FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

One Direction, Babes, if You’re Going to Break up with Us, Please Just Get It Over With

Let’s not let this drag on. Let’s not let this be the “Ross and Rachel” of pop music.
Emma Garland
London, GB

Illustration by Chris (Simpsons artist) via Facebook.

This article was originally published on Noisey UK.

According to extremely reputable UK tabloid newspaper The Sun, One Direction are maybe possibly potentially splitting up in the near future. The news comes five months after Zayn Malik left the band to live life as a “normal 22-year-old” which many took to mean settling down with his fiancee Perrie Edwards of Little Mix only they broke up shortly afterwards (pretty shady TBH, Perrie. Now that he spends his time sitting at home file sharing with Soundcloud producers like every other budding R&B star the relationship has lost its charm? I see you). Anyway, what follows is a plea to the remaining members of One Direction to make their fucking minds up.

Advertisement

Dear One Direction,

We’ve been in this together for five years. Zayn leaving was the equivalent of someone in a long-term relationship announcing all of a sudden that they’re actually really into pegging—you can either accept that and roll with it, or it’s all over. I accepted it, I bought a durable strap-on. And now you throw this in my face.

You have said that you want to part company for a year to focus on solo projects, but that’s bullshit. That’s like breaking up with your high school sweetheart because you want to spend your gap year having guilt-free sex with people whose purpose in life is to drop acid and do fire poi in Koh Phangan, before coming back and attending the same university together, reunited after all this time as if nothing has changed. Only it’s worse than that because you’re not even leaving straight away. You want to stay together for the next seven months, eating across from us in restaurants, singing us to sleep, each of us fully aware that you’re leaving soon and potentially never coming back. “It’s definitely not a split,” a 1D source told The Sun, “They fully intend to get back together at some time in the future.”

IS IT, ONE DIRECTION? IS THAT HOW IT IS?

You know who would stand for that? Mugs. Fucking mugs. Do you think we’re all a bunch of mugs, teen idol sensations Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan? Is that what you take us for?

Advertisement

As things currently stand, it looks like your tour will end in Sheffield on Halloween. If you’ve been waiting for a sign from the universe about whether or not you should give up the ghost of your band, then the fact that your final tour date happens to take place in one of the saddest towns in Britain on the one day in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead is probably it.

Breakups are messy, I know. Someone says some cutting shit like “I’m leaving to make REAL MUSIC.” There are tears shed, hashtags invented, Tumblr entries posted (eighteen pages long, front and back), I get it. But sometimes you just need to rip off the band-aid, not peel it back and fiddle with it for nine months while you line-up your next fling.

So stop jerking us around, reaching across the table and tucking our hair behind our ears and telling us it’s all going to be OK, and pretending you’re all about “us” while really thinking about other things. Let’s not let this drag on. Let’s not let this become the “Ross and Rachel” of pop music. Let’s give this an ending we all deserve: release your Fifth album as a four, and fuck off.

Or take it all back and stay forever (m。_。)

Follow Emma on Twitter.