One Direction is not getting back together, but the boy band noted for “What Makes You Beautiful” is celebrating their 10th anniversary in a big way.
The group will mark its decade together on July 23, the day when Simon Cowell put the five teens together on “The X-Factor,” with a brand new, interactive website, Rolling Stone reported. The band members -- Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne -- originally auditioned on the show as solo artists.
The 10 Years of One Direction website will be a “timeline” from their audition through 2016, when the group released the song “History” and announced they would begin their “hiatus,” the magazine reported.
In addition, the band will debut a “10-year celebration video especially made for their fans,” according to Simon Jones PR, the company that handles publicity for the group.
“The video will document highlights of the band’s career,” the firm said, “including clips from music videos, performances and candid behind-the-scenes video content. And, of course, the special relationship they have with their fans.”
New One Direction playlists will emerge across streaming platforms, along with updates on old ones, Rolling Stone reported. There will also be “reformatted EPs” containing B-sides, rarities, acoustic performances, live recordings and remixes, the magazine said.
The group’s debut album, “Up All Night,” was released in the United Kingdom and Ireland in November 2011, Billboard reported. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 when it was released in the U.S. in March 2011, selling 170,000 copies in its first week, the magazine reported.
One Direction released five albums and played 326 shows in theaters and stadiums during four world tours over a four-year span, Billboard reported.
Malik left the group in 2015, and the remaining four members released “Made in the A.M.” later that year before going on its hiatus, according to Rolling Stone.
Rumors about the 10-year anniversary have been circulating for months, E! Online reported. In an interview earlier this year, Payne hinted something big would mark the group’s anniversary.
“We’ve got a 10-year anniversary coming up so we’ve all been speaking together a lot over the last few weeks, which has been really nice,” Payne said. “To hear a lot of people’s voices and seeing old content and different things that we haven’t seen for a long time or never seen before, it’s very interesting.”
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