I remember when they had announced the tour and the tour dates. I wasn’t expecting them to have a Minnesota date, but still was gutted when I didn’t see us on the list. “Well then, it looks like I’m going to have to go to college wherever they have a date!” I would tell people, with a slight bit of seriousness behind the joke. I ended up choosing ASU, without the Where We Are Tour (WWA) in mind, it just happened to be an added bonus.

If you are a bit confused to what I am talking about, I went to the One Direction concert the other night, and this was my experience.

It was a long wait, waiting for our tour date. A wait of nearly six months. I had bought the tickets, the 4th level, nose bleed, “broke college student specialty” for my roommate Kaity and I for her 18th birthday (which looking back at it was kind of a selfish birthday present since it was just as much as a present to me as to her) and we were set. One Direction: Where We Are Tour at the University of Phoenix Stadium, aka where the Super Bowl will be this year, for September 16th, 2014.

In past situations, I had always been the girl who needs to know everything about the concert before I see it: the set design, the setlist, even when the wardrobes changes are. Don’t ask me why, because I’m not entirely sure why I needed to know this myself. This concert was an exception though. I knew nothing of the setlist, the stage design or anything. All I knew was that it was a show you needed to experience, and it really was. Because I didn’t know anything about this tour, it wasn’t hard waiting for our date to come because to be honest, I would keep forgetting I was even going. However, about three weeks prior to our show, I was at Jobing.com arena, which is right across the street from the stadium, for Ed Sheeran’s show and ever since, I hadn’t been able to contain my excitement. How cute am I? an 18 year old freshman in college who has a tweenage side to her. 

Finally, September 16th had arrived. Below is a detailed description of how the next 24 hours had went for me.

I had woken up earlier than I had wanted to from excitement. I looked outside, as I do every morning, only to see that it was cloudy and rainy. While most people would be discouraged, I couldn’t help but enjoy the fact that we were actually having “weather” in Arizona. Anyway, I tugged along to my morning classes, having each minute feel like ten minutes and me not being to concentrate on anything other than what I was going to wear that evening. I made it through both of my classes, and received a text from my friend from Minnesota, Katherine. I had known that Katherine had flown down to AZ to go to the concert with her friend Madi, but we didn’t know how far away we were from each other therefore we didn’t know how likely it was to see each other. She had texted me where I was, and thinking I was funny, I replied with my exact location address. She put it in her maps and realized we were 4 minutes walking distance from each other. That being said, I grabbed my bag and sprinted out the door to meet (more like tackle) her at Starbucks. We had a short visit and parted our ways, planning on meeting up later that night at the concert. around 3:30 p.m. Kaity, Drew, Jasmyne and I were off to the stadium, in hope of beating traffic.

We arrived at the University of Phoenix stadium around 4 p.m. and the doors to the show opened at 5 p.m. While we were incredibly early, I was shocked to see how many girls and parents were already there and waiting in line. We decided against waiting in line and instead went out for sushi for dinner. While at the sushi restaurant, there was a dedicated dad sitting at the bar with his daughter with a homemade shirt that read “ 1D-ad!” which Drew and I had to compliment. It was also at this time that we all realized we were the oldest kids we had seen. Oldest by a good four years…. But hey, less of an age gap between us and One Direction then, right? After dinner, we finally went through security and into the stadium and my golly, it is huge. HUGE. Overwhelmingly large. Kaity had mentioned that the stadium has probably never had that many girls in it before. I agreed. 

Before we headed to our seats, we shoved our way into the merchandise stand to get the most “boyband-y” t-shirts we could find. We succeeded. Afterwards we went our separate ways and Kaity and I had found our seats. We like to call our little section the “Nosebleed VIP” where we had such a bad view that it was good. You see, we were so side stage that we were actually able to watch everything that happened backstage, but we will get more into that later… We once again noted that we were oldest girls in our section, but we did has another rockstar father in our section, sporting ear plugs and binoculars. While waiting for 5 Seconds of Summer (the opening act) and One Direction to go on, they played little music videos, movie trailers, and commercials and every single time the video included 5 Seconds of Summer or One Direction in them, they screamed. And when I say scream, I want you to imagine 70,000 young girl piercing screams. They screamed every. single. time. I kid you not, they played a 1D fragrance ad around six times and the girls got even more excited each time they played it. It can be overwhelming, I understand their emotions, but really, EVERY time?

