Zayn Malik announced this Saturday that he made the decision to postpone his tour due to the loss of Liam Payne, his former One Direction bandmate, who died on October 16 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Through a publication on his Instagram account, the “Pillow Talk” singer reported that his tour in the United States as part of the “Stairway to the Sky” tour will be postponed to January and assured that the tickets will be valid for the new ones. dates. .
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Zayn was the first to leave the pop band in 2015, however, he had not toured to promote the four albums he released as a solo artist.
With “Stairway to the Sky”, the Briton will mark his return to the stage and was scheduled to begin on October 23 in San Francisco, United States, to end on December 3 in Newcastle, England.
The internet’s first boy band, Liam Payne and Zayn Malik, shared the stage for five years, but before One Direction became a band, its members auditioned for the UK’s “The X Factor” separately.
The judges decided to put them both, along with Harry Styles, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson in a band that quickly became a local hit and finished third in the 2010 competition.
Rolling Stone contributing editor Rob Sheffield called this an “unprecedented” way for a boy band to get started.
“They were assigned to be together. And you don’t expect longevity from that situation. Honestly, you don’t even expect a good pop record to come out of that situation,” he says. And yet, not only did it work, One Direction essentially created “a new format for pop stardom.”
The show allowed fans to follow her from day 1 of her career before her official release in 2011 with “What Makes You Beautiful.” Fledgling fans could use rising social media platforms like Twitter and Tumblr to find a community, draw attention to the group, and, in the early days, talk directly to members.
One Direction and its fansThe millennial and Gen Z audience practically grew up with One Direction, but the band was truly omnipresent. That, says Maura Johnston, a freelance music writer and adjunct instructor at Boston College, is at least partially attributable to arriving in a very different media environment than today.
“I was much more focused,” he says of the early 2010s. “Algorithmic classification of things hadn’t been very successful. So, there was a broader, mass approach. … They were one of the last throes of that mass phenomenon, which anyone of any age, even if they were not a fan, had to pay attention.”
But it takes more than omnipresence to cultivate a loyal fan base. And there were countless reasons why listeners were drawn to One Direction.
“It was five very different musical personalities, along with five very different personalities,” Sheffield says. They also broke the rules associated with traditional boy bands.
Liam Payne’s place in the band and his legacy Payne was a “broody” older brother type in One Direction, says Johnston. He also co-wrote many songs, especially in the later years of his career, such as Fleetwood Mac’s “What A Feeling” and “Fireproof.”
”He was the fundamental force of the band,” says Johnston.
In an Instagram tribute, Tomlinson called Payne “the most vital part of One Direction.”
“His experience since he was little, his perfect ear, his stage presence, his gift for writing. The list goes on. Thank you for molding us Liam,” he wrote.