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One Direction splitting up? A Take That fan remembers what it was like

LONDON — At moments like this, I try not to think back to those dark, miserable days in my mid-teens. I try not to think about my mother, anxiety etched on her face as I became increasingly distraught and then, even more worryingly for her, despondent.

LONDON — At moments like this, I try not to think back to those dark, miserable days in my mid-teens. I try not to think about my mother, anxiety etched on her face as I became increasingly distraught and then, even more worryingly for her, despondent.

“There’s a helpline for this,” she said. “Just talk to someone, Bryony. It doesn’t have to be me.” But I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to eat, or go outside, or do anything other than sit on the sofa with only my misery for company. My heart had broken into a million pieces.

Take That had split up. I was 15 and I had never known pain like it.

To many, it will not mean much that Zayn Malik of One Direction has quit the band’s world tour and — rumour has it — the band itself. As the mother of a toddler who is old enough to know better, the fact that a boy band is imploding should not impinge on my daily routine.

But I cannot help feeling a pang of compassion for all those millions of teenage girls currently witnessing the beginning of the end of their favourite boy band. Though these girls may not realise it now, their grief and terror are not actually about the demise of a manufactured group who sing passably good pop songs. It is about the end of innocence itself.

The popularity of boy bands has long mystified earnest, pompous proper music fans who think the astonishing success of groups cooked up in a laboratory by some sinister Simon Cowell figure is a sign that they live in a culturally bankrupt society populated by philistines. These snobs completely miss the point of boy bands, whose roles are social, rather than musical. Although I still know the words to every Take That song by heart, this is not a sign that I actually liked them — more that I liked what they stood for.

While the “cool” girls at school claimed to like Nirvana and called Take That “lame”, I at least was not getting felt up round the back of the bike sheds like they were. This, I think, is the real purpose of the likes of One Direction, Westlife, Boyzone, Take That, The Osmonds, The Monkees … throughout time, all of these boy bands have acted as safe channels for the hysteria of teenage girls.

Those currently worrying about Zayn and One Direction should remember this: In 15 years’ time, when you are all grown-up and sneering at the next generation’s boy band du jour, One Direction will probably get back together. And all the cool girls will rather uncoolly pretend that they always loved them, and you will feel quietly smug and oddly grown-up for ever having liked them in the first place. And though you may now have children yourself, your heart will still do a little flip, because you never forget the magic of your first boy band. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

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