From launch to burnout in five years: One Direction's withdrawal was inevitable

One Direction … On The X Factor in 2010. Photograph: TalkbackThames/Rex Shutterstock

The writing had, as they say, been on the wall for One Direction. Quite possibly adorned with emojis and then posted to an obscure social network that nobody over the age of 15 can fathom, but on the wall nevertheless.

In November last year, an Instagram video emerged of Liam Payne meeting fans and posing for what looked to be like his 9,264,754th and 9,263,755th selfies. The rapid, mechanical way in which he worked his way down the line of fans, combined with the dead-eyed stare he relaxed into between each forced grin, told the whole story: here was a man who had long stopped enjoying this kind of fame.

Earlier that month, the Guardian had gone to interview the band, intrigued by stories of a group who – band in crisis cliche alert! – travelled even tiny distances in separate cars. The writer, Tom Lamont, found five young men who – despite the grinding schedule of world tours, awards shows and promo – furiously denied any hint of exhaustion. “It’s not a question of burnout,” insisted Payne. Four months later, Zayn Malik quit the band, saying he just wanted to “be a normal 22-year-old”.

But life could hardly be normal. One Direction were a group who formed in the public eye, as part of the 2010 series of The X Factor, in which they finished third – the oldest of them, Louis Tomlinson, was only 18. They found themselves catapulted to instant fame in the UK, which rapidly spread worldwide, and their success made them the darlings of the UK music industry – they won five Brit awards, four MTV video music awards, 11 MTV Europe music awards and 19 Teen Choice Awards. Their four albums and series of tours have made them rich – last year, Forbes named them the second-highest earning celebrities under 30 – and made others rich, too. They’re more a list of notable stats than a group – more than 50m record sales, 91 worldwide No 1s, more than 7.5m concert tickets sold.

Now One Direction seem to be calling it a day, even if their rumoured split has been reported as a “break” rather than “break up”. Should we be surprised? Five years is a decent stint for any boyband to remain at the very peak of commercial success – it’s roughly the same lifespan as Take That achieved, and though the likes of New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys lasted longer, their careers were bookended by slow rises and rapid falls. In fact, anyone who has seen the script laid down by countless other teen pop sensations will not be treating the news as a shock.

The Spice Girls and Take That had both lost a member by this stage of their lifespans. The 1D boys have already been on as many tours (five) as the Backstreet Boys and N-Sync had before serious cracks appeared, and put out at least as many albums (four) – or more than – all the aforementioned groups.

The truth is, a boyband can’t expect to last much longer than this. On a basic level, life in one can be unrelentingly tough. This statement might not go down especially well with anyone currently manning a cash-strapped NHS ward or riding out the daily lottery of a zero-hours Sports Direct contract, but it’s true. Payne and Malik, along with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan, have spent half a decade having all their financial, sexual and egotistical needs looked after several times over. But the work-rate required to keep a pop group’s wheels turning, and the global fanbase sated, should not be underestimated.

Scott Robinson of 5ive once recalled a life in which he rarely had time to eat, and would often use the 10-minute periods he spent in a make-up artist’s chair to catch up on his shut-eye: “I’d wake up looking like a pop star. But I promise you I didn’t look like a pop star before I sat in the chair,” he told the BBC.

The four members of Little Mix once told me of a schedule so packed that they had to book advance slots into their timetable just to be able to wash their hair. “If we do Daybreak we have to get up at, like, 2am. It’s ridiculous,” said Jesy Nelson. At the time, the girls were still in their early days, when even the most gruelling aspects can seem exciting, but anyone working under this kind of routine for a sustained period of time will inevitably start to go a little loopy, no matter what the rewards.

Life in a pop group is one in which you get little control, from the minute you’re formed. Kevin Yee from failed 90s boyband Youth Asylum recently told a Reddit AMA that he had to surrender virtually every aspect of his life to higher powers, from his hairstyles to his opinions. Scared that the teenage girls they were being marketed at might be put off if they found out Yee was gay, his management allegedly took him to a grocery store and taught him how to “walk ‘straight’, up and down the aisles”.

Such a life might have felt suffocating two decades ago, but nowadays there is the added glare of social media to contend with, in which every aspect of your behaviour will be analysed for potential “scandal”. Payne will know all about this from his selfie lapse. Likewise Malik, whose engagement to Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards was called off shortly after a relatively innocent Instagram photo emerged of him with his arm around the midriff of a blonde fan.

Malik has recently re-emerged, of course, having seemingly decided against the idea of living like a normal 22-year-old (maybe he listened to Noel Gallagher, who said: “Pfft! Who wants to be a normal 22-year-old?! They’re fucking shit-for-brains!”) and decided to sign a solo deal with RCA. On Twitter, he declared his desire to make #realmusic – a genre of music so authentic that it can only be described using a hashtag – which brings us to another reason why boybands rarely last forever. They long to be taken seriously as artists, which isn’t easy when you’re required to perform songs called things like Best Song Ever, Kiss You and Summer Love for months on end.

Just ask Charlie Simpson, who, depending on your point of view, either courageously or foolishly turned his back on future pop star millions in Busted in order to devote himself to emo punk project Fightstar. “Every day at work, I was in a fucked-up situation,” he told the Guardian back in 2006. “I was in a music career, which was amazing, and I hated it because it wasn’t fulfilling me in any sense of the word. I kept thinking, imagine if this was a band I really liked, I’d be loving it. It was like torture.”

Signs that One Direction have been craving credibility are certainly there. A recent X Factor performance saw them performing Where the Broken Hearts Go with the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood on guitar. Niall Horan has declared himself a massive fan of the Who – which must have made it all the more galling when Roger Daltrey blasted the group, saying: “Here we are with the world in the state it is in, and we’ve got One Direction.” Malik, meanwhile, has been hanging out with Malay, producer of Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, and there have been hints too of a possible hook-up with Odd Future’s Tyler the Creator.

The notion of packing it all in to show the world your real talent might seem deluded, yet there’s enough evidence of it paying off: Robbie Williams, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé Knowles all turned boy band or girl group member fame into stratospheric solo success.

Whatever happens to 1D during their period “focussing on solo projects”, though, there’s no escaping the fact that this news was always inevitable. The clue is in the name: boyband. As the members develop chest hair and stubble and permanent hangovers they look increasingly awkward and out of place serving their original audience. They’re just not designed for the long haul. In effect, the writing was on the wall for One Direction from the very moment they formed One Direction.