Harry Styles, What A Difference Five Years Makes: Love Mom

One Direction star Harry Styles is one of the biggest names in pop music. Styles has gone from being a young man with a dream to having the world at his feet in five short years. Five year ago Styles was a 16-year-old boy whose dreams had been dashed when he was booted from “boot-camp” on Simon Cowell’s reality TV show X-Factor. Styles along with his band-mates Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Liam Payne and Zayn Malik had been deemed surplus to requirements until a lack of talent in the band category offered them a life-line.

Cowell called Styles and the others back and offered them the opportunity to work together as a boy-band. Harry and the others grasped the opportunity and the phenomena that became One Direction was born. At this point, Harry and his pals did not even have a name for the group. One Direction went on to reach the final of the show and, despite placing third, Styles and his mates went on to become a global success story, X-Factors biggest success, and one of the biggest-selling bands in the world.

The story of Styles and One Direction’s success is well known and today millions of young fans around the world hang on their every word. When Zayn Malik quit the band there was an international outpour of grief perhaps even bigger than when the Beatles split decades before. Despite selling millions of albums, tours that have grossed hundreds of millions there is perhaps nothing that better illustrates the rise of One Direction better than a throwback post by Harry’s mom, Anne Twist.

Yahoo! Celebrity report that Harry’s Mom has posted a “throwback” on her Timehop account from five years ago. Styles Mom posted on her Facebook page begging her friends to follow Harry’s new Twitter account. Her post read “Follow my baby @harry_styles on twitter.” Twist posted the “throwback” this week with the caption “from when I felt the need to ask.” Cute.

https://instagram.com/p/70XlUHGtqN/

According to Her magazine Harry is now closing in on 26 million followers on Twitter and between them the members of One Direction have over 100 million followers.

I seems likely that Harry’s mom must sometimes pinch herself to ensure that she is awake and that Harry’s success hasn’t all been some incredible dream. No-one could have envisaged the kind of success that Harry and One Direction have enjoyed in less than five years.

Harry remains a fairly infrequent and enigmatic user of social media. Whilst Styles posts regularly after shows to thank fans his other posts often leave fans baffled. His latest says simply “Handbag branch.”

Handbag branch.

— Harry Styles. (@Harry_Styles) September 16, 2015

Well if you say so Harry, if you say so.

[Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images]