It's officially One Direction season! The UK superstars have a thing for a releasing an album every year around November, and they're keeping up the tradition in 2014. One Direction's fourth album, Four, will be out November 17 2014.

1D PromoOne Direction are releasing their fourth album on November 17

Taking some notes from Maroon 5 (who titled their recently released record, V) 1D decided to go ahead and just call their record by its number in their discography. However, for some reason they opted against the way cooler looking IV and settled for the ugly Four … but then again, they’re One Direction. They can basically do whatever they want. The guys teased the album announcement early Monday morning and followed it up with a video update spilling the news, but they also gave something a little extra, too. In an effort to apparently break the entire Internet, One Direction also decided to debut Four’s lead single, ‘Fireproof’ - and give it away completely for free, too.

‘Fireproof,’ which was available for free for 24 hours on the band’s website, had a lot to live up to when it comes to 1D lead singles. Following tracks like ‘Live While We’re Young’ and ‘Best Song Ever,’ ‘Fireproof’ is yet enough notch in One Direction’s belt of different genres - but this time, it’s a little more familiar. Still sticking with the Top 40 pop sound, the guys have thrown some country acoustics into the mix, too, and they stray away from the big guitars found on last year’s effort, Midnight Memories. It’s as catchy as a 1D track should be and it’ll definitely make an impact on radio in no time. With vocals that are as smooth as silk providing some fantastic harmonies, you can chalk this one up as another win in the One Direction singles department.

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The writers for ‘Fireproof’? John Ryan, Jamie Scott, Julian Bunetta, and One Direction’s own Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne. Ryan, Scott, and Bunetta are no strangers to writing One Direction music as all three of them have dabbled in it in the past - like essentially writing every song on Midnight Memories. Seriously: at least one of the three have a co-writing credit on all but 4 of Midnight Memories’ 14 tracks, and the trio also wrote two of the record’s deluxe edition songs. It’s not a bad thing, of course. It’s actually a pretty good insight into the future of Four: if you loved Midnight Memories, you’ll probably love Four, too.

Credits from Payne and Tomlinson are nice to see as well, because it seems like with each album, the guys are getting more and more involved in the writing process. There were barely any songs on MM that didn’t have a 1D member’s fingerprint on it and it’s looking like the same will happen for Four. The question is - which members will have the most writing on it? With member Harry Styles getting into the writing game by contributing a track to Ariana Grande’s new album, perhaps that will push him into gear much more on Four. Currently, the Payne/Tomlinson combo have the most writing credits of the group.

Next page: What else do we know about the new album?