One Direction’s Week in Review: 11/21
The band is on a break, but the boys aren’t.
One Direction last performed together on a Sunday night, Dec. 13th, 2015, on the season finale of the British iteration of “The X Factor.” They sang a single from their fifth album, accepted accolades from Simon Cowell and others, and then vanished into the night to begin a hiatus with no end-date. Between them, in the months since they last took the stage, they have officially announced very little — two solo record deals, the birth of a child, the founding of a golf management company. But each week they are out in the world, doing things, going places. This is what we know.
On Tuesday, Liam Payne invited fans to enter a contest to win a studio visit and lunch date with him, for charity. On Thursday, he was the only member of One Direction to tweet after the band won an Aria, the Australian music award, for best international artist.
On Friday, he was feeling himself. On Sunday, he went shopping at Sainsbury’s in London, got papped, and tweeted (bragged?) about it.
On Wednesday, Niall Horan got a new guitar. On Thursday, he angled for a last-minute Thanksgiving invite. On Saturday, he performed at I Heart Radio’s Jingle Ball North in Toronto. (“I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got for you right now,” he said after performing “This Town.” “I literally came to Canada for three and a half minutes.”) On Sunday, he watched golf.
On Friday, Louis Tomlinson went to a sandwich takeaway shop called Rita’s Pantry in Sheffield, England. An employee called Emma posted a selfie with Tomlinson on her Facebook. “Did he tip ya,” a friend asked in the comments. “No the tight get ha x,” she responded.
On Friday, Harry Styles got coffee in LA. He wore a yellow blouse over a white tee, black skinny jeans, his signature Chelsea boots, and a slight mustache. Or maybe it was chocolate milk. Anyway: He’s alive.
There’s also this: fans found a video that a woman called Dara Cohen had posted of Styles on Nov. 2. In the video, he looks tired, maybe drunk. There are people chatting in the background. It’s a party, maybe a bar. “Hi, Scott. Heard you’re going through some stuff, I’m sorry to hear about that. Stay #ScottStrong.”
Scott is Scott Selig, a real estate developer in Atlanta; #ScottStrong is the hashtag his friends and family are using to support him after he was diagnosed with cancer. Other friends have had other celebrities make videos, too — Shaq, Mario Lopez. Styles’s video is not particularly moving or interesting or inspirational. But people’s best friends don’t know what to say when they get cancer — “Heard you’re going through some stuff, sorry to hear about that” is probably about as good as a message from a stranger popstar can be. Did he feel good about himself after making this video? I don’t think he did.
Notable Adjacent News
Gemma Styles, sister of Harry Styles, sang “History,” One Direction’s last single before the hiatus, at karaoke.
Robbie Williams revealed who Harry Styles has been writing with — and it’s not him. “Last year I tried to work with Bruno Mars — didn’t hear anything back. Tried to work with Max Martin — didn’t hear anything back. They literally didn’t return my calls,” Williams told Radio Times Magazine. “Then I met Harry Styles in an airport. ‘Oh, you’re writing, Harry? Great, who with?’ He goes, ‘Well, I just spent a week with Bruno Mars, and I’m about to spend a week with Max Martin.’”
Sugarscape, the British gossip site that has been a premiere source of One Direction journalism and jokes since 2011, announced that they are shuttering at the end of the year. “This might seem like the end but, y’know, One Direction lost The X Factor and they did alright,” they closed the message to readers.
