Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	65/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
The A.V. Club	B-
Billboard
The Buffalo News
The Guardian
New York Daily News
Irish Independent
The Observer
Slant Magazine
The Daily Telegraph
Rolling Stone

Four is the fourth studio album by English-Irish boy band One Direction, released on 17 November 2014 by Columbia Records and Syco Music. Two singles were released from the album, "Steal My Girl" and "Night Changes", both achieving platinum status in the US, and scoring the band their tenth and eleventh UK top-ten hits.

The album received generally positive reviews from music critics. It debuted at number one in 18 countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States. The album was also One Direction's last with member Zayn Malik, who announced he was leaving the band on 25 March 2015. In August 2015, Four became the band's fourth consecutive album to sell in excess of 1 million copies in the United States. The band became the first band to have their first four albums debut at number one in the United States.

On 27 April 2014, it was confirmed that One Direction were working on their fourth studio album. Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne worked on the majority of the album with songwriters Julian Bunetta, John Ryan, and Jamie Scott, but members Harry Styles and Zayn Malik also co-wrote tracks with Bunetta, Ryan, Scott and producer Johan Carlson. Niall Horan was unable to be involved in writing due to a leg injury.

Malik has described the album as a way of growing with their fans, and having more mature lyrics without straying from their style too much. The album provides a place for each member to showcase their styles of writing, particularly Styles, whose four tracks on the album perfectly sum up the songwriting skills he has.

The name and cover of the album were announced on 8 September on One Direction's official website, along with a free download of a song called "Fireproof", which was available for 24 hours. Horan stated that the reason for the free download was "because you have supported us so much, we wanted to give a little something back". "Fireproof" was written by Payne and Tomlinson along with John Ryan, Jamie Scott and Julian Bunetta, who also wrote their single "Story of My Life". In the 24-hour span, 1.1 million downloads were generated. The song was put on the band's Vevo on 22 September.

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