Anyway, finally 5 Seconds of Summer came on, and they rocked the house! (I’m judging myself so much). But really, they’re are always fun to watch perform and bring lots of energy. The highlights from their set would definitely include their cover of  “What I Like About You” and a song they had made on the spot all about thanking One Direction, afterwards saying their next song “Good Girls” was about them. The real excitement had started after they went off and they were preparing for One Direction though. Kaity and I were casually sitting in our seats when I looked up and watch the golf carts whiz around backstage. One of the golf carts had stopped behind the stage and wheel a rack of mens clothing under the stage. That was when I had a feeling something exciting was about to happen.. Sure enough, another golf cart followed it and I see a familiar blonde haired figure and tall brown haired figure with a bandana in his hair. In shock I slap Kaity and exclaim “SHUT UP. KAITY THAT’S HARRY! THAT’S HARRY AND LOU” *Lou Teasdale is the infamous hair dresser for One Direction, with over 1 million followers on twitter.* Kaity and I don’t scream but instead shoot up and stare with our jaws on the ground. Harry must’ve notice someone nearly scream, otherwise saw Kaity’s and my starstruck faces and smirked and waved at us (definitely not our general area, it was solely to us) before going under the stage. More golf carts and followed Harry’s with the other boys on them, but sadly by the time they parked they were out of our field of vision.

Alas, it was time for the show to begin! It started off intense, and didn’t stop with the intensity and energy until after the show was over. There were lots of cannons, fireworks, strobe lights and streamers and confetti everywhere. In the first song they performed, Midnight Memories, Niall had replaced the “Same old shhhh but a different day” to “Same old shit but a different day” which made me proud and made lots of mothers cover their 8 year old daughters ears. After they performed their first few songs, Liam started off by welcoming us and mention that we were probably wondering why he had a cast on his arm. He then said “I would tell you what had happened but, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!” (They were in Las Vegas prior to our show for Niall’s 21 birthday) followed by Niall showing us the dance moves he used in Vegas. Yes, he embarrassingly white boy danced. Harry kissed Liam while they sang, Through the Dark. That made a lot of girls scream, including myself. Zayn Malik hit a lot of high notes which nearly made Kaity fall to her knees. Harry had asked a boy in the audience if he took that girl to their concert on a date to which he replied “No, it’s my sister” and Harry said back “Well then what a good brother you are.” Little did that boy know, but he was the was the luckiest guy in the stadium. They also sang happy birthday to a girl on the floor, she was pretty lucky too, and emotional. During their song Little Things, all the girls put the flashlights on on their phone which lit up the stadium like a Christmas tree, which was very pretty. Niall also had us sing a line of his solo which was “Love you” to which he replied to us “I love you too!” There was lots of hip thrusting, crotch grabbing and silly dances which made all of us swoon. They knew exactly what they were doing. 

Going back to being able to being able to see backstage, during the show, Kaity and I had watched about 11 black SUVs line up in a line, one for each of them, and some of the crew, to leave the venue. It was very cool being able to watch them, after they performed their encore and said goodbye, sprint off the stage and straight into their own separate cars and leave with police escorts before we even had the chance to leave our seats. Crazy.

To put in summary: I am not embarrassed about going to yet another One Direction concert, and you’ll have to experience one yourself to understand why. They’re very cute and silly and talented and fun and there are five of them, what’s not to like? It was one of the most fun concerts I’ve ever been to. Kaity is now a massive fan. I have post concert depression. 

Long story short, I love One Direction.

OH AND HARRY STYLES PUT HIS HAIR IN A STRAIGHT UP MAN BUN AND WE ARE STILL NOT EMOTIONALLY STABLE FROM IT. 

Now please, enjoy a little video montage I made with highlights from the show. *Warning, it's a time commitment/11 minute video*

XOXO

Audrey