Confused Yet?

Maybe we've been a little spoiled from the other music videos that have accompanied the singles off their Midnight Memories album. "Best Song Ever" was less of a music video and more of a comedy sketch with a music video attached to the end of it as an afterthought. Then we were forced to admit that "Story of My Life" was both an excellent song and an excellent music video. "Midnight Memories" was an ode to old school rock 'n' roll and late night mischief, both in musical tone and in accompanying music video. In stark contrast, the music video for "You & I" is too simplistic to compare to all the others.

It really says something about the enduring popularity of One Direction that "You & I" has been trending on Twitter all day Friday, even for hours before the video for the single actually came out. 1D even released a teaser clip a day to countdown to the release of the music video. The finished product was underwhelming. They spend the first half of the video walking down the boardwalk one at a time, morphing into each other when it's time for someone else to sing their solo. They spend the second half of the video still walking down the boardwalk, this time all together while tripping into surrealist freeze frame figures of themselves.

Confused? So was I. "You & I" is one of their more mature songs, according to them, which makes it understandable that they'd want to take a more calm, simplistic, and somber approach to the song. However, when One Direction gets serious, they can produce musical gems like the video for "Story of My Life". Compared to that, the "You & I" video really doesn't seem to fit the subject matter of the song at all. And what was that part where there were dozens of clones of them all over the boardwalk even supposed to mean?

"You & I" is the kind of video that you can only really appreciate if you like to sit down and stare at the members of One Direction. It gives you plenty of opportunity to do that while you listen to the song. However, as a video, as a narrative, and as a symbol, it kind of falls on its face. When compared to the videos that accompanied "Best Song Ever", "Story of My Life" and "Midnight Memories", it's not even in the same league.

Watch the video below.