One Direction was one of the last boy bands from the age of mass-audience linear television and one of the first of the social media era.
That helped propel them to a level of fame comparable to Beatlemania, but with the constant scrutiny of a world of smartphones and streaming. The band members, still in their teens, had to cope with the fame, then navigate the aftermath of its split while trying to build solo careers - challenges that have received renewed attention in the wake of band member Liam Payne's death on Wednesday.
One Direction was put together by music mogul Simon Cowell after the teens auditioned separately for TV talent show "The X-Factor" in 2010. They didn't win, instead coming third in a final watched by 17 million people in the U.K., a quarter of the population. But they were signed by Cowell and had the first of several No. 1 hits with the now-pop classic "What Makes You Beautiful" in 2012.
British radio host Kevin Hughes called them "one of the biggest selling U.K. bands since The Beatles, a huge global export and one of the biggest selling pop acts of the 21st century."
One Direction's appeal rested partly on the members' cheerful, cheeky ordinariness. The late filmmaker Morgan Spurlock said when he directed a documentary about One Direction in 2013 that "part of the reason they've been so incredibly successful with their fans is that they are so incredibly grounded and normal."
