Happy Birthday Harry! One Direction's Birthday Number Ones Revealed

To celebrate Harry Styles's 20th birthday, we find out who topped the Official Singles Chart on the days all our lovely One Direction boys were born!

It’s one of the biggest pop questions you'll ever be asked, alongside “What was the first single you ever bought?” But unlike our first music purchase, we don’t have any control over the answer to “What was Number 1 when you were born?”, but it’s very easy to find out, thanks to OfficialCharts.com

What does your Birthday Number 1 say about you? As Harry Styles turns 20 today, we took a look in our archives to find out what was topping the charts when the five members of the world’s biggest boyband One Direction were born. Will it be a classic track or a really embarrassing novelty record?

Louis Tomlinson – Queen: Bohemian Rhapsody/These Are The Days Of Our Lives (December 24 1991)

A baby born at Christmas is a very special thing indeed – just like a Christmas Number 1. On the positive side, it means nobody forgets your birthday. On the negative side, you may, depending on how tight your relatives are, get a joint present for Christmas and birthday. Released just after the death of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, Bohemian Rhapsody knows only too well about someone else getting the attention – it had to share the spotlight with These Are The Days Of Our Lives as a double-A side. Louis may only be one of five, but the spotlight is firmly on him whenever he’s singing.
WEEKS AT NUMBER 1: Five
STAR POTENTIAL: Including collaborations, Queen have had over 50 Top 40 hits – among them six Number 1s. A musical based on their hits, We Will Rock You, has been running in London’s West End for 11 years.
CHART FACT: Bohemian Rhapsody was actually Christmas Number 1 twice. The first time was in 1975, when it topped the Official Singles Chart for nine weeks. Nine!

Zayn Malik – Whitney Houston: I Will Always Love You (January 12 1993)

It’s only fitting that a guy who is one-fifth of a global phenomenon should have one of the biggest hits on Earth as his Birthday Number 1. While Mummy Zayn was buttoning up her pride and joy’s very first romper suit, Whitney Houston was just over halfway through a 10-week reign at the top of the Official Singles Chart, with this cover of a Dolly Parton track. Taken from the movie The Bodyguard, I Will Always Love You is the romantic ballad guaranteed to bring a tear to your eye. And Zayn himself is quite the heart-throb and an old romantic – he became engaged to Little Mix’s Perrie in 2013 – and she’s got the rock to prove it.
WEEKS AT NUMBER 1: Ten!
STAR POTENTIAL: This is Whitney we’re talking about here. She was a megastar. During her lifetime, she had 32 Top 40 singles, including 17 Top 10s and four Number 1s.
CHART FACT: I Will Always Love You was a Top 40 hit for Whitney three times. It charted again in late 1993, reaching Number 25, and on her death in 2012, it peaked at Number 14.

Liam Payne (August 29 1993) & Niall Horan (September 13 1993) – Culture Beat: Mr Vain

Culture Beat's Mr Vain was the sound of the late summer in 1993. As baby Liam and newborn Niall gurgled their first B-sharps and clutched their mummies’ fingers tighter than they grab a microphone, teenagers all over the UK were raving in their bedrooms to this tune. You could certainly never call the One Direction lads vain in any way, but they are pretty confident when it comes to bouncing around on stage. Would they ever utter the song’s demanding line "I know what I want, and I want it NOW"? Surely not, unless they were ordering a chicken burger or maybe taking a bite of a big lump of kebab meat, as Niall does in their latest video, Midnight Memories. Look, we've all been there.
WEEKS AT NUMBER 1: Four
STAR POTENTIAL: Culture Beat had six Top 40 hits, including two more Top 10s. Mr Vain sold over 442,000 copies and was ninth best-selling single of 1993.
CHART FACT: 51% of Mr Vain’s sales were on cassette! Remember those? Or cassingles, as nobody ever really called them.

And finally, the birthday boy himself… Harry Styles (February 1 1994) – D:Ream: Things Can Only Get Better

Our tousle-haired prince of pop may be a global megastar now, but Harry Styles has never forgotten his talent show roots and how hard he had to work to get there. Señor Styles’s Birthday Number 1 is an anthem of hope and courage (and, erm, of the Labour Party’s electoral campaign in 1997). D:Ream had plenty of goes at chart success before Things Can Only Get Better finally came through for them in 1994, but Harry proved he had the X Factor when he helped take One Direction’s debut single What Makes You Beautiful straight to the top – none of your messing about. The D:Ream tune still pops up now and again, especially on ‘90s nostalgia shows – you can just imagine Harry kicking his then tattoo-free legs and having a bit of a rave in his cot to it, can’t you? No? Just us? OK.
WEEKS AT NUMBER 1: Four
STAR POTENTIAL: It was D:Ream’s only Number 1, but they did go on to have seven more Top 40 hits.
CHART FACT: Things Can Only Get Better has charted three times, reaching Number 25 in early ’93, the top spot in January ’94 and saying hello again and peaking at Number 19 in May 1997, thanks to Tony Blair playing it on his favourite ghetto blaster (ask your mum) when he won the election.

What’s your Birthday Number 1?

Want to know what was topping the charts on the day the stork brought you? Take a look at the big blue box in the top-right of any page on OfficialCharts.com, and under ‘Access the archive’ select ‘Charts’ and enter your birthdate and before you can say “Please let it be something really cool and not a puppet or comedy character” you’ll be presented with the Top 10 from the day you were born.

What’s yours? Tweet us using #BirthdayNo1 and tell us!