Breaking It DownWhy Did One Direction Really Split? Here’s The Real Reason The Band Broke Up

The boys wanted to start their solo careers

At the time, sources told Us Weekly that the reason One Direction had split was because they were “exhausted and wanted solo careers.” Insiders also told E! News, “They are taking a hiatus so they can work on individual projects for a while.”

As fans know, the guys have all been pretty busy doing their own things since they decided to take a break. Niall released two solo albums called Flicker and Heartbreak Weather. Harry starred in the movie Dunkirk, dropped two of his own LPs and completed a world tour. Louis welcomed a son, Freddie, and released his debut album, Walls, in January 2020. Liam also became a father and has been hard at work on his solo music, and Zayn dropped two epic albums over the years!

They were exhausted

Since they accomplished so much during their time as a band, it’s no surprise that they must have been pretty tired. The guys were constantly working, and their grueling schedules eventually became too much for them.

Niall later explained, “It was incredible. But we got tired. Not tired of it, just tired out. I can never really remember any major bust-ups, just brotherly family nagging, s**tty arguments like that. But we were gonna end up killing each other. We all sat down one day, had a chat and it was like, ‘We need to take a break, chill out and try something new.'”

Liam also opened up about the breakup in April 2020. He said, “We all just got on with it, you know, it was just a case of this is your job and this is what you do and then you just slowly spiraled into this thing. I mean, more than anything for us, I think the danger zone is in the band. And actually what probably caused the demise of it, towards the end, was just the tiredness more than anything. Everyone makes stupid decisions when they’re tired.”

Liam said his time in the band was “toxic”

“When you’re doing hundreds and hundreds of [concerts] and it’s the same 22 songs at the same time every single day, even if you’re not happy, you’ve got to go out there,” Liam told Mens Health Magazine in July 2019. “It’s almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage and underneath the Disney costume I was pissed quite a lot of the time because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on. I mean, it was fun. We had an absolute blast but there were certain parts of it where it just got a little bit toxic.”

The “Strip That Down” crooner also admitted that he “went off the rails” during his time in the band.

“I was drinking too much and getting into really bad, bad situations for quite some time actually. And I hit a peak moment where I knew the drinking was going to get me. I needed to do something about it,” he said to GQ Magazine. “I spent a lot of time drinking to escape the crazy world that I had created for myself. I didn’t know what I was doing. That first therapy session and being like, ‘I don’t even know what I like or anything about myself,’ it was pretty scary stuff. I was afraid of how far my career was going and that it might go even further. You can say, ‘Who is afraid of success?’ But that’s what it entails sometimes. Success has got the better of me on more than one occasion. When I am losing I tend to concentrate more.”

And when they started their hiatus, it was a total shock to him.

“Everything changed — new teams, new managers, new labels. Building those working relationships can be tricky,” he admitted. “You also become the boss of your own s**t, and I was 21, 22 when I first started doing my own thing, so it’s all a bit scary and can be a bit lonely.”

Liam recalled thinking, “[One Direction was] a lot of fun, but what do I do now that’s done? What actually happens at this point? Who do I call? Who is the ‘point of’ person?”

“I just didn’t really know what was going to happen — a very strange thing to be involved in. All of it is weird, but that was a real strange moment. But things pick up and slowly you start getting back into the groove again,” the 1D heartthrob added. “I kind of always knew that something would happen. I just didn’t know what the h**l it was going to be. And that was the scariest part of it. You just didn’t really want to make a fool of yourself at that point. I think after such a long legacy of your band being absolutely amazing, the most important thing was make sure you don’t step off that pedestal — don’t embarrass yourself. The biggest worry was don’t ruin the legacy.”

In another interview, Liam explained that during his time in the band, he faced a bunch of “erratic highs and lows,” which made things a “bit dark.”

“It was very touch and go at times. It was a point where every day, you didn’t know whether it was going to be the end. It was so touch and go, at every single show. I was slowly losing the plot,” he shared. “I was like: ‘I don’t really know how to deal with this.’ Once you start, you can’t really press the stop button.”

They needed some time to relax

Harry later told Entertainment Tonight that he was excited to finally have some time to himself and that he was going to spend a lot of the break traveling.

