Thank You for the Music - Fifteen Years of One Direction
Today is July 23rd, 2025. It is a normal Wednesday for some, but for others it is fifteen years of One Direction - the day since the X Factor formation. At the end of the day for me specifically, it is a bit of grief for a myriad of reasons, some more obvious than others.
I had to take a moment with myself today, in full honesty. Fifteen years of One Direction for me personally means fifteen years of being a fangirl at its core definition. Fifteen years since I’ve started a Twitter account, if we want to get really gritty about it. One Direction had been so much of my formative years and beyond - for years it was a bonding point between myself and so many others, a source of talks at sleepovers, online, the list continues. I will always be grateful for every memory I have about this band - I relish being a teenage girl giggling at the “Girl Talk” board game. If anyone has one for sale, I expect to hear about it on any of our inboxes. I relish watching the music videos, the fandom being better detectives than federal agents (I know most millenials/gen-z folks in those departments are former directioners. Some of these people were scary about it). I will always especially love the birthday gift I received in the form of Midnight Memories - fellow sag sun! I wish I could be a a tween and watch the video diaries for the first time. Be a teenager and enjoy the Adventurous Adventures Of One Direction for the first time again, and watch the music videos in the school computer rooms again. It was just a different time - in ways a lot worse, but in a good few ways so, so, so, wonderful.
This also means about ten years since the band was a band, but it means ten years of genuinely phenomenal solo works in their own rights from Louis, Niall, Zayn, Harry, and Liam before his passing. I will never be okay with missing Love on Tour, but c’est la vie, even if I wish to forget about it!
The years we as a musical community, as fangirls, as everyone had with One Direction will forever be special to me, and I am forever grateful I got to experience it all in any capacity, but especially at its fullest. I saw something today about the group that said “You can travel back to the past, but nobody will be there.” but I know that the other fans will be. Sometimes "In places we’ve never been, for reasons we don’t understand”.
Admittedly, ABBA felt most appropriate here, in true theatre kid form, but also - the edits, yes. I truthfully would be nowhere near the human being I am today without being exposed to the X Factor and One Direction and the fandom and its members as a whole. I don’t think this outlet would exist, and I would certainly not be nearly as much of a dreamer as I am today.
Forever and always, One Direction - Thank you for the music, for giving it to me.
But an even bigger thank you to the folks who made up the community then, and the ones who do now, and everyone between. Fangirls* run the world, and I’ll say it until my dying breath.
CT.