Why we are still SO not over One Direction
One Direction’s origin story plays like a boy band fairy tale. After Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson all auditioned as solo candidates for the U.K. X-Factor in 2010 and failed to progress in the competition as individual artists, judge Simon Cowell had a brilliant idea and brought the lads together to form a five-piece boy band. As legend goes, Harry Styles came up with the name “One Direction,” and voila pop history was made.
This week they’re dropping their fourth album (appropriately titled “Four”) and in honor of the gents, we’re going to break down four reasons why we still love 1D:
It’s really fun to love a boy band
The 90’s (and early 00’s) were a GLORIOUS time for boy bands. New Kids on the Block, Boyz II Men, the Backstreet Boys, N’Sync, Hanson, 98 Degrees. Even also-rans like O-Town and LFO gave us some bedroom dancing worthy jams. There’s been a resurgence of boy bands in the last few years (The Jonas Brothers, Big Time Rush, The Wanted, Five Seconds Of Summer, even New Kids on The Block and Backstreet Boys got back together and reunited to form a man-boy-super-band NKOTBSB) but there has yet to be a boy band this decade that captures radio waves and teen girl hearts like 1D does.
TBH it’s just FUN to like a boy band. It’s fun to have pajama dance parties to their songs, it’s fun to argue over which one is the cutest, it’s fun to write fan-fiction about having all the dudes in the band fall in love with you and having to make the agonizing decision re: who to give your heart to. IT’S JUST FUN! And if you’re going to crush on a modern boy band, there’s really only 1D. They are the true successors to Beatlemania with their catchy songs and British cuteness.
1D busts out earworms like nobody’s business
We all know what an earworm is, right? It’s that song you can’t get out of your head which is totally fine because you don’t even WANT to get it out of your head. Basically ALL 1D does (besides be the cutest) is crank out the catchiest of jams. “What Makes You Beautiful” came out four years ago now and I STILL can’t get it out of my head. “Live While We’re Young,” “One Thing,” and “Kiss You” are also THE DANCIEST. I’m even game for them to slow it down with jams like “Little Things,” although they played “Story of My Life” on the radio one too many times and now I have to take, like, a five year break before I can like it again.
Boys know EXACTLY how to do a music video
When they’re riding that red double-decker bus singing into the camera for “One Thing”? When they run all over the beach singing “What Makes You Beautiful?” The jaihouse rock/surfboard/motorcycle “Kiss You” mash up? I feel like no one in the history of space and time has had more fun making music videos than 1D.
Boys dress for the cameras
Good LORD can those boys dress. Or I guess it would be more accurate to say good LORD can their stylists style them. Never has clean-cut been so cute. Those vests, those ties, those haircuts that must get micro-trims every single day to stay so geometrically precise, are you even kidding me? I am BLINDED by their good style.
The final true beauty of 1D? Their lyrics are so blissfully vague that anyone can imagine themselves as the object of the song’s affection. That, my friends, is a boy band pre-requisite.
