We made it! Today marks ten whole years of One Direction.
Juuuust incase you didn’t know, One Direction were formed on July 23, 2010 on The X Factor. Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, and Zayn Malik had all originally auditioned as solo artists, but Simon Cowell thought the guys would have even greater potential as a group. So, One Direction was born, and they went on to create music that defined a generation.
I first discovered One Direction on an online forum in the fall of 2011. I wasn’t really into pop music, but I figured I’d give these guys a try. I saw their X Factor stuff and was like, “oh yeah, this is cool. Wouldn’t really consider myself a fan, but these guys have talent.” Right off the bat I was pretty fond of Liam, but I wasn’t planning on being obsessed with One Direction. Never in a billion years.
But honestly, did *anyone* actually plan on being obsessed with them?
Today, I wanted to go take a trip down memory lane and share a few of my favorite 1D moments with everyone!
The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction
Just COMPLETELY out of the blue, an animator named Mark Parsons dropped this gem called “The Adventurous Adventures of One Direction.” The 17 minute long cartoon featured tons of cheeky jokes that the fandom just ran with.
LIAM’S TWITCAMS
Long before Periscope, Twitcam was a thing. When One Direction were in the US for promotions, Liam did a whole lot of live streams from his hotel room! They were so PURE.
SYCAMORE POINT BEACH
That’s the beach where the “What Makes You Beautiful” music video was shot! For my 15th birthday, I begged my parents to take me to Malibu to this beach.
When we got there, I noticed the beach was so different than the beaches in San Diego. The sand felt thicker and harder to walk through, and it was just…. hmmm, I really can’t put my finger on it.
But anyways, I saw the sacred log! Since the beach is a part of a state park, you’re not allowed to take any plants (or pieces of the logs) and I’m also pretty sure writing on the log was technically not allowed either. But chill doesn’t exist when it comes to One Direction, right?
The Today Show (March 2012)
One Direction performed on The Today Show a ton of times, but their first appearance was to celebrate and promote the release of Up All Night. I was in 8th grade, and made sure to record the performance before I left for school. My first class of the day that day was video production, and we had some little side rooms in the classroom. I went straight into one of those rooms, turned on the tv, and watched the whole performance – with not a moment missed. My teacher didn’t even know what was up!
Up All Night Tour
I went to the Up All Night, Take Me Home and On The Road Again tours… but my favorite is always going to be UAN. ALWAYS. Little me was so whipped. My parents felt like I was too young to go to a show alone and that was my first concert in an arena, so they had tickets to go in with me too. We ate at Subway before getting to the arena and I remember being like ahh this place is so big WHAT.
There were people literally everywhere. Honestly, one of the really cool things about 1D concerts was the fact that even if it was all reserved seating, people would show up HOURS early to take in the atmosphere. There would be screaming every 5-10 minutes, there would be local artists trying to promote themselves and their EPs, you’d spend all the money you had saved up on merch, it was all such an innocent time.
Back then I was so proud of these pictures HAHAHHA. I wanted to do concert photography so badly, even if those words never exited my mouth (or even existed in my brain at the time) I knew yeah, someday it might just happen.
Another thing I loved so much about this tour was the fact the guys would take a little break and answer Twitter questions. As your date got close, you got to use a certain hashtag and tweet a question for the guys along with your seat numbers. If your question was chosen, it would appear on the big screen and the guys would call you out. Of course, my delusional self thought she stood a chance when it came to that… but it was still a very fun concept!
THIS
I’m not even going to bother explaining this. If you know, you know. If you don’t know, just watch!
Enjoy the day, fellow Directioners!
