One Direction - I Would[Fanmade Music Video]

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I have the words “I Would” tattooed on the back of my shoulder, written in my own hand originally transcribed on a scrap of paper meticulously scribbled with sharpie on a tattoo shop counter. I have a hard time explaining to people why. The easy explanation is that it was the first song I ever performed drag to — One Direction songs are the only songs I’ve ever done drag to, sometimes solo and sometimes with a group of friends as One Erection. (The joke is so easy it would be a waste not to make it.) “I Would” as a phrase says something about me as a performer and as a queer person, and as a song is contextually situated at the intersection of those two things. That’s the easy answer, but still a hard one to give because the casual querent is usually not someone I want to talk to about gender and performance, and I usually end up explaining basic things about drag rather than addressing the real metaphor at work. Which is fine, I guess — that is easier than explaining queer theory to someone on the back porch of a bar who is probably only asking because they think “I Would” is a sexually implicit entendre, and is going to be disappointed by the irony of how unsexy thinking about your sexuality can be.

The difficult answer is only difficult in that it’s loaded with self-involved introspective bullshit, so it feels both self-indulgent and overly personal to tease it out of where it feels nestled deep in my rib cage, a tangle of core self-truths that I find to be evident in the tone of a One Direction song about wanting what you can’t have because you feel like you deserve it more. That sounds so entitled, and it is, a little bit. But it’s not the situation that I care so much for, even though I can relate more than I wish I did. What’s important to me about it is the ability to identify yourself as the person who can give someone else all of those things. It’s the ability to pinpoint what you have to offer. That’s how I want to define myself to the people I’m close to, not by some checklist of niche interests and political ideologies and personality traits, but what I have to give to them. What do you bring to the table of this emotional potluck?

Would he say he’s in L-O-V-E?Well if it was me then I would.Would he hold you when you’re feeling low?Baby you should know that I would.

There’s a theme in the universe of 1D songs where the subject is “I,” but is then fixated on an object of desire that is set up as someone wholly deserving, sometimes unattainable, definitely imperfect, but nevertheless ideal. They started out telling us that we don’t know we’re beautiful, and we’ve all cried about “Little Things,” it’s fine, this is a safe space, you don’t have to pretend. (And! And.) I don’t even want to start on “Through The Dark” — Kenzie already handled that. The narrative consistently emphasizes the worth of the person they’re singing about, in spite of anything, especially self-worth, and that comes through even when the narrator is just talking about himself. The complementary implication to “I would” is “you deserve,” and I haven’t heard it any other way.

With this song I feel I am both the first and second person. I’ve always been ultimately an empathetic and nurturing person. What I know I have the most of to give is love, effusive and unconditional love. I think I am most happy when I have someone to pour all that excess affection onto, and that’s something I’ve really struggled with in my mostly-intentional sabbatical from dating. Can I, or should I, hinge my happiness on loving someone else? “I Would” instead mounts my identity on my capacity for loving people — it just defines that potential as part of who I am. It doesn’t mean I am less-than without it, but that the ability to boil over with affection is latent, simmering until heat is applied. The narrator has his insecurities, relatably — I can’t compete with your boyfriend; He’s got 27 tattoos! — who hasn’t belabored their inadequacies that way? Yet he exhibits self confidence in his ability to love someone exactly the way they need. He vacillates between defeated insecurity and egotistical to a fault. Instead of asking, “well which is it?” I find myself nodding along like, yeah, hard same. This is also the song that brought us “reality ruined my life,” which is possibly my very favorite line in a One Direction song, or any song, ever. It encapsulates the futility of daydreams and the powerlessness of knowing you are good, truly good, core-good, but having to wait for someone else to recognize it in you. The narrator has already recognized it in the love interest, who’s the same person I imagine her to be in every song — me. That’s the point of the boy band as an institution — to write songs about me, but the 1D straw-girl is special in that she’s enchanting, desirable, and flawed, yet entirely worthy of four albums of adoration. I am totally content with being the girl in a little black dress who still has to squeeze into her jeans and is pretty when she cries. That’s me. I’m glad to know you would. I would, too.