Who is popular today?

With only Harry Styles troubling the upper reaches of the singles chart, perhaps it’s time the 1D lads got the band back together
In recent weeks, all five members of boyband behemoth One Direction – now nearly four years into their “hiatus” – have released solo singles. Out of those five, only one has so far reached the UK Top 30, with Harry Styles’s Zayn-esque Lights Up entering at a not-too-disrespectful No 3. For everyone else, it looks like a rapid fall from grace: lovely Niall Horan’s Nice to Meet Ya entered at No 51; Liam Payne’s awkward trap-pop bop Stack It Up started at No 84; while Louis Tomlinson’s Kill My Mind failed to chart. As for Zayn, whose 27-track second album Icarus Falls flew in at No 77 last December, he is now relying on collaborations to keep his Spotify plays ticking over. So why has the post-1D bubble burst?
In many ways, the band represented the last true cross-generational, all-consuming pop culture moment. They were also a global phenomenon, who arrived when less quantifiable stats – such as huge YouTube viewing figures and Twitter followers the size of Peru (Niall Horan is currently the band’s most followed with 39.4 million followers) – started to infiltrate music. Continue reading...