Hear One Direction’s Folky, Fan-Assisted New Song ‘History’
One Direction have gone rootsy with the latest preview of their upcoming fifth album, Made in the A.M. Listen to new song “History” below.
The boy band’s latest veers sharply from the more anthemic, arena rock sounds of their most recent singles “Drag Me Down” and “Perfect.” On “History,” the quartet harmonize above acoustic guitars and hand claps. “You and me got a whole lot of history,” they sing together on the song’s chorus. “We could be the greatest team that the world has ever seen.”
On Twitter, Niall Horan revealed that fans were brought into the studio to sing on the track. “Actually, [longtime One Direction co-writer Julian Bunetta] and I brought some fans in the studio to record the chorus as like a crowd vocal,” Horan wrote. “So this song is really YOURS.”
Made in the A.M. is One Direction’s fifth album in five years and the band’s first without Zayn Malik. “There’s a lot of love and loss and success and failure crammed into this, and we just had the most fun you can ever have doing it,” Bunetta told Rolling Stone about writing the album with the band. “That’s the truth.”
The group recently wrapped up the U.K. leg of their On the Road Again tour in support of 2014 album Four. The band has no current plans to tour in support of Made in the A.M. and will be taking a “well-earned break at some point next year,” as Horan confirmed on Twitter in late August.