The Whiz Palace

getting there on wednesday, i consulted with a work friend (one of the only ones i’m friends with on facebook, etc.) about how to get to new jersey before i left. this kind of spread beyond her and to everyone else around about best strategies for getting to metlife. everyone had an opinion. i only let on that i was going to a concert, but i’m sure everyone at work just googled it after. like the other coworker i ran into on my confused walk to penn station who googled who was playing metlife while i was standing there and then proceeded to explain that he hates one direction because they dominate the twitter trending topics AND then brought it up covertly at work the next day. smh.

so, i had ridiculous nerves about transportation for no reason. it was fine. i listened to the tracks from midnight memories that i knew were on the setlist and forced myself to let them grow on me. (i like a lot of the album, but it sounds like all the bits and pieces of FOUR, scattered around before they were assembled and fused into a perfect album the next go-round.) yeah, so i cried a little bit on the train because this was the day. THE day. 

when i transferred at secaucus and saw the HORDES of young girls headed for the special train to the stadium, i immediately was overwhelmed with emotions. there were girls that were no doubt the coolest girls in their school, with dip dyes and septum rings. there were girls dressed like cheerleaders and girls in crop tops. girls in feminist t-shirts. girls who were the “future mrs. niall horan.” girls who looked nervous to even be alive. younger girls holding their moms’ hands, overwhelmed the crowd. and everything was abuzz and alive. there were even several clumps of adult women like me, taking it all in. 

oddly, this was the beginning of the most i have ever felt completely enmeshed in modern femininity. as much as it is packaged, bottled, commodified, and sold to us through advertisements and thinkpieces and magazines... this was it for me. the irony that it was all in the name of four young men, but you know what? it was also a celebration of the fandom and the community. the unbridled communal joy was on full display throughout the night. i watched girls take photos for other girls, help them find their seats, wait patiently for the train to unload. i didn’t witness a single nasty moment.

i boarded the train and sat next to another woman who around my age and alone. she had tattoos and a nose ring and strappy gold sandals. she was cool. i was cool too. i cried for the second time that evening.

metlife stadium the train to metlife slowly circles the stadium for 10 to 15 minutes until it arrives at the gates. the girls kept their eyes glued on the monster nfl mecca the entire time, snapping pictures in anticipation. cars were lined up for miles with painted windows declaring how long they’d driven to the show or which minivan moms had the hots for harry styles. bag check was uneventful. i remained patient. i had plenty of time. but my phone battery was somehow already under 50% due to constant nervous map application usage and fervent anticipatory tweets.

i entered the stadium at the special gate for floor ticket owners, among my privileged sisters. four friends of mine had made it to the stadium a bit earlier in the evening and i attempted to meet up with them, but the stadium security gods made it basically impossible. i then went in search of an electrical outlet to revive my phone, but every one in every possible tiny hallway i found was claimed and guarded by a different pack of teen girls, charging, tweeting (i’m honestly not sure if that’s the cool social media for them or if they were using snapchat or something) and prepping for the show.

at this point, i realized my phone battery situation was dire. i turned it off. i was going to face the next couple of hours completely with the eyes on my head and not a pal in sight. i settled into my seat that, while on the floor, was over 50 yards (?? idk football) from the stage. every time a stagehand or tech wandered onto the stage, i realized that i would not really be able to see the boys very much at all. on the bight side(?), my seatmate was a customized honda civic “signed” by one direction. i helped a lot of girls take pictures in front of it and watched security guards yell at teens for leaning on its guard rails for most of the time leading up to the show. a mom with two younger girls sitting near me recognized me as another adult and kept tossing casual smiles my way. she teased a young man who had me take his photo with the car in a very fratty pose with a beer in one hand and the other pointed at angle toward the sky, where he gazed off. she was unprepared for my emotional immaturity to come.

