Audio Autopsy, 2013: One Direction No One Expected: The Blondie & Undertones Medley For Charity

To the hipper-than-thou, kindly adjust your "cool quotient" to allow for the following several moments where a billion-selling teen-pop group is acknowledged for having once existed. To fans, welcome!

Formed via the plastic, commercial convention of the TV talent show? Check. Propelled and promoted by the cynical Dick-Clark-of-the-New-Millennium, Simon Cowell? Check. More popular than we’ve ever been with the ladies? Check. So squeaky clean you could eat off ‘em? Check. Did they make more than their share of catchy, ear-candy taffy? Yep. Don’t panic: We’re here only to focus on one! Your cool-quotient will remain intact!

Guilty Pleasure, Table For One D…and Several Million

One Direction was a party waiting to happen from 2010 to 2016, and for more than just the middle-school cheerleader set. They consistently recorded jubilant and danceable songs that were also fun to sing along to…for fun-lovers of all ages! Then, in 2016, the group was found guilty of being both Endearing and Adorable, which caused our English-Irish Fabricated Five to fold their hit-making tent, and slink off into a life of inevitable beer guts, American pick-up trucks lettered “F,” and beard care.

The group was made up of Niall Horan, Zayn Malik (until his departure in 2015), the late Liam Payne (1993-October 2024; he was 31 when he died following a fall from a hotel balcony), Harry Styles (who’s become a solo sensation), and Louis Tomlinson. They became one of the best-selling boy groups of all time before going on an indefinite hiatus in 2016.

But, for one of the songs they recorded, One Direction even dipped into the 1978 new wavin’/punk pool for two songs they jammed into a medley: Blondie’s “One Way or Another” (written by Debbie Harry and Nigel Harrison) and The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks,” written by The ‘Tones’ J.J. O’Neill (medley produced by Julian Bunetta and John Ryan)!

Julian Bunetta: “It was an interesting process... because we had to re-imagine it, we only could do that once we heard the boys sing it. We didn’t produce the track first and then have them sing it. I had them sing to just an acoustic guitar track only, that’s it,” he recalled to MTV News. “We went in the studio, and all the boys had known the song. We listened to it over and over, and we basically laid down an acoustic guitar and we picked out favorite parts and we sang them.”

Bunetta (above) once revealed to MTV News that it was Simon Cowell who came up with the idea for covering the Blondie track, “because obviously it’s a really cheeky song and it’s very fun, and also it was very unexpected.” He added…“And, it obviously is fun and that works with the whole Comic Relief idea.”

Debbie Harry told The Daily Star that she thought One Direction did a good job with their version of her band’s hit tune: “Making a mash-up of our song by putting it together with The Undertones’ track was entirely appropriate,” she said, adding, “One Direction’s take had a similar spirit to our early cover versions. They seem like good kids.”

Red Knows

And, to make it all the more endearing, they did it all for charity…namely UK’s Comic Relief, helping the needy and hungry in both Africa and the UK! A little harder to hate ‘em now, ain’t it fellas?

And, as it happens, their “One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)” debuted at #1 on the UK Singles Chart in 2013, making it One Direction’s third UK chart-topper. In fact, it hit the #1 spot in no fewer than 63 countries! That’s almost one-third of the countries on this planet (while it didn’t chart on Mars, rumors persist it did creep into the Top Ten on Jupiter). If all that wasn’t enough, it was nominated for Best British Single at the 2014 Brit Awards.

Robert Copsey of Digital Spy said of the single: “The cheeky lyrics, bouncy pop-rock melody and singalong chorus feel like an obvious but reassuringly safe option for this year’s official Comic Relief single,” concluding that it was “predictable, but undeniably fun!”

I’m not sure you could ask any more of these past purveyors of bubbly-pop earworms…unless you were to add altruism to their enviable quiver of superpowers.

What’s this, then? Harry’s wearing a Rush t-shirt? You don’t suppose Geddy, while mowing the manse’s lawn, wears a One Direc…………………naw!

When they performed it, live, in a crowded arena…wouldn’t ya know it? A party!

The Undertones in 1978: (l-r): Lead singer Feargal Sharkey, bassist Michael Bradley, rhythm guitarist John (J.J.) O'Neill, lead guitarist Damian O'Neill (J.J.’s younger brother), and drummer Billy Doherty (📸Fin Costello/Redferns).

