One Direction

One Direction is a British-Irish boyband formed in London in 2010 during the British talent show “The X Factor”. The lineup of the collective includes: Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan. Previously, the boyband also included Zayn Malik, who left the group officially on March 25, 2015. After appearing on The X Factor show, they signed with Simon Cowell’s record company Syco Music. In North America, they were signed to the Columbia Records label.

The boys were grouped together at the bootcamp stage of the X Factor 2010 song contest at the initiative of guest judge Nicole Scherzinger. As a result, they took third place on the project, after Rebecca Förgusson and the winner Matt Cardley. The band is most popular in France, the United Kingdom, Sweden and the United States.

The band’s first album was released on November 21, 2011. Immediately, it became a colossal success and reached number three on iTunes on the first day. The band’s first single was What Makes You Beautiful, which was released on September 11, 2011. The music video for this single was released much earlier, on August 14. Within a month and a half, it gained over 9 million views on youtube. Sales of the disk with the single for the first week amounted to more than 153 thousand copies. During the month of sales the number of sold copies totaled more than 88 thousand.