icona pop i wandered for a bit and contemplated buying a hot dog or a margarita once i’d realized i had COMPLETELY forgotten to eat lunch at work that day. but i couldn’t bring myself to spend $15 on a frozen drink. why? because i had already decided that i was going to buy catwalk tickets for the show near boston, massachussets. i needed them. i was desperate. how many more tours would 1d really be doing? (my friends told me to wait until the weekend before making this purchase. i agreed. it was a mistake. they sold out this week. i’m going to have to buy them at gouged resale prices.) i had no more tolerance for frivolous-- well, except for the $40 tour t-shirt i waited over half an hour to buy. i found my zen in that crowd of clamoring moms with coors lights trying to get their nervous baby girls up to the front before the shirts sold out in their size. my phone was off. i didn’t need to see icona pop. i heard their set start. i waited. i bought the shirt.

i returned to my seat to see most of icona pop’s set. they were actually very cute and fun. they clearly love each other and it was the greatest strength of their set. they had a lot of fun kind of bouncing and bopping and slipping in every reference to 1d possible in order to get the crowd on their side. one of them looked uncannily like angela from boy meets world (but with, you know, an alienesque pop star makeover) and the other looked like perrie edwards crossed with vitamin c. their whole shtick felt a bit dated, like they would have had a hit song in an early disney channel original movie. they definitely felt more akin to m2m or b*witched than anything going on in pop right now, but it somehow worked. with only a powered-down phone, a chapstick, and my keys in my purse, i had no choice but to be completely engulfed in their performance.

anticipation but of course the boys would not be performing while the sun was still up. instead, we would be treated to a hodge-podge of ads and music videos, several featuring 5 seconds of summer. and the girls lost. they. damn. minds. every time the spray painted 5sos logo would show up, the stadium was completely racked with screams. i didn’t realize the crossover audience was quite so huge, but i suppose it makes sense since the two bands have toured the u.s. together previously. (the one direction perfume ad received a similar response, but the little mix and hey violet videos did not. nor did the honda commercials, shockingly.)

i’m pretty sure the boys went on late. everything seemed all prepped and ready to go for 8:30, but the 1d-vocal-featuring safety video didn’t roll until much closer to 8:50. screams. i power my phone back on. the intro video. screams. fireworks. screams. the opening soaring high note of clouds-- we’re in the game, now, baby. (screams.)

the boys and the show here’s where this journaling becomes a lot less chronological. i would love to go through song by song (a setlist i had memorized, based on the playlist i’d constructed and listened to on repeat for the entire week prior) and tell you each remarkable moment and every time i grasped at my chest as harry writhed and twisted and performed some sort of humble genuflection to his adoring fans. or every time i doubled over as liam slayed another improvised vocal run. but my brain was running on dopamine overload. i didn’t know whether to look at the 1 boy at a time featured on the screen or squint at the tiny, hyper-lit stick figures wobbling so far in the distance on the stage. i can tell you i spent way too much time taking garbage quality videos on my iphone that i definitely missed a lot of fun parts. i can also tell you i will treasure those videos for a long time.

here’s the general arc of the concert: they spend the first three songs spread out across the stage and i’m too overwhelmed to pay attention. then they do a little banter, as liam readily establishes himself as the group’s de facto leader. finally, they move down the catwalk and perform several songs on the small stage at the end of it. between an infinite sea of hand-written signs, i can see the boys’ faces and motions and expressions near-perfectly and am now elated. they eventually move back to the main stage, but continue to play with the catwalk for the rest of the show, particularly harry. 

the set slows down for “don’t forget where you belong.” thousands of pairs of hands in the audience hold up computer paper printed signs that say “thank you for staying” in the one direction logo font. i am a puddle of tears. it’s an obvious understatement to say 1d teen’s fanbase allows themselves to be emotionally vulnerable. but it was an entirely new and nuanced level to see the mass acknowledgment that their emotions do ride on those of the one direction and that the boys don’t HAVE to be there making them happy. that they have chosen to stay. i wonder if this recognition was spurred by the loss of zayn (certainly it was, at the least, enhanced) or if it has been present all along. or if it’s simply the result of an aging and maturing fanbase. “thank you for staying.” i wish i could better describe why it felt so poignant.

