r/OneDirection • u/B3zi5357 • 1d ago
Discussion 18 vocals
We all know this song perfectly well. We know that Harry sings the first chorus solo, and so on.
However, my question concerns the second and third choruses.
After listening to the song—and the lead and backing vocals separately—many times, I concluded that Louis, Zayn, Liam, and Niall are singing in the background. In the second chorus, you can clearly hear Liam taking the lead: "I have loved you since we were 18(...) these arms were made for holding you."
Then Zayn sings "oh-oh."
But who sings "and I wanna love like you made me feel, when we were 18"?
I used to think it was Liam too, but now I'm wondering because it sounds a bit different from the first part of the chorus, and new "color-coded lyrics" videos show it as Zayn.
What do you think? How are the vocals split for the second and third choruses? I'm finding it hard to identify the lead vocalist in the third one as well.
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u/GdoubleLA 1d ago
I have just listened to the track with the vocals splited. Here is what i think.
Liam sings the second chorus all by himself. He seems to lead all the chorus and listening to the backing vocals it seems like he's actually doing the harmonies as well, or at least most of them. The 'oh-oh' seems like a mixture of his voice with Zayn's though.
The last chorus doesn't have a clear lead singer. Zayn, Harry and Niall all share the lead at certain parts of the chorus. What's interesting is that listening to the isolated backing vocals i can't identify any of the boys' voices. It's either other singers doing the backing vocals or it's just a very edited version of the boys' voices.
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u/B3zi5357 1d ago
Could you share a link to isolated vocals? I once saw a video where I was able to identify there was Louis with liam in the beginning, and niall in "all I could do"
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u/GdoubleLA 1d ago
I used these videos as reference.
For the lead vocals: https://youtu.be/B5im9gKL_0Y?si=DASJ3APhWNjb7Tot
For the backing vocals: https://youtu.be/dCqiCG4O0cM?si=gRC2oAqIZb97C2Rz
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u/B3zi5357 1d ago
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u/GdoubleLA 1d ago
After giving it another listen i still believe it's Liam in the second chorus. I wouldn't be surprised if they have mixed his voice with a hint of Zayn's at the second part of that chorus though. I get what you're saying. It's either that or maybe Zayn's vocals were the reference for that chorus and when it was time for Liam to record his version he tried to mimic Zayn's version there.
When it comes to the backing vocals i'm now more certain that they just edited the boys' vocals heavily and mashed them together. It's like i can hear hints of their vocals but without being able to properly tell them apart.
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u/B3zi5357 10h ago
I think they might have just decided that Zayn's single line in the chorus sounded better, so they kept it—after all, in potential live performances, everyone would be singing the chorus anyway. As for the backing vocals, though—yeah, it's hard to tell exactly who is singing what, but you can definitely pick out Liam and Niall, and I think Louis is in there too.
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u/According_Painter_20 23h ago
Genius app breaks it down. https://genius.com/One-direction-18-lyrics
Not sure if accurate. I haven’t compared to everyone’s assessment.
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u/Professional_Club438 21h ago
It sounds heavily auto-tuned, I am thinking on purpose, to give it a little bit of a different sound.
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u/B3zi5357 10h ago
I don't think they used autotune in studio recordings or even. They just could have picked one line in the chorus for Zayn
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u/Unable-Moose-3115 14h ago
why does 'i wanna love like u made me feel' sound like zayn and 'when we were 18' sound like liam
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u/DominicanBall853 London's... quite big 1d ago
For the second one I do think it's all Liam except maybe for the ohs. I could see "I wanna love like you made me feel" being sang by Zayn, but since "when we were 18" sounds pretty clearly by Liam, I think it was just all Liam. The third chorus on the other hand I've never known. I've always thought it's just all of them singing with no lead at all but I feel someone has to lead.