park was also a special moment for Harry, Liam, Louis and Zayn as it was and will be the biggest crowd the band have ever performed for. With this being a stadium tour, it meant a bigger stage and bigger production and the lads didn’t disappoint! The stage took up all of the Hill 16 and had a catwalk going down to the halfway point of the pitch. There was no shortage of pyrotechnics, with fireworks going off the minute the boy band phenomenon popped up on stage singing Midnight Memories. The stage itself had laser beam lights along the catwalk and projected laser into the stadium also. With many critics and non fans claiming One Direction to be a stereotypical boyband, they really aren’t! The entire show was chilled backed and not over rehearsed. The lads literally just messed around as if the were in a park on their own and not in front 82,000 plus people. They don’t need the choreographed dance moves or the ‘key changing stepping up from the stools’ like what Westlife done because that isn’t who One Direction are. Their fans know that One Direction can’t dance (well Liam can certainly move and Harry likes to think he can) so why would they make a fool of themselves learning ridiculous dance routines! Over all 3 nights, Niall and the lads mentioned how Irish fans ‘are the best fans in the world’ and with that, it must make me an unreal fan seeing as I went three times! 😛 (Okay, I like to think I am!)

The stage!

Liam and Harry were full of life on stage over the weekend and taking the Irish culture to heart. Liam declared his love for Superquinn sausages on Friday night and Harry begged the crowd to scream ‘2 bananas for a euro‘ on Saturday night. Harry also won the crowd over with his Irish accent, talking Irish and simply saying ‘What’s the craic Dublin?’ The lads showed they were having the craic by wowing the crowd with their Macarena skills, singing the Friends theme tune and explaining what flavour of crisps each member of the band was!

One Direction asked pals 5 Seconds of Summer (who are my faves, if you didn’t already know!) to be their opening act on this tour and let’s just say if Croke Park had a roof, 5SOS would have blown it off, that’s how good they were!  They sang 11 songs including She Looks So Perfect, Don’t Stop, Disconnected and a cover of Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream (which might I add is better than the original!).

My photo of 5 Seconds of Summer

Calum on Sunday night.

Luke on Sunday night.

Calum and Luke on Sunday night.

Michael on Sunday night.

Michael on Sunday night.

Michael and Ashton on Sunday night.

Below are some of my pictures from Sunday night when I was standing in the Pink Zone and luckily enough to be so close to the boys!

Me at the stage before the concert started!

         

Croke Park gave Niall Horan his own unique Westmeath jersey as a reminder that finally a Mullingar man made it to Croke Park! 😉

With Croker being such a success, I have no doubt that One Direction will be back their soon and I am already looking forward to it. Gwaaaan Nialler, proud of ya buddy 😉

Now, as my acing body is still recovering from all the dancing and standing and as my post concert depression kicks in, I pack away all the One Direction merchandise and Irish flags. It was a good weekend lads, see ye next time! 😉

5 Seconds of Summer.

Before you all get carried away thinking I’m talking about Irish summers, I’m not. I am talking about my favourite band, 5 Seconds of Summer. Now I guess you are now asking ‘Who the hell are they?’

5 Seconds of Summer are an Australian (and 1/4 New Zealand because of Calum) band who have taken the music world by storm. The young band is made up of Luke Hemmings, Michael Clifford, Ashton Irwin and Calum Hood. It all started back in December 2011, when the boys started uploading home videos to Youtube and pleading to their small group of fans to ‘make them famous‘! They released their first Ep Unplugged in June 2012 and it went in at number 3 in the Australian iTunes chart but failed to chart in the official music chart. 5SOS soon became known worldwide as one of their fans just happened to be One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson and he shared their single Gotta Get Out on twitter and the Youtube views on escalated quickly for the 5SOS boys . They released a second EP in December 2012 called Somewhere New and their success began to grow even bigger. Louis Tomlinson then managed to get the 5SOS boys to be 1D’s opening act on their Take Me Home tour in 2013.

Here is an acoustic version of their single Gotta Get Out, the song Louis shared on twitter. 

The song that made them receive fans worldwide was Heartbreak Girl which features on their EP Somewhere New. To date, the video has over 9 million views on Youtube. 

Now, before you start thinking ‘oh 5 Seconds of Summer must be a boyband if they toured with 1D!’ Nope, you’re wrong! Don’t make the mistake of  classing 5SOS as a boyband, they are a pop rock band. The Aussie boys have worked with All Time Low’s Alex Gaskarth, James Bourne from Busted, McFly and Joel and Benji Madden from Good Charlotte.

On February 5th 2014, 5SOS released their latest single She Looks So Perfect worldwide on iTunes for pre-order and immediately, it went in at the number one spot in over 35 countries.

On Friday 28th of March, the boys reached the number 1 spot in Ireland’s official music charts.

On Saturday 29th of March, the boys received their first ever official number one in Australia.

On Sunday 30th of March, 5SOS were announced the official UK Number 1 single.

Today, the 1st of April, 5SOS released She Looks So Perfect in America and it went in at number one on the iTunes charts so I expect it to reach the number one spot in the official American charts soon.

For me, being a huge fan since June 2012, this success is so surreal! I can’t imagine how the boys themselves must feel.

One thing that is obvious, 5 Seconds of Summer are very grateful to their fans for making them so successful, thanking them daily on their twitter accounts. I’ve been lucky enough to meet the guys and they are genuinely nice guys and appreciated the fact I had travelled to see them live.

5 Seconds of Summer in London, November 2013

 

So I’d keep an eye on 5 Seconds of Summer, they are my ones to watch for 2014.

Below is the video for their single She Looks So Perfect and it is such a catchy song, I know it will be that song you can not get out of your head for days after 😛