there is this beautiful symbiotic relationship between the boys and the fans. they owe everything to one another and they openly feel and acknowledge it. it’s all love and praise. and they aren’t aging into some sort of bad boy phase. if “girl almighty” (liam’s favorite song to perform live, as he informs us) is any indication of the future, the band intends to continue to worship the females that have made their careers possible (as evidenced by both the loyalty of the young women in the crowd and the close-knit relationship each member publicly has with his mother.) they’ll take less of a page from the sexist disparagement of the rolling stones’ book and look instead to the syrupy love songs that kept the yacht rockers afloat in the late seventies.

1d packs a one-two punch her by transitioning from “don’t forget where you belong” to “little things.” it’s practically a hymn for the fans in the stadium; their most sacred song. it’s perfectly pretty and quintessential saccharine boy band gushiness; one of the sole remnants of their more cherubic years on the setlist. im standing there, singing through tears and just as engulfed in the swaying of the stadium as the harmonies. by the time “night changes” comes along, im literally heaving sobs. the night changes era was during an early peak in my obsession and dangerously close to zayn’s exit. when zayn quit, every 1d become about him in my mind, but perhaps night changes most of all. 1d lets us linger in our sadness for those few songs and whips back into adolescent swaggering pop rock quick enough to make us forget we ever felt so deeply. and my mental cogency disappears once again. the rest of the concert is a blur, but i am severely aware of the fact that my obvious crying has officially alienated the friendly mom i’d joked with pre-show and likely also many of the teens around me.

at one point, one of the boys asks everyone to turn to the person next to them, hug them, and tell them you love them. i give a half-hearted hug to the older teen girl next to me and ask her where her friends are (they’d visited her earlier in the night) and she points to the edge of the catwalk and expresses how lucky they are. i tell her that my friends are in the nosebleed seats and point in their direction. i just needed someone to know that i do have friends. and they were there. even though i actively chose to sit alone and dance like a maniac (and/or harry styles.) at another point, harry leads the boys and the crowd in a round of “happy birthday” for a girl in the front row who is turning 25. harry asks if anyone else in the audience is 25 and i scream raucously. there can’t have been another one around me for a good 15 person radius, at least.

everything else kind of whizzes by until the encore. when niall river dances to act my age, it is his most interesting contribution of the night. it’s cute. i’ll admit it’s cute. then i’m in a pile of emotions again for you & i. that IS. ZAYN’S. SONG. it is. i roll my eyes that little white lies is even on the setlist (then proceed to have it stuck in my head for the next three days) and scream and punch dance along to best song ever, like i always have and always will (since my pre-stan days.)

but right now i want to break down each individual member’s impression on me over the course of the night and, you know, ~what they mean to me~ or whatever.

zayn it would be insincere for me to pretend zayn’s ghost didn’t spend much of the night haunting me. there were occasionally surprising stretches where i wouldn’t think of him for 10 or 15 minutes, but then one of his huge solo notes would go unattempted by the rest of the group and break my heart. according to the hasty notes i took in my phone, this happened during steal my girl, kiss you, and don’t forget where you belong. but niall was surprisingly capable picking up some of zayn’s solo verses here and there (though not as silkily beautiful, of course.)

if we rewind a bit, i was absolutely crushed and devastated when zayn left the band. i was already going through a hard time in my personal life during march of 2015 (bad improv, unstable work environment, health issues, a series of mini family crises) so much of my joy had begun to become derived from the band. zayn’s departure resulted in the immediate purchase of a plane ticket home for the weekend. it was overly-dramatic, but it was genuine. and it will always be a dark mark for me. it drew a line in the sand. i was living in post-zayn fandom and i would never get to experience 1d as the angel-faced teen boys who want to cheer up faceless teenage girls having a hard time at school. that was solidly over and i could only ever live in the ot4 era from this point forward. these are complicated feelings i haven’t quite sorted through, apparently. but i know the unhealthiest part of my fandom is the desire to go back in time and live in the earlier era of the band.

