One Direction Announce New Album - All You Need To Know About 'Four'

It's officially One Direction season! The UK superstars have a thing for a releasing an album every year around November, and they're keeping up the tradition in 2014. One Direction's fourth album, Four, will be out November 17 2014.

Taking some notes from Maroon 5 (who titled their recently released record, V) 1D decided to go ahead and just call their record by its number in their discography. However, for some reason they opted against the way cooler looking IV and settled for the ugly Four … but then again, they’re One Direction. They can basically do whatever they want. The guys teased the album announcement early Monday morning and followed it up with a video update spilling the news, but they also gave something a little extra, too. In an effort to apparently break the entire Internet, One Direction also decided to debut Four’s lead single, ‘Fireproof’ - and give it away completely for free, too.

‘Fireproof,’ which was available for free for 24 hours on the band’s website, had a lot to live up to when it comes to 1D lead singles. Following tracks like ‘Live While We’re Young’ and ‘Best Song Ever,’ ‘Fireproof’ is yet enough notch in One Direction’s belt of different genres - but this time, it’s a little more familiar. Still sticking with the Top 40 pop sound, the guys have thrown some country acoustics into the mix, too, and they stray away from the big guitars found on last year’s effort, Midnight Memories. It’s as catchy as a 1D track should be and it’ll definitely make an impact on radio in no time. With vocals that are as smooth as silk providing some fantastic harmonies, you can chalk this one up as another win in the One Direction singles department.

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The writers for ‘Fireproof’? John Ryan, Jamie Scott, Julian Bunetta, and One Direction’s own Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne. Ryan, Scott, and Bunetta are no strangers to writing One Direction music as all three of them have dabbled in it in the past - like essentially writing every song on Midnight Memories. Seriously: at least one of the three have a co-writing credit on all but 4 of Midnight Memories’ 14 tracks, and the trio also wrote two of the record’s deluxe edition songs. It’s not a bad thing, of course. It’s actually a pretty good insight into the future of Four: if you loved Midnight Memories, you’ll probably love Four, too.

Credits from Payne and Tomlinson are nice to see as well, because it seems like with each album, the guys are getting more and more involved in the writing process. There were barely any songs on MM that didn’t have a 1D member’s fingerprint on it and it’s looking like the same will happen for Four. The question is - which members will have the most writing on it? With member Harry Styles getting into the writing game by contributing a track to Ariana Grande’s new album, perhaps that will push him into gear much more on Four. Currently, the Payne/Tomlinson combo have the most writing credits of the group.

Next page: What else do we know about the new album?

With that said, what do we know about Four so far? The band has been touring across the world for a good part of the year, but they still managed to find time to get in the studio and put together a record. They haven’t been writing music in secret, either. Back in March, Payne told The Sun that One Direction’s new music was going to be a “gamechanger.” “'I really think the next album is going to be a game-changer for us. I'm excited,” Payne said. For Styles, other than Grande’s track, his writing ventures have gone public as well - but not for 1D music. Styles linked up with songwriter John Legend to write a track for U.S. X Factor winners Alex and Sierra, and he also collaborated with Kodaline for a track that was allegedly for Styles’ solo music - but a label spokesperson debunked it and said it was to be a One Direction song. Despite writing for other artists, Styles has most likely written plenty for Four - it was revealed back in February that there were over 19 songs he had co-written that never made the Midnight Memories cut. Let’s hope things change this time around!

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Another writer you can probably expect on Four is Ed Sheeran. In an interview back in June, Sheeran said that he may be included on Four after speaking with Simon Cowell. “There was some sort of political thing on the last record as to why I didn’t get asked and he was explaining that. He basically just said, ‘We need some songs’, so I’m seeing him next week,” he said in an interview with Digital Spy. After writing ‘Little Things,’ ‘Over Again,’ and ‘Moments,’ another Ed penned track in the 1D discography will be much desired. While we’ve still got a long ways to go to hear the new record and all its collabs in its entirety, ‘Fireproof’ is a hell of an introduction, and the excitement for Four has only begun.