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kingstylesdaily · 3 years

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Playtime With Harry Styles

via vogue.com

THE MEN’S BATHING POND in London’s Hampstead Heath at daybreak on a gloomy September morning seemed such an unlikely locale for my first meeting with Harry Styles, music’s legendarily charm-heavy style czar, that I wondered perhaps if something had been lost in translation.

But then there is Styles, cheerily gung ho, hidden behind a festive yellow bandana mask and a sweatshirt of his own design, surprisingly printed with three portraits of his intellectual pinup, the author Alain de Botton. “I love his writing,” says Styles. “I just think he’s brilliant. I saw him give a talk about the keys to happiness, and how one of the keys is living among friends, and how real friendship stems from being vulnerable with someone.”

In turn, de Botton’s 2016 novel The Course of Love taught Styles that “when it comes to relationships, you just expect yourself to be good at it…[but] being in a real relationship with someone is a skill,” one that Styles himself has often had to hone in the unforgiving klieg light of public attention, and in the company of such high-profile paramours as Taylor Swift and—well, Styles is too much of a gentleman to name names.

That sweatshirt and the Columbia Records tracksuit bottoms are removed in the quaint wooden open-air changing room, with its Swallows and Amazons vibe. A handful of intrepid fellow patrons in various states of undress are blissfully unaware of the 26-year-old supernova in their midst, although I must admit I’m finding it rather difficult to take my eyes off him, try as I might. Styles has been on a six-day juice cleanse in readiness for Vogue’s photographer Tyler Mitchell. He practices Pilates (“I’ve got very tight hamstrings—trying to get those open”) and meditates twice a day. “It has changed my life,” he avers, “but it’s so subtle. It’s helped me just be more present. I feel like I’m able to enjoy the things that are happening right in front of me, even if it’s food or it’s coffee or it’s being with a friend—or a swim in a really cold pond!” Styles also feels that his meditation practices have helped him through the tumult of 2020: “Meditation just brings a stillness that has been really beneficial, I think, for my mental health.”

Styles has been a pescatarian for three years, inspired by the vegan food that several members of his current band prepared on tour. “My body definitely feels better for it,” he says. His shapely torso is prettily inscribed with the tattoos of a Victorian sailor—a rose, a galleon, a mermaid, an anchor, and a palm tree among them, and, straddling his clavicle, the dates 1967 and 1957 (the respective birth years of his mother and father). Frankly, I rather wish I’d packed a beach muumuu.

We take the piratical gangplank that juts into the water and dive in. Let me tell you, this is not the Aegean. The glacial water is a cloudy phlegm green beneath the surface, and clammy reeds slap one’s ankles. Styles, who admits he will try any fad, has recently had a couple of cryotherapy sessions and is evidently less susceptible to the cold. By the time we have swum a full circuit, however, body temperatures have adjusted, and the ice, you might say, has been broken. Duly invigorated, we are ready to face the day. Styles has thoughtfully brought a canister of coffee and some bottles of water in his backpack, and we sit at either end of a park bench for a socially distanced chat.

It seems that he has had a productive year. At the onset of lockdown, Styles found himself in his second home, in the canyons of Los Angeles. After a few days on his own, however, he moved in with a pod of three friends (and subsequently with two band members, Mitch Rowland and Sarah Jones). They “would put names in a hat and plan the week out,” Styles explains. “If you were Monday, you would choose the movie, dinner, and the activity for that day. I like to make soups, and there was a big array of movies; we went all over the board,” from Goodfellas to Clueless. The experience, says Styles, “has been a really good lesson in what makes me happy now. It’s such a good example of living in the moment. I honestly just like being around my friends,” he adds. “That’s been my biggest takeaway. Just being on my own the whole time, I would have been miserable.”

Styles is big on friendship groups and considers his former and legendarily hysteria-inducing boy band, One Direction, to have been one of them. “I think the typical thing is to come out of a band like that and almost feel like you have to apologize for being in it,” says Styles. “But I loved my time in it. It was all new to me, and I was trying to learn as much as I could. I wanted to soak it in…. I think that’s probably why I like traveling now—soaking stuff up.” In a post-COVID future, he is contemplating a temporary move to Tokyo, explaining that “there’s a respect and a stillness, a quietness that I really loved every time I’ve been there.”

In 1D, Styles was making music whenever he could. “After a show you’d go in a hotel room and put down some vocals,” he recalls. As a result, his first solo album, 2017’s Harry Styles, “was when I really fell in love with being in the studio,” he says. “I loved it as much as touring.” Today he favors isolating with his core group of collaborators, “our little bubble”—Rowland, Kid Harpoon (né Tom Hull), and Tyler Johnson. “A safe space,” as he describes it.