i worry about zayn a lot. he’s cut everyone from the past few years of his life out. i genuinely believe his exit from the band was being planned, but he was forced out early after his unannounced departure from the asian leg of the our. i don’t think it’s been easy for any of them, but i don’t think zayn really has anyone to lean on anymore and he’s probably going to get taken advantage of. at least “i won’t mind” is an amazing track. ~sigh~ his foray into r&b didn’t quite fit with what the band was doing, but i do think the decision to not include anything he’d written on four was probably a last straw for him. i hope he finds success with r&b, but i genuinely think he’s going to be ravaged by solo fame if the public keeps their interest.

but, as many of the reviews i linked above pointed out, the band is apparently stronger than ever without him; if not as a whole, then as individuals. throughout the night, each proves his worth and growth and value.

niall lord, i want to care about niall. i really do. his irish dancing to act my age was cute. his long-winded intro to “don’t forget where you belong” about writing with mcfly was... an attempt. i do admire that he’s picked up the guitar over the past few years to counterbalance his relatively weak voice. i also admire that he has improved his voice considerably since zayn’s departure (but if you listen to recordings of him on z’s solos back-to-back with performances by their former owner, well...) 

it does bother me that, as one of the weaker vocalists of the group, that niall doesn’t step it up as an entertainer. perhaps the guitar hinders him. but he doesn’t really engage in any crowd-pleasing or goofy faces or dances or hats with the other boys. of course, he’s a human being and he doesn’t have to act any certain way if he doesn’t feel like it. i was just always under the impression that niall was the fun one and a fan favorite before i became involved. maybe i was mistaken.

louis can’t pretend i did NOT care for louis when i first became interested in one direction. and, in a move surprising no one who knows me, i have somehow become completely defensive and protective over him in the time since. louis has had attitude problems in the past for sure, but i’m now completely convinced it’s a defense mechanism (probably true for most people!). louis’ work ethic (songwriting, record label work) and commitment to charity completely turned me around on him. he’s not my fav of all favs, but he seems aware of his own strengths and weaknesses within the band and has worked to carve out his own niche. plus, the songs he’s written for himself recently have suited his voice much better!

unfortunately, this was not a great show for louis. he didn’t seem happy and he messed up his lyrics in fireproof. he did come out in an adidas jumper, something he’d joked about in an interview the previous day and i appreciated. but maybe he just wasn’t feeling well. maybe he was uncomfortable after having to confirm his baby news on gma the previous morning. i thought he handled a lot of his verses ably, but he was largely reticent and failed to participate in much crowd interaction. (thankfully, he seemed to be in much better spirits at their next tour date in baltimore!) i’d love to see them again when louis is having a better day and goofing around with liam.

liam now, i had secretly taken a shine to liam when their first album broke in the united states and my younger tween cousin was obsessed with the band. i liked his hair and i liked his voice and that was about that. in fact, recognizing that some of the boys were cute is what made me reject any further interest, given the creepy age gap i didn’t need another nick jonas on my hands! once 1d re-entered my radar, it was thanks to the charm and personality of harry. liam was not a part of my new focus. and he certainly hasn’t been central to any media focus, including reviews of this show!!!

and they were wrong and i was wrong. liam payne is a star and a hero. his cool calmness commands attention from the moment he clears his throat, but he is putty in the hands of the crowd. who’s going to read the thirsty sign you’re waving relentlessly? liam. who’s going to wear the stupid hat you threw on stage? liam. who’s going to excruciatingly attempt the whip dance? you better believe it’s liam. he’s a classic people pleaser, attempting to keep the fans, his bandmates, interviewers, and even zayn in good spirits. he’s certainly not as goofy or dreamy as harry when he’s working the stage, but liam is quietly steering the ship. throughout the night, liam makes sure the backing band is included in the fun and gets some camera time. he also helps feed niall anecdotes to present to the crowd and checks in on a sulky louis.

