The common thread linking all great boy bands, from New Kids to BSB, he says, is, “When they’d break, they’d come out of nowhere, sounding like nothing that’s on the radio.” He first witnessed their power back in the Eighties, when New Kids on the Block helped his older sister through her teens. Kotecha, who met 1D on The X Factor and shepherded them through their first few years, is a devoted student of the history of boy bands. One Direction’s songs were great and their charisma and chemistry undeniable, but what made them stick was a sound unlike anything else in pop - rooted in guitar rock at a time when that couldn’t have been more passé. It’d been a decade since the heyday of ‘NSync and Backstreet Boys, and the churn of generations demanded a new boy band. Most of it was mumbled - a temporary place-holder - but there was one phrase: “Better than words …” A few hours later, on the bus to another city, another show - Bunetta and Ryan can’t remember where - Liam asked, maybe having a laugh, “What if the rest of the song was just lyrics from other songs?” At one point, Liam got up to use the bathroom, and when he re-emerged, he was singing a melody.
The second takes place a few years later: Another hotel room in England - this one in Manchester - where songwriters and producers Julian Bunetta and John Ryan were throwing back Cucumber Collins cocktails and tinkering with a beat. The first will be familiar to any fan: Songwriter and producer Savan Kotecha was sitting on the toilet in a London hotel room, when he heard his wife say, “I feel so ugly today.” The words that popped into his head would shape the chorus of One Direction’s unforgettable 2011 debut, “What Makes You Beautiful.” A bathroom figures significantly in the origin stories of at least two classic One Direction songs.
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