About This Album
One Direction, an English-Irish pop boy band, formed in London in 2010 after each member initially auditioned as a solo artist for the British singing competition show *The X Factor*. The original members—Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson—were grouped together to form the band, a concept that both guest judge Nicole Scherzinger and long-time judge Simon Cowell claimed to have conceived. Unseen footage from *The X Factor* in 2022 later confirmed Scherzinger's significant role in the band's formation, with Horan being chosen first, followed by Styles, Tomlinson, Payne, and Malik. Harry Styles himself came up with the band's name, One Direction, which is often abbreviated to 1D. After finishing third in the seventh series of *The X Factor* in 2010, Simon Cowell signed One Direction to a reported £2 million record deal with Syco Records, and the band subsequently signed with Columbia Records in North America.
