I only understood that I wasn’t a teenager anymore when stars who were younger than me started to be churned out. I remember particularly feeling my age when the boyband One Direction shot to stardom.
The thing is that I had already experienced the golden age of the boyband through Take That, the Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, Boyzone, and Westlife, and chosen my favourite band member in each one, so these children brought together by The X Factor confused me. They all looked so young and clean; I just couldn’t relate.
What did become relatable, though, was the predictable trajectory One Direction took. After a few years of dizzying stardom and salacious The Sun stories involving the usual mix of women, drugs, and alcohol, one of the band members decided to throw in the towel and let the others pick up the pieces.
The band took a hit, as all bands do when a member leaves, and they all embarked on solo careers to varying degrees of success. Of course, the latter part is where things have gotten traditionally hairy. How do you go from being someone the word worships to an attention-seeking has-been who people are no longer interested in and who has to hustle extremely hard to shift records and not get dropped by their label? Can you imagine what that does to the ego? To the person’s identity?
When former One Direction band member Liam Payne met his untimely demise a couple of weeks ago ago, even though I wasn’t a fan and didn’t follow his work, I was sad for his family and friends.
However, I was even more upset at people’s callousness. This man has a son who will one day Google his father and find page upon page of awful things written about him both before and after his death. And for what? It’s bad enough that people openly seem to need to tear people down to feel better about themselves.
But when someone who is struggling dies, I find it truly despicable that so many seem to be waiting in the shadows for their pound of flesh. I will never forget the picture of Amy Winehouse crying and hugging herself at her last show while the crowd booed. We may not publicly stone people anymore in the West, but we definitely found new ways to destroy others from the inside out.
As much as I loved my boybands, I’m glad that manufactured pop is not so popular anymore. Too many young people were chewed up, spat out, and made to feel lost and worthless. As flawed as Liam Payne allegedly was, he deserved better. Perhaps it was Robbie Williams, who is not unfamiliar with the pitfalls of fame and screwing up royally in the public eye, who said it best when he said: “Even famous strangers need your compassion.”