"Best Song Ever" is a song recorded by English-Irish boy bandOne Direction. It was released on 22 July 2013 by Syco and Columbia as the lead single off the group's third studio albumMidnight Memories. The song was recorded in 2013 and runs for 3 minutes and 21 seconds. It was announced by One Direction in a video uploaded to their YouTube channel on 25 June 2013.[2] The trailer for This Is Us was released thirty minutes after the video was uploaded, and included a short preview of the song.[3] The song became available for pre-order on iTunes on 26 June.
Critical response
"Best Song Ever" received mixed to positive reviews from contemporary music critics. Amy Sciaretto of PopCrush awarded the song 3 and a half out of 5 stars, stating that "the first 20 seconds and intro of the song" were likely an "intentional homage" to The Who's "Baba O'Riley", however that the rest of the song was "signature 1D".
Click Music reacted negatively to the song, giving it 1 and a half stars out of 5, describing it as "tiresome" and called the song's writers "creatively barren", accusing them of plagiarism of The Who's "Baba O'Riley". It also called the song a representation of "the laziest, most mind-numbing trends in modern pop".[4]
Sciaretto went on to call the song "flirty, fluffy, and fun", dubbing the track an "anthemic" and "cute", however stated that the song was not as catchy as their previous singles "Live While We're Young" and "Kiss You" and that it wasn't their best work.[5]Popdust's Samantha Martin stated that the song did not "live up to its titular goal", and that some of the song's lyrics were contradicting. Martin described the song as a youthful "celebration", stating it was "definitely for the kids" and stated it wasn't their best work, however nonetheless described the song as "fantastically catchy" and praised Zayn Malik's "falsetto shriek" at the end of the song and compared the song's use of the name Georgia Rose to The Beatles.[6] Lucas Villa of Examiner was complimentary of the song's "amped up" pop-rock sound, writing, "It may not be the best song ever, but One Direction's latest single is certainly a contender for one of the year's more exciting releases."[7] Internet reviewer Todd Nathanson described the song as a marked improvement over their earlier work, specifically praising the use of the third-person pronoun "she" instead of the band's more common practice of using the second-person pronoun "you", since it allowed them to construct a specific narrative throughout the course of the song. Like other reviewers, Nathanson commented on the similarities to previously released songs by other bands, but said that he could not find it in himself to complain over the addition of quality music. [8]
Live performances
The group performed the song live for the first time on 30 July 2013 at the SAP center in San Jose, California during their Take Me Home Tour concert. The song was added to the setlist of the concert to all proceeding shows of the American leg. The groups first televised performance of the single was at the 2013 Teen Choice Awards on 11 August 2013. The group also performed the song, along with some of their other hits, on the Today Show on 23 August 2013 and on America's Got Talent on 28 August 2013.