Here’s the original whole cloth from which this new bouncy-beat fun-fest came:

“We were always trying to be as good as Television or the New York Dolls. We were trying to write great pop songs. All that stuff [that we were reading about] was just a revelation, like ‘f*ck The Rolling Stones, I’ve got the New York Dolls!’ But, we always felt we were never as good as anybody else; that was just our nature. We were quite self-deprecating, really, I suppose.”—J.J. O’Neill, The Undertones, Punktuationmag, October 9, 2022

“Teenage Kicks” was the debut single by Northern Irish punkers, The Undertones. Written in the summer of 1977 by J.J. O'Neill, the band’s rhythm guitarist and principal songwriter, it was recorded on June 15, 1978, and was initially released that September on independent Belfast record label, Good Vibrations, before the band signed to Sire Records, worldwide, on October 2, 1978.

T-shirt inspired by The Undertones being signed to The Ramones’ label, Sire Records? The Guardian, 2001: Upon first hearing "Teenage Kicks" in September 1978, UK’s BBC Radio 1 DJ, John Peel, is reported to have burst into tears, and readily admitted to still being moved to tears upon hearing the song in interviews granted to journalists up until his 2004 death. Peel also told The Guardian that apart from his name, the only words he wished to be engraved upon his gravestone were the opening lyrics to "Teenage Kicks": "Teenage dreams so hard to beat."

Sire Records subsequently obtained all rights to the material released on the Teenage Kicks EP and the song was re-released as a standard vinyl single on Sire’s own label on October 14 that year, reaching #31 in the UK Singles Chart 2 weeks after its release.

From The Undertones’ official YouTube page, with this “Teenage Kicks” description I’m guessing was composed by J.J. O’Neill: “John Peel’s favourite ever song and not hard to understand why. Timeless teenage frustration in 2-and-a-half minutes of raucous pop punk heaven. Play it loud and feel free to pogo -- you know you want to!” Did he mention the exuberant hand-claps? Here they are, then (1978):

And, here they are more or less, now (Isle of Wight Festival, 2017, 39 years later):

Blondie Pest Inspires Song, One Way or Another

The same month (June 1978) The Undertones were laying down tracks at Belfast’s Wizard Studios for their self-produced “Teenage Kicks,” Blondie were beginning the recording of their Parallel Lines album at the Record Plant in New York, with Mike Chapman producing.

“One Way or Another” was inspired by one of Debbie’s ex-boyfriends who stalked her after their breakup, according to Cathy Che’s 1999 Deborah Harry: Platinum Blonde. According to Debbie, this boyfriend’s constant calling and persistent stalking forced her to move out of New Jersey, per Paul Lester’s LouderSound article in 2023.

The stalking had taken place in 1973, when Debbie was a member of The Stilettos; Debbie’s former bandmate, Elda Gentile, recalled, “It was freaking us all out, especially Chris [Stein, then Debbie’s boyfriend].” As Debbie once explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:

I was actually stalked by a nutjob, so it came out of a not-so-friendly personal event. But I tried to inject a little bit of levity into it to make it more lighthearted. I think in a way that’s a normal kind of survival mechanism. You know, just shake it off, say one way or another, and get on with your life. Everyone can relate to that and I think that’s the beauty of it.

The Song

Musically, the song was composed by bassist Nigel Harrison, who first introduced the song to keyboardist, Jimmy Destri. He explained, “My original music for ‘One Way or Another’ was this psychedelic, Ventures-like futuristic surf song gone wrong. Jimmy really liked this piece of music, and we would play it on the road. Then Debbie picked up on it; she came up with the ‘getcha-getcha-getcha’s’.”

Debbie, in a 1986 Spin article, claimed to have worked out the song live with Harrison. According to Harrison, producer Mike Chapman came up with the chaotic ending section.

Here’s Debbie and Blondie synching to Chapman’s track on the Dutch TopPop in 1978:

And, here’s the band playing live on The Midnight Special early the next year. Debbie really created a host of improv moves and lyrics for her performance:

And (with behind-the-scenes clips), the count-down begins:

We’ve One! One Direction made our “One” Playlist! Check it out here!

GROW BIGGER EARS #8: The ONE "Audio Autopsy" Power Pop Playlist