Did you ever argue with your friends about who would be which Spice Girl when you were kids? Or how about over which Friends character you were most like? We’ve all had a weird fascination with how our individual identities within a group dynamic at one point or another. If there’s anything that pop culture has taught us, it’s that there has to be a funny one and a bossy one. A Posh and a Sporty. So, what’s sometimes harder than filling these personas that we, and the people we surround ourselves by, assign ourselves, is getting your head around not having a role to fill at all.
That’s how Louis Tomlinson felt for the majority of his time in One Direction. In an interview with The Observer, he referred to himself as ‘the kid at the back’, ‘the kid wearing espadrilles, stood in’t back’ and ‘forgettable, to a certain degree’. It’ s heart-breaking and admittedly a borderline unbelievable thing to hear from one-fifth of the world’s most obsessively adored boy band. But if we’re brutally honest with ourselves about what we knew about each of the 1D guys at the height of their success, the spotlight always seemed to fall elsewhere and our attention usually followed.
‘The others have always been… Like Niall, for example. He’s the most lovely guy in the world. Happy-go-lucky Irish, no sense of arrogance. And he’s fearless.’, Louis explained. ‘Zayn, back in the day. He could relate to me on a nerves level. In the first year we were both the least confident. But Zayn has a fantastic voice and for him it was always about owning that. Liam always had a good stage presence, same as Harry, they’ve both got that ownership. Harry comes across very cool. Liam’s all about getting the crowd going, doing a bit of dancing…’
‘And then there’s me’, he added.
It’s hard not to feel like you’re the one people are interested in. It’s even more difficult when you struggle to pinpoint what it is you’re contributing to your friendship group. We all want to feel of value. We all want to feel part of the thing, in on the action. But I speak from experience when I say that it's worrying about things like this that then lead you to the really shitty feeling of not being important, of feeling like you need to be a certain way to fit where you already fit and trying to rationalise why your friends even want you around in the first place. But is it really that important to have a 'role'? Is it really all that crucial to fit a pre-determined persona for the sake of being identifiable among your friends?
Louis was 17, going on 18 when he joined the band. It’s the age when we feel like we finally have the freedom to work out who we are - try fun things, experiment with stupid things and inadvertently start to grow into our non-adolescent identities. But that certainly doesn’t depend on having a ‘thing’. As much as we're all influenced by the people we're surrounded by, our personalities don't have to be determined by whatever complimentary characteristic is missing from the table.
Granted, the circumstance was definitely very different for Louis. He was strategically chosen by Simon Cowell (after auditioning for the X Factor three times, btw) to fill a specific position in a pop group destined for world domination. And there's no doubt that Simon had fully intended for Harry to be the heartthrob, Zayn the voice, Liam the front man and Niall the boy next door. But, without adhering to that cliche 'celebrities just want to live normal lives' thing too much, I think it's totally fair to say that in being part of the construct, Louis was pushed into a position that effectively left him unable to forge a public identity of his own beyond being the boy in the espadrilles. 'I [...] just started driving, didn’t need fake ID any more, going to house parties. That’s the time. That’s the age. And to a certain degree… ‘Having it taken away’ is the wrong phrase. But there was a price to pay', Louis said.
Quite frankly, we’d all be kidding ourselves if we thought that where we fit in our friendship groups back then in any way reflect who we are now. But that's what's so great and exciting about not defining yourself by the characters we feel the need to play at various stages of our lives. I've been the baby of one group. I've been the bossy one of another. I've now landed in somewhere in the proximity of the sarcastically lolz, comically moody, ‘one more tequila’ person. I've also been the one on the edge, unsure of whether or not they actually belonged in the group, girl. We have the ability to change, grow and turn out however we want to, without necessarily having to be a character. And with a beautiful baby boy, a record label, a single with Bebe Rexha on the way and some of the most frighteningly loyal fans behind him, it clearly hasn't worked out too badly for the forgettable kid in the back wearing questionable footwear.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.