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Over the weekend, the exclusive first interview with One Direction following the departure of founding member Zayn Malik was published in UK tabloid The Sun. The now-quartet— comprising Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Liam Payne—briefly discussed their sadness since learning of Malik's decision to leave, before returning to the subject that's been at the forefront of nearly every one of their interviews, awards acceptance speeches and tweets since they formed five years ago: the fans.
"We're looking forward to seeing all our fans on the tour this year," Horan said, while Tomlinson praised them for their loyalty and "for being so incredible during this time," and Styles went for the gratitude angle—"A huge thank you to them for everything they've done for us."
Even a casual observer of One Direction knows how powerful their fanbase is, but when you pay close attention, you begin to feel like the band's appreciation is as much about gratitude as it is self-protection.
The band's success is rarely credited to their talent as singers and confidence as songwriters, or their charisma and genuine likability. Instead, they're routinely labelled "lucky", a marker that implies a kind of musical Imposter Syndrome because they were in the right place at the right time, they appeared when Simon Cowell needed a new group to spackle together and sell to teenagers, and their fans took to social media in droves and wouldn't rest until they were the biggest band in the world.
That last part is undoubtedly true. But even when the band broke every imaginable record and sold out the world's largest arenas and stadiums multiple times over, their fans' hunger for information, access and affection only grew. They, after all, were the reason these unknown boys with cherubic faces and dirty mouths were suddenly neck-deep in money, fame and attention.
Which makes it all the harder for those fans, who have grown so accustomed to gratitude and acknowledgement, to learn of Malik's departure and receive no context or explanation.
A week after announcing that he was leaving his bandmates, Malik went on holiday with his family, including his parents, sisters and fiancée Perrie Edwards. Photos of the couple were shared on Instagram by Malik's older sister Doniya. The comments section was instantly seized upon by expectant fans demanding answers from Zayn (and his family) for his departure and the subsequent announcement that he would continue making music solo.
"We pay your bills!" some cried in the comments, "He said he was leaving the band to be a normal 22-year-old, but now he's going solo! This is not what normal 22-year-olds do!", and, "He lied to us!"
A week earlier the same fans were declaring that they'd support Zayn "no matter what". They were sad to see him leave, but supportive of his decision to put his own needs and feelings first. When producer Naughty Boy leaked a demo he recorded with Zayn—presumably intended for inclusion on One Direction's 2014 album Four—the same support turned nasty, with fans threatening to withdraw their support and "end his career", because this path—working with a collaborator who is not connected to the band, and who acts like kind of a dick to 1D fans on Twitter—is in opposition to what they collectively want for him. They're acutely aware of the power they wield, due in large part to the constant credit they're given for Malik's and the band's success, and they know how to use it.
One Direction's mythology centers on the phenomenon of how their fans engage on social media—in their 2013 film This Is Us, Cowell described how their determined, obsessive tweeting and support made it impossible for anyone to ignore or forget about the band—and, because of this, an expectation of information and access has seeped into the fandom, often at the expense of the members themselves.
After the announcement of Zayn's stress leave, which came just days before news hit of him leaving the band for good, BBC Radio 1 stalwart Scott Mills told his colleague Phil Williams he "wasn't particularly surprised" about the departure. "They're the only band we've not been able to interview inside the [BBC] building, because it's too much of a security risk for people outside … Being in this band is not like being in any other band. You can't leave your hotel room, you can't sleep at night because there are people screaming outside your hotel room. You can't go to the cinema, you can't go to the shops because if you try to do that, then the whole town or city will go on lockdown."