“We’ve been, of course, incredibly fortunate to travel a lot of the world, and I think one of the cool things about that is we haven’t necessarily spent a lot of time in each place,” he said. “You see places you want to go back to, and think, ‘I want to come back here for two weeks instead of two days and experience some more of it.’ So I’m sure there will be a bunch of traveling.”

Niall also tweeted that he was “looking forward to chilling for a while.”

They didn’t split because of a rivalry

But don’t worry, people, because the band definitely did not split because of any drama between the boys. How do we know? Well, when an article came out claiming that a “rivalry” between the members was the reason they decided to go on a hiatus, Louis quickly posted a screenshot to Twitter. He captioned it, “Biggest load of bulls**t I’ve seen in a while. Typical unprovoked venom from The Mirror. Couldn’t be further from the truth!”

Liam did reveal, however, that he and Louis didn’t get along during the beginning of their time in the band.

“When we were in the band — because [Louis] was the oldest and because I had been singing for quite a little bit of time, we both got put into a weird position because he wanted to be the leader and I was doing my thing and wanted to too,” he told Hits Radio in September 2018. “So at first we didn’t get on at all. We absolutely hated each other, it was so funny.”

He explained that although things were “really bad” between them, they were able to “hide it well” from the rest of the world.

“It was crazy. In the end we kind of just settled that we’d both do different parts,” Liam continued.

He also called Louis a diva! When the pop star was reminiscing about the band’s sense of style, he revealed that each member had their own look. And it sounds like Louis was a little possessive over his.

“We all had our own little thing. I was the lumberjack. I can’t remember what Zayn‘s thing was, but Louis’ was always stripes. Louis had a number of things actually, he was a proper diva about it, like, he had stripes [and] he had them suspender-type things or whatever they’re called,” he told Capital Breakfast. “So everybody had their little thing and so if you started going into someone else’s thing it was like fighting with your sister … I was just like, ‘Right, no stripes,’ and then I just never wore stripes.”

Louis wasn’t ready for the haitus

According to Louis, he definitely wasn’t ready for the band to take a break because he was “finally building up confidence in the band.” He told The Sun, “You’re asking guys who have grown up being best friends to make selfish decisions, which they should do, based on themselves. But it doesn’t change the fact that it was difficult for me to accept at first.”

But looking back, he doesn’t think it was the wrong decision.

“If you asked me now if I think it’s the wrong decision, I don’t think it was. I think the market and the fans and everyone had had so much of One Direction that regardless of any individual ventures, the market could do with a two, three — or however long break away from us,” he continued.

The “Back to You” crooner also told The Guardian, “In the last year of One Direction, I was probably the most confident I ever was. And then it was: ‘OK, hiatus!'”

“It was like a drug. It’s that feeling of heightened emotion and every day being manically busy, and the hysteria,” the singer also said. “We’d done such a lot of work in a short space of time so a break was inevitable. But I don’t think I was necessarily ready for how long. We had a band meeting and everyone just said, ‘Maybe we’ll put it on the back burner for a bit,’ and I felt a bit petulant about that at the time. It actually hit me like a ton of bricks.”
“It was good to be back doing normal things but I wasn’t ready for the band to go on a break and it came as a shock for me,” he explained to Far Out Magazine. “It definitely wasn’t my choice but I understand why the decision was made and there’s a good argument for that. I’m enjoying expressing myself now but it rocked me for a time and for a bit and I didn’t know what I was going to do.”
“It had kind of been brewing and we knew the conversation might be coming around but it was just one of those things. It was always going to happen, we were always gonna take a break, but I think there are always people who are going to take things better than others,” the 28-year-old added. “I’m not gonna lie it hit me hard but it definitely inspired me to get on with my own solo career because it wasn’t something I was always going to do. I was just going to write songs and just hopefully send them to other people and stuff like that but everything happens for a reason, so they say anyway.”

Niall wasn’t ready either

The breakup was also a shock for Niall. He later explained, “I think it was just a shock. We were so used to what we did that it had become normal. We were in a bubble. Then someone just went [pop], and before you know it, you’re sat at home.”
“[The lack of closure] is like the end of a bad relationship. We were asking ourselves, ‘Should we end at a good time – big tour, massive album, going out on a high… Or, should we just keep going?’ It’s when you stop, that’s when you go, ‘f**k’. And I needed a few minutes to be by myself,” he added.
So there you have it, folks. We cannot wait to see what they have up their sleeve for the upcoming anniversary!