this would be plenty of heavy lifting for one band member, of course, but it’s not enough for liam. nope! liam loves singing more than any person i can think of. he’s constantly pushing his voice to be stretch beyond its current limits, embellishing notes, singing one-off lines of other people’s songs during downtimes; not to mention quietly putting in songwriting credits all over the records and on other projects. for the encore, liam re-enters the stage in a plaid button down and a black hat, looking like he’s wearing the leftovers of several of his bandmates. and one could pull it off more endearingly. liam payne will do anything to make sure that one direction stay in tact and is always pushing to be better. it is everything to him.

harry what is there to say about the boy wonder that hasn’t been said already? harry styles moves like a panther. the catwalk is his and his alone. he’ll jog backwards, drum on the air, spray the crowd with water, and maybe carelessly reveal his hip bone tattoos as he tousles his own hair. he is a young and vital sexual phenom. he’s trying hard, but you don’t care because you can tell it’s the very essence of who he is. somehow the cherubic little boy who openly cried on tv and admitted he would probably always care what other people thought of him has transitioned into a bona fide rock star. his adult persona is new and fresh and none of the charm has been lost, though it’s become obscured by an aura of mystery and mane of loose curls. he became a disney prince like we always imagined, but one much more along the lines of tarzan than charming. harry is irresistible to the entertainment industry. sometimes someone is just a star, plain and simple.

whereas liam is putty in the palms of screaming fangirls, the fangirls are firmly in the hands of harry styles, who quite literally silences them and then commands them to scream, with the gravitas of moses parting the red sea, (only the sneakiest sliver of a smile invading his solemn demeanor.) the world is harry’s if he wants it. a lazier rock star would rest on these laurels and enjoy the unfettered praise of his onstage antics. and it certainly has my focus as harry essentially air humps a mic stand during the verses of “little black dress” at the end of the catwalk.

but harry styles apparently doesn’t plan to let us down. while always among the stronger half of vocalists in the group, harry wasn’t particularly lauded for this talent. he fit into the formula where his lower, slightly-gravelly voice would contribute a bridge for contrast before zayn would inject a shower of smooth high notes and vocal runs for a final chorus, while liam led the song and picked up any slack or harmonies on the verses. i can’t say i was expect harry to become the slayer of high notes on the band’s latest single “drag me down” but there he is. wailing, laser-focused and slam dunking all across the final chorus.

harry brought me to me 1d with his progressive quips that would come across my tumblr dashboard in cute gif set form and his idolization of stevie nicks, joni mitchell, and karen carpenter. he was speaking my language. his strangeness amongst the pop landscape doesn’t stand in contrast to his beauty; it’s what feeds it. i am forever grateful to harry styles for getting me here and allowing me to crack the more seemingly-traditional shells surrounding the other boys and experience their value, as well.

leaving metlife i bolted from my seat during the final notes of best song ever, afraid of being trampled by the exiting crowd. but the reality was more of a mournful march. we did NOT want it to be over. i waited outside the metal detectors for my friends to come meet me so we could make the trip home together. i shed silent tears staring at the stadium, completely aware that he only thing i had been looking forward to for nine entire months was gone. it took them a lot of time to get down from the top, and when i finally saw my friends, i burst into tears and hugged them. i was briefly inconsolable. while i’m generally pretty open about my feelings, this was a bit of an unusual experience for me. i think it was the result of having no one to share the show with. whatever. it happened. it took forever to get home and was largely uneventful, as i took the opportunity to verbally diarrhea about 1d and the show while i had the chance. i put on my tour shirt when i got home and cried myself to sleep. i’m not gonna make excuses. i was acting dumb. i’m allowed to act dumb.

adult fandom being an adult fan of a band that was created and shaped for children comes with a bit of a stigma. it’s great that i don’t care if other people have an issue with it. but it does make me curious as to why this is the case. why do we reject things marketed or targeted toward children? i’m not sure i really have an answer for this. 

