Five Pop Groups Who Unexpectedly Survived Member Departures

For better or worse, UK pop powerhouse One Direction have confirmed they will continue as a four-piece in the wake of Zayn Malik's departure, which was announced overnight and has since seen certain circles of the internet descend into emotional collapse.

While it would be easy to simply make fun of the (largely prepubescent) fanbase currently experiencing apparently genuine inner turmoil over the marginal shake-up of their favourite band's personnel, it would also be pretty indefensibly dickish and, moreover, not really that interesting outside of purposes of schadenfreude (which we're not writing off in general, it's just… they're kids, man).

What is interesting, though, are the questions over whether One Direction can capably survive their intention to carry on as a four-piece for any significant time frame. After all, Malik is far from the first pop star to have had a gutful of a life lived in lights, with myriad similar acts having faced the same dilemma of how to proceed in the wake of a member's departure.

Lest we forget…

s club 7

We all know that there ain't no party like an S Club party, and the importance of not stopping and never giving up — which may explain the continued survival of S Club 7 following the departure of member Paul Cattermole back in 2002. Renaming themselves S Club, the six remaining members carried on stoically for another year while the British media dredged up memories of the Spice Girls and Take That's inability to sustain interest following roster changes of their own and basically all but openly speculating on when the S Clubhouse would inevitably burn to the ground.

Despite seemingly calling it a day in 2003 following the turmoil and media attention, which you'd think they'd have been desperate for, Cattermole would later reunite with fellow founding members Bradley McIntosh and Jo O'Meara, the three of them keeping the S Club torch aflame for several years (yes, under the moniker 'S Club 3'), from 2008 to 2013, before the full original seven reunited last year. Take that, Take That.

5ive

Late-'90s quintet 5ive are mostly remembered for being the musical equivalent of a root canal, but nonetheless were successful enough to release three full-length albums and snag several esteemed awards like "Best Haircut" at the Smash Hits awards (three years running, baby!) between 1997 and 2001.

Just like S Club 7, the band endured a five-year period of inactivity before reuniting for two years in 2006-7 without member Sean Conlon, which was unfortunate, since he was one of the least outwardly annoying people in the band. However, Conlon wouldn't stay gone — 5ive, after breaking up again in 2007, reunited once more in 2012, this time with Conlon back on board but without Jason "J" Brown, eventually seeing Abz Love take his exit last year. The three remaining members — Conlon, Scott Robinson and Ritchie Neville — continue to perform as 5ive, because they're apparently not as pedantic as the S Club folks.

busted

UK pop-rockers Busted, who ostensibly broke up in 2005, get points for ingenuity in terms of worming their way back to relevance following a dissolution that ought to have wiped them off the face of the earth entirely. The band had already survived the departure of founding member Ki Fitzgerald in their first year of activity (2000) and replaced him with Charlie Simpson well before they split in 2005, but the band later formed a long-term strategy for survival by hitching their wagon to the rising star of fellow pop-rockers McFly when they couldn't get Simpson to agree to a reunion in 2013.

Now going under the name McBusted, McFly and the two remaining members of Busted somehow managed to make the world believe it had been asking for a supergroup made up of musicians from middling pop outfits, and did so with aplomb. Whether or not the idea of McBusted being a marketable commodity makes you want to scream, you have to admit that reviving your career while managing to co-opt more than half of an existing band's name, several years after releasing anything of note, is pretty damn slick. Or evil. Whatever, they're not mutually exclusive.

the backstreet boys

This might come as a surprise to you, but The Backstreet Boys never actually stopped being active in the years they seemed to disappear immediately following the turn of the century, around the time they started pushing out Greatest Hits albums and singing the national anthem at football games. 

Even more surprisingly, The Backstreet Boys later survived a line-up change that occurred during the period that the world had largely stopped caring about them (which, if memory serves, lasted up until their 20th anniversary tour in 2013), when founding member Kevin Richardson called it a day in 2006. Immediately following his announcement, the band proved that Richardson was entirely unnecessary anyway by announcing they were going into the studio specifically because fuck Kevin Richardson (that may be paraphrasing).

Like Busted, the Backstreet Boys had a little help from some friends — after plodding along quietly from 2006-2011, they teamed up with fellow also-rans New Kids On The Block for to tour the NKOTBSB show, though it could be argued equally the New Kids were just as guilty of coattail-riding as the Backstreet Boys by the midpoint of the 2000s, long after anybody in either band had been a boy or a kid.

Richardson publicly returned to the fold in 2012, releasing their first single with the member in six years in November that year, capitalising on people's affinity for Christmas by releasing It's Christmas Time Again and riding that nostalgia all the way to #1 on Billboard's Holiday Digital Songs Chart that month.

the jacksons

When Michael Jackson left the The Jacksons in December 1984, it's hard to imagine how the group managed to carry on without their increasingly famous little brother but, then again, it wasn't even the first line-up change the group originally known as The Jackson Brothers had endured in their decades-long career.

The original line-up of brothers — Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael — performed together for 11 years, from 1964-1975 under both The Jackson Brothers and The Jackson 5 monikers before Jermaine tapped out and was replaced by "other" brother Randy in May '75, marking the transition to The Jacksons. Eventually, Jermaine would return in 1983, leading to a little over a year as a six-piece before the late King Of Pop made his move, along with Marlon — leaving only Jackie, Tito, Jermaine and Randy to recite their ABCs despite having, by this point, become fully grown men.

Still, the dual loss (if you can even equate the impact of Marlon's departure with Michael's) wasn't enough to totally scuttle the band — they lasted a further five years as a quartet, releasing one album in 1989 — 2300 Jackson Street — and even a charting single, Nothin' (That Compares 2 U).

Its peak performance of #77 wasn't exactly in line with the multiple #1s they put out during The Jackson 5 era, but the fact they were able to operate in the shadow of their increasingly famous little brother for half a decade is admirable regardless.