IF YOU HAVE been on the internet, turned on Sky News or seen a newspaper today you will know that the sky may be about to fall in.
Or that One Direction may be taking a break for a year from next March. Same thing.
But, if you’re of a certain vintage, you’re probably a little lost as to why this is news.
Put on this tune and let us explain:
First things first: who are One Direction?
One Direction are Louis Tomlinson, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Mullingar’s own Niall Horan. Zayn Malik left the band in March, and it’s still a raw subject.
They are a boy band formed on the UK X-Factor in 2010 after they each auditioned individually and Simon Cowell saw money and threw them together.
They finished third in the competition, losing out to Matt Cardle. Remember Matt Cardle? No, of course you don’t.
*Break time to allow readers google Matt Cardle*
Shortly after losing the final, One Direction signed a £2 million deal with Simon Cowell’s Syco Records, double what Cardle received, so they were already doing pretty well.
And they’re popular, right?
In August of the following year, they released their first single What Makes You Beautiful and from there, basically conquered the world.
Their first album became the first by a boyband to sell 500,000 digital copies and they became the first British band to enter the Billboard charts at number 1 with their debut album.
Worldwide, their four albums have sold nearly 20 million copies, a documentary about them grossed $68 million in the US, they’ve sold out Wembley Stadium, Croke Park and this summer played in front of tens of thousands in America’s biggest stadiums.
They’ve won 198 awards, but never a Grammy.
So, yes, they’re popular.
But they’re breaking up? Why?
Yes, no and maybe.
The boys are about to unleash their fifth album (but not before playing Dublin’s 3Arena in October) and The Sun says that they’re going to go their separate ways after it’s released. A report in Billboard says that the band has no such plans.
The report says that the band plans not to tour the album and will take a year-long hiatus to work on solo projects.
But there’s no bad blood and they plan to get back together some time in the future.
Presumably when they realise that boyband members going solo is, generally speaking, a terrible idea.
Unless you’re Abs from 5ive, in which case it freed you up to create your magnum opus:
And how are the fans taking it?
In two words: not well.
The Sun’s showbiz editor Dan Wootton dropped the story last night, claiming it as a world exclusive.
He then hopefully retreated from Twitter for a while because One Direction’s fans are…passionate.
Some of these tweets contain bad language:
So, what’s next?
If you’re a fan of the band, you wait with bated breath to hear official word from the OneD camp.
If not, you get on with your life.
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