i know that i always become drawn toward these type of things when i’m having a difficult time coping with adult situations. for one direction, it was my trouble fitting in and getting a grasp on new york city, but the pattern isn’t new for me. i became briefly obsessed with the care bears at age 13 when my cat died. i got heavily into the disney channel (and, of course, the jonas brothers) when i had anxiety about leaving home for college. to feel young again is great. to understand things as simple can feel profound. and i have no intention of ever depriving myself of these feelings.

but with one direction, i have noticed a ripple among several groups of my friends. we hear about them enough from one or two friends, stick a toe in, then dive into the deep end overnight. now, my fragile psyche has perhaps taken the obsession to the furthest limits out of most of the people i know. but the group does have some sort of appeal when given the chance that is perhaps more universal than one would guess. 

for one thing, it’s an easy and welcoming fandom to plug into. unlike many other adult fandoms, no one is going to try to test your knowledge of 1d (the way someone might subtly do with star wars, doctor who, the mlb, stand-up comedy, etc.) there is a much larger focus on sharing of photos, videos, interviews etc. we want to inundate you. want you to love the boys as much as we do. we want you to have a favorite and engage in light-hearted arguments about who’s the best (and perhaps the further breakdown into fandoms for the individual members does something to diffuse the pressure.) and it’s easy! just spend an afternoon watching all of the music videos, follow a couple of good fan update accounts on twitter, and maybe borrow your friend’s copy of “one direction: this is us” and you’re in! welcome!

it doesn’t hurt that the band’s music is markedly improving and becoming something unique. don’t get me wrong; “take me home” is a perfect bubblegum pop album and anyone who doesn’t have a soft spot for that kind of stuff is an alien to me. but maybe you already have taylor swift or beyonce or someone more acceptably popular for adults to take on as their pop ~guilty pleasure~ in your repertoire. then you might be impressed by the obvious influences of the police, fleetwood mac, the rolling stones, bryan adams, and the other arena rockers of bygone eras. i suppose they aren’t for everyone, but i’d posit that they could be, as evidenced by the scattered of parents in the crowd who non-begrudgingly bopped along to their songs of choice.

the future after picking up on the classic rock vibes when FOUR was released, i got really excited for the band’s future. i came up with my own dream for them and hoped they would all pick up instruments and become a legitimate rock outfit. after all, their trajectory hasn’t been so different from the beatles or the beach boys, who started off singing goopy love songs to legions of female fans. i was convinced a shift toward instruments would be their only shot at legitimization in the eyes of the music world and ultimately prevent them from the curse of every boy band we’ve seen shatter before our eyes. this, of course, was ignoring boy bands like the jonas brothers and 5sos who have never had the respect of the mainstream.

but after seeing them live, i realize that it would be a CRIME to stick harry styles behind a musical instrument. while i’m sure he could pull it off, no other front man right now performs quite the way he does and i would hate to lose that. so would we let harry have the center mic and put everyone else behind instruments? that doesn’t feel quite right either. it would throw the dynamic of the band into chaos.

while i’m sure there’s a rock instrument configuration that could work for the group if they want it, it’s a silly thing to expect. we don’t expect solo pop acts to get serious and play instruments and do all of their own songwriting -- why is there this expectation for groups? i suppose it’s due to the historic thirst for individual members to make an impact as a solo artist. each man currently in the band receives significant attention and support from fans, especially due to the rise of social media. and they have, as a group, found a way to shift their music into the kind of stuff they’re more interested in listening to and performing. unfortunately, this was not the case for zayn, which is why his departure becomes less surprising the longer you look at it. and while i’d be over the moon if he ever decided to return, the current group is seemingly on the same page style-wise, for the time being.

i believe the most likely thing to destroy one direction will be exhaustion. one or more of them will likely become sick of the constant paparazzi attention and ruthless tour and recording schedule and expectation of young fans. which is why i hope they take a well-deserved break soon, even if i fear that they may decide not to return from it. which is why i’m ravenous for catwalk tickets to see them in boston next month. i want to gorge myself on this fandom while it’s still here.