One Direction - What Makes You Beautiful (5 Piano Guys, 1 piano) - The Piano Guys

The idea: A couple months ago the 5 of us were gathered round a piano prepping for a video shoot scheduled for that day. We were brainstorming ideas when one of us (can't remember who!) got off task and starting flicking a piano string. Since all of us are poster children for ADHD, it wasn't long before ALL of us had joined in -- banging out a beat, plucking a string, or hitting keys. The brainstorming meeting had been sabotaged beyond repair, but another music video idea was born!
The song: We went through several song possibilities before landing on \"What Makes You Beautiful\" by One Direction. We like this song because it's catchy and the music, lyrics, and video passed our \"sesame street\" test (meaning family friendly). We thought about the ramifications of taking on a teenybopper boy band tune as five middle-aged married guys who are desperately holding on to their hairlines. One of us even has a son older than the guys in One Direction (we won't say who) :-) BUT you know us -- we love a good challenge! This one was so fun to write that the \"challenge\" part of it never was felt. We just acted like kids playing the piano and it totally worked! :-) After we figured out the main \"techniques\" of playing the piano unconventionally we loved experimenting with swapping out chords and throwing the structure of the song around until it clicked.