There is no doubt: Pillowtalk is the single greatest song ever written. It makes every one of Beethoven’s symphonies look like steaming piles of decaying horseshit. The fact that The Beatles are still on Spotify when Pillowtalk is literally RIGHT THERE is widely considered to be among the greatest crises of our times. This, we all agree on.
But… is it more of a bop? Or a jam? Or maybe a banger? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves. But the questions don’t stop there. What about all the other former One Direction members? Have they released songs post-breakup too? And if so, are those songs bops, bangers, or jams?
Folks, this calls for nothing less than our best data visualization. Unfortunately, we were all out of that. So here, have this color-coded tri-axis scatterplot instead:
Yeah, we listened to every song that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 released by a former 1D member after the band broke up. But we didn’t just do the easy part. We did the hard part too: we plotted each of those songs along three axes (bops, bangers and jams*) and color coded them by artist.
Why did we do this? For liberty and justice, probably. But what did this show us? A few things:
- Harry Styles is a jam machine. Spread this sweet boy on some hearty 11-grain toast cause he is 100% organic cage-free jam.
- Niall, on the hand, is committed to bops—and for a while I was worried that he just couldn’t stop. But then, in the year of our lord 2019, something happened. He stopped. And what we got was his first ever jam, Nice to Meet Ya. Our nation’s top scientists must remain vigilant to see what he does next. More jams? A return to bops? Or, dare I say it, a banger?! A frightened nations waits to find out.
- And then there’s Zayn. Yes, Pillowtalk is undeniably a banger. Perhaps the most banging banger that every banged. But he checks in with bops and jams too! My guy’s a versatile king and frankly, we love to see it.
- Finally, we must discuss Liam. Criminally underrated Liam. The only 1D member with even a single Migo on any of his tracks. The soft-spoken lad who has *checks notes* consistently released certified bangers every year since the band dissolved? Honestly, I’m proud of him. But I’m even prouder of me for being proud of him.
What we do with this information is surely for the courts to decide. But know this: as long as the boys are making music, we’ll be plotting it in a scatterly fashion. With Pillowtalk on repeat in the background, obviously.
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*If you don’t know the difference between the Three Types Of Songs I honestly don’t even know what to tell you.
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