Tonight the mass of girls before me in the arena, swarming like insects, raises a question of economy. They’d fight any battle for their seigneurs. These girls build galaxies out of whole cloth. A third confesses she’d kill a cat, no, a goat, in order to meet the boys. Another girl says that if the boys asked her to chop off her arm, she would. The documentary film Crazy About One Direction records one fan admitting she got braces put on her teeth not because she needed them but because Niall had braces. They are honestly mad for love or whatever chemistry the band is brewing in their bodies. They are unembarrassed by their extreme passions. But I also love the hormonal girls who fill the ranks of 1D’s fans, Directioners. I love girls, my three girls in particular. One world tour ends in the States as the next starts up in Australia and every night that they perform, no matter the continent, a temporary city of girls appears. talent-show losers and squashed them into a boy band, 1D has become a massive weather system traveling the globe, chasing summer nights. In the five years since Simon Cowell plucked five teenagers from a slush pile of U.K. The boyfriends stayed away, as did 1D’s gay fans despite the lush homoeroticism of Harry, Zayn, Liam, Niall, and Louis strutting onstage in tight jeans. There are no boys at 1D shows except the boys. Most of these men are fathers checking sports scores on their devices, ignoring their daughter’s hysterical antics. A generous tally would have a hundred males in attendance. That’s 70,000 people in the New England Patriots’ home arena. One Direction has sold out Gillette Stadium. Tonight it’s late August all over the world. Though tonight Styles seems slightly off. The girls’ response is tidal, shrieking solid as a brick wall. He’ll lift the mic to damp, open lips, sharpen his blue steel, and bore a message of love into the sea of screaming fans. The heavy breathing and tossed, greased hair. Still, the Jumbotron tightens its focus as he prepares for another moment of intensity. But even from the missteps to the highlights to the nonsensical, every 1D moment is essential to their myth-making.Harry Styles has a cold or a hangover or a broken heart. To celebrate their tenth anniversary, I’ve ranked every single song in One Direction’s catalog, which is one of the most consistent discographies in recent pop memory, and included an MVP for each track to recognize the standout member or moment on that particular cut. Their sound wasn’t about legitimizing themselves in order to be really taken seriously as artists, because the millions of young women who made them megastars were already doing that. That’s because the regard One Direction held for their audience was higher than that. There was never a sense of elitism from One Direction - even when their music moved toward electric guitars, it didn’t feel like it was to win over the people who wouldn’t think to look to a boy band for some of the last decade’s best rock music. Often described as an “edgier” boy band, they evolved from standard pop fare to interpolating the signifiers of classic rock, but excelled at both. Not that One Direction even needed that mythos to enhance their music - the songs were already excellent. Every post, picture, interview and gesture was dissected and analyzed along with the music, building a deep lore that’s just as essential as the songs. As the first big boy band of the social media age, they were accessible in a way those kinds of stars had never been before. The rest is history - and by history I mean their every movement from that moment on was chronicled by a fandom of dedicated Directioners. But instead of going home and trying again next year, they were morphed into a different mold - why not put these cute, flippy-haired boys together? After their shaky auditions of varying degrees of nervousness, it seemed evident that Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan wouldn’t end up being the Justin Bieber clones Simon Cowell was looking for when he put every cute, flippy-haired boy through to the next round. Ten years ago, five young lads were cut from a singing competition.
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