The band’s most favoured themes – nostalgia, bittersweet memories, young love, friendship – are all present and correct. It doesn’t really fit at the end of the album on its own, it’s an impressive and rather moving pop ballad with some of the band’s best vocal work, including those superb harmonies on the chorus. Perhaps not the most obvious choice for number one, this enormously underrated track from Take Me Home has a title that belies its disarmingly mature approach, from the lyrics to the romantic production filled with sweeping violins and tender guitars. Meanwhile that driving, synth-pop backing track is a dead ringer for “Style” – Swift’s song widely believed to have been written about Styles himself (if the title wasn’t enough of a clue). He references knights in shining armour and a person “looking for someone to write your breakup songs about”. Harry Styles gets top marks for sheer audacity with this blatant riff on a classic song by his ex-girlfriend, Taylor Swift. Malik’s vocal performance here is particularly impressive, but each member gives the track their all. Yet after five virtually non-stop years, it was clear that even these energetic young lads were beginning to run out of steam.Ī defiant song that has 1D paying proper tribute to all the great boybands who came before them. They won more than 200 awards, including seven Brits, four MTV Music Awards, seven AMAs and six Billboard Music Awards. They have sold 200 million records worldwide, and as recently as 2019, achieved 3.6 billion streams across Spotify, YouTube and other platforms.

Over the course of five studio albums, “the boys” made music history on multiple occasions, smashing industry records previously set by The Beatles and achieving that rarest of feats: breaking America. While their potential for success was noted by many at the time, no one could have predicted the phenomenon they would become. After initially auditioning as solo artists, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne became One Direction. Ten years ago, five aspiring singers were grouped together by Simon Cowell to compete as a boyband on the then-popular reality show, The X-Factor.

One direction history my life