You've seen the pictures and videos of these scenes; hundreds of thousands of fans swarming the streets of Rome to welcome the band, girls clinging to the backs of speeding motorcycles in Mexico just to catch a glimpse of the boys, who are shielded away behind the dark windows of SUVs. But this kind of attention is harmless compared more direct interactions. A 2012 paparazzi video shows Liam and his then-girlfriend Danielle Peazer walking through Manhattan. A fan-run "update account"—where admins tweet all sightings and information on the boys' whereabouts—tipped fans off, and suddenly the couple is descended upon. They try to keep their heads down and continue walking, until Danielle is hit with a shoe someone threw at her from the swarm. Moments later, amid desperate screams of, "We do so much for you!" Liam relents and lets them take pictures with him, forcing a smile like the one that's been looped over 15 million times on Vine. He tells the girls by way of explanation, "This is my only day off", but it doesn't matter: They do so much for him by ensuring his continued success, and he is obligated to meet their demands. By the end of the video, he hurries away with his girlfriend and their security detail and the fans are left behind, crying and congratulating one another, so thrilled to have been so close to him for just a moment.
"[With the Beatles] you had the mania and you had people turning up at the airports and recording studios and radio and TV stations," Mills said, "but what you didn't have was that constant insight into people's lives through social media. Some people say it's too intrusive, but you have to be on it if you're a modern band. And One Direction's fanbase pretty much grew through social media."
"We had the advantage of Twitter and YouTube and I think that goes to show how powerful the Internet is nowadays," Malik mused in the 2014 documentary Fan Armies on BBC Radio 1 Stories. "Literally, people shouldn't know who we are [in America] at all, and we've got a little bit of a following because of the Internet."
One Direction is both the guinea pig and the end goal for labels hoping to promote their band or artist on social media, only instead of their interaction with fans being a gimmick or a short-lived campaign, it was the catalyst for their existence. There were no rules or boundaries in place for them, because it wasn't until they stepped onto that "X Factor" stage that anything at this scale had been seen before. Comparing One Direction to bands in the past is as reductive as comparing the Kardashians' hold on reality television to the first season of "The Real World"; nothing is comparable because we're watching these empires expand in real-time. There's no reference for it, and as such any restrictions need to be implemented retroactively. You can't tell where the lines are until they're crossed.
Last month Molly Beauchemin wrote about the control musicians have over their social media platforms, paying special attention to the Instagrammed lives of women in rock. "Social media is playing an increasingly central role in determining how musicians like these are portrayed in popular culture," Beauchemin said.
"If there's like a currency in social media, like a kind of money that people spend, that money is recognition," psychotherapist Aaron Baylick explained in Fan Armies. "With Twitter … if you put something out there and you get a mention back or a retweet, you feel recognised, like there's something good enough about you and this other person has recognised it. And that actually does feel like, in a sense, the creation of a relationship."
But what began, in One Direction's case, as an organic relationship that connected a band to their fans has become distorted along the way when that same connection became a way to monetize a product. One Direction fans will be all-too familiar with the premise of a "follow-spree". This is when a member announces that they're online and will follow a select group of fans, but there's often a catch:
#ONEDIRECTIONBRIT thank you if you’re tweeting this :-) x
— zaynmalik1D (@zaynmalik) February 25, 2015CAN YOU DO A FOLLOW SPREE FOR FANS WHO ARE VOTING FOR YOU? <<< this was a DM and the answer is yes ..
— zaynmalik1D (@zaynmalik) February 25, 2015The fans also show, time and time again, that they're more savvy and self-aware than a label's marketing arm might assume.
can u believe zayn malik faked a follow spree and won his band a brit
— sadika (@malikmecool) February 25, 2015"Since we’ve legitimized Instagram as a medium that purports to show 'reality'—or some semblance of it—the community’s reaction to these images comes with a degree of entitlement," Beauchemin wrote. The promise of access, and the assurance that the person you see on stage or in magazines is a person who might pay you the same attention on their personal social media account, is dangled in front of the fans like a carrot, but it's snatched away before they can really get a taste.
To promote the release of Four last November, One Direction were interviewed in a Google Hangout that was live-streamed to their fans around the world. Being online at the same time as their heroes were being interviewed was as close as the fans got, though; interviewer Ben Winston read a series of pre-prepared questions and chatted with the band for half an hour, offering no opportunities for interaction from the million plus fans watching around the world. The fans are told to expect proximity and access for showing their allegiance, but the promise ring never quite makes it onto their finger.