Harry Styles Was Relieved One Direction ‘Didn’t Fail’
Harry Styles felt like it was “a relief” that One Direction was successful, late reflecting on his time with the boy band. Here’s what we know about the Grammy Award-winning musician.
Harry Styles joined One Direction after ‘X Factor’
Before he released solo music, Styles auditioned on The X Factor. He was added to One Direction, which recorded and released music for several years. That is, until Zayn Malik officially left the boy band on March 25, 2015, due to “stress.”
One Direction continued to release music as a four-piece group. That includes Made In the A.M., with original tracks “Drag Me Down,” “Perfect,” and “I Want to Write You a Song.”
It wasn’t until January 2016 that the group went on an extended hiatus, meaning a reunion is still a possibility. In the meantime, Styles released his self-titled album, earning his first Grammy Award for “Watermelon Sugar” in the Best Pop Solo Performance.
Harry Styles thought it was a ‘relief’ that One Direction was successful
In 2023, the artist took home the biggest Grammy Award of the night, Album of the Year, for Harry’s House. Months prior, he reflected on his time with the successful boy band.
“We’d go through real highs in the band and stuff, and it would always just feel like a relief,” Styles said during an interview with Rolling Stone. “Like, ‘Oh, we didn’t fail. That feels like a massive relief.’ I never really felt like I celebrated anything. And I had a great time. Like, truly.”
With One Direction’s popularity came world tours. This artist explained it was difficult to find a work-life balance, especially because he was a teenager at the time.
“You miss so many birthdays and stuff like that. And then eventually, it’s just assumed that you’re unable to be at stuff,” Styles said, according to the same article. “And I think that was one of the things where I was like, ‘Oh, I want to take a second to invest some more time into balancing my life out a little bit.’”
“This working is not everything about who I am, it’s something I do,” he added. “And I don’t want to be defined as a person necessarily by what I do all the time. I want to be able to put that down.”
The One Direction members supported Harry Styles’ latest Grammy win
Of course, most of the One Direction members have since branched out to release original music. Some of the songwriters even shared their support for one another. That’s true of Niall Horan and Liam Payne, who both congratulated Styles on his Album of the Year win.
“Harry,” Payne captioned one Instagram post, “you deserve every millisecond of that moment looking down smiling at the trophy you’ve earned. God bless you brother congratulations.”
During his Saturday Night Live monologue, Styles joked that he couldn’t remember the names of the other One Direction members, saying, “They’re my brothers. Niall [Horan], Liam [Payne], Louis [Tomlinson], and, uh — Ringo! Yeah, that’s it.”
