Music

Here’s Everything We Know About The Extremely Chaotic One Direction Reunion

Zayn's out... or is he?

by Joseph Earp  22 April 2020

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Ten years ago, the world was a very different place. Barack Obama was the leader of the free world. Angus & Julia Stone’s ‘Big Jet Plane’ topped the Hottest 100 (somehow.) And five scrappy young talents joined forces and became One Direction.

Nobody could have predicted the sheer cultural domination of the boy band back then. After all, there had been only moderately successful groups formed out of shows like X Factor before — the future wasn’t necessarily guaranteed for the group.

But One Direction were different from those who had gone before them. They were kinder; smarter. Their songs were more emotionally complex and sincere. Rather than the flashiness of an NSYNC, One Direction went for something much humbler, and as a result, that much more effective. Within a few years, they were running the game.

Of course, that didn’t last forever. The band grew apart, with Zayn Malik leaving in 2015, and the remaining four members went on hiatus a year later.

But this year, in honour of the group’s decade as a band, it looks like a reunion is on the horizon. Details are scattered and forever changing — but there are some things we know. Here are the essentials.

Some Kind of One Direction Reunion Is Almost Certainly Happening…

A reunion has been in the air for weeks now, ever since it was reported that members of the band had all refollowed Zayn Malik on social media. Leaving aside how funny it is that they ever unfollowed him in the first place, that was taken to be a pretty direct sign that something was afoot.

Shortly thereafter, we got explicit confirmation that some kind of reunion was to go ahead when Liam Payne let the information slip on Instagram Live during a Q and A session with DJ Alesso.

“I did speak to Niall again on FaceTime today,” Payne said.

“He’s in London as well. Most of us are in London. We’ve been trying to arrange the first group FaceTime at the moment.”

That’s not a whole lot to go on yet, but it’s certainly a pretty definite start.

…But Without Zayn

There is some bad news for Malik fans, however — in the same chat, Payne invited Alesso to join the FaceTime group to “fill-in” for Zayn, implying he’s not part of the talks.

That shouldn’t be super surprising. Malik outright left the group, after all, and he’s complained a lot about his time in the band ever since, speaking out against the level of corporate control and basically being something of a sulk.

It Might Be A Little Chaotic

So far, all the band have attempted to do is get together for a few informal chats. But even that is proving difficult. Yesterday, on Instagram Live, Niall and Liam had a chat and a laugh together. Louis was meant to be involved too, but according to the pair, they had simply failed to get ahold of him — as far as they knew, he was off “drinking and smoking.”

If this is how messy that reunion attempts are going to be during an age where we are literally trapped in our homes, then prepare for the actual thing to be all over the place.