In the music he has been working on in 2020, Styles wants to capture the experimental spirit that informed his second album, last year’s Fine Line. With his debut album, “I was very much finding out what my sound was as a solo artist,” he says. “I can see all the places where it almost felt like I was bowling with the bumpers up. I think with the second album I let go of the fear of getting it wrong and…it was really joyous and really free. I think with music it’s so important to evolve—and that extends to clothes and videos and all that stuff. That’s why you look back at David Bowie with Ziggy Stardust or the Beatles and their different eras—that fearlessness is super inspiring.”

The seismic changes of 2020—including the Black Lives Matter uprising around racial justice—has also provided Styles with an opportunity for personal growth. “I think it’s a time for opening up and learning and listening,” he says. “I’ve been trying to read and educate myself so that in 20 years I’m still doing the right things and taking the right steps. I believe in karma, and I think it’s just a time right now where we could use a little more kindness and empathy and patience with people, be a little more prepared to listen and grow.”

Meanwhile, Styles’s euphoric single “Watermelon Sugar” became something of an escapist anthem for this dystopian summer of 2020. The video, featuring Styles (dressed in ’70s-flavored Gucci and Bode) cavorting with a pack of beach-babe girls and boys, was shot in January, before lockdown rules came into play. By the time it was ready to be released in May, a poignant epigraph had been added: “This video is dedicated to touching.”

Styles is looking forward to touring again, when “it’s safe for everyone,” because, as he notes, “being up against people is part of the whole thing. You can’t really re-create it in any way.” But it hasn’t always been so. Early in his career, Styles was so stricken with stage fright that he regularly threw up preperformance. “I just always thought I was going to mess up or something,” he remembers. “But I’ve felt really lucky to have a group of incredibly generous fans. They’re generous emotionally—and when they come to the show, they give so much that it creates this atmosphere that I’ve always found so loving and accepting.”

THIS SUMMER, when it was safe enough to travel, Styles returned to his London home, which is where he suggests we head now, setting off in his modish Primrose Yellow ’73 Jaguar that smells of gasoline and leatherette. “Me and my dad have always bonded over cars,” Styles explains. “I never thought I’d be someone who just went out for a leisurely drive, purely for enjoyment.” On sleepless jet-lagged nights he’ll drive through London’s quiet streets, seeing neighborhoods in a new way. “I find it quite relaxing,” he says.

Over the summer Styles took a road trip with his artist friend Tomo Campbell through France and Italy, setting off at four in the morning and spending the night in Geneva, where they jumped in the lake “to wake ourselves up.” (I see a pattern emerging.) At the end of the trip Styles drove home alone, accompanied by an upbeat playlist that included “Aretha Franklin, Parliament, and a lot of Stevie Wonder. It was really fun for me,” he says. “I don’t travel like that a lot. I’m usually in such a rush, but there was a stillness to it. I love the feeling of nobody knowing where I am, that kind of escape...and freedom.”

GROWING UP in a village in the North of England, Styles thought of London as a world apart: “It truly felt like a different country.” At a wide-eyed 16, he came down to the teeming metropolis after his mother entered him on the U.K. talent-search show The X Factor. “I went to the audition to find out if I could sing,” Styles recalls, “or if my mum was just being nice to me.” Styles was eliminated but subsequently brought back with other contestants—Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik—to form a boy band that was named (on Styles’s suggestion) One Direction. The wily X Factor creator and judge, Simon Cowell, soon signed them to his label Syco Records, and the rest is history: 1D’s first four albums, supported by four world tours from 2011 to 2015, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard charts, and the band has sold 70 million records to date. At 18, Styles bought the London house he now calls home. “I was going to do two weeks’ work to it,” he remembers, “but when I came back there was no second floor,” so he moved in with adult friends who lived nearby till the renovation was complete. “Eighteen months,” he deadpans. “I’ve always seen that period as pretty pivotal for me, as there’s that moment at the party where it’s getting late, and half of the people would go upstairs to do drugs, and the other people go home. I was like, ‘I don’t really know this friend’s wife, so I’m not going to get all messy and then go home.’ I had to behave a bit, at a time where everything else about my life felt I didn’t have to behave really. I’ve been lucky to always feel I have this family unit somewhere.”

When Styles’s London renovation was finally done, “I went in for the first time and I cried,” he recalls. “Because I just felt like I had somewhere. L.A. feels like holiday, but this feels like home.”

Behind its pink door, Styles’s house has all the trappings of rock stardom—there’s a man cave filled with guitars, a Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks poster (a moving-in gift from his decorator), a Stevie Nicks album cover. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was one of the first songs he knew the words to—“My parents were big fans”—and he and Nicks have formed something of a mutual-admiration society. At the beginning of lockdown, Nicks tweeted to her fans that she was taking inspiration from Fine Line: “Way to go, H,” she wrote. “It is your Rumours.” “She’s always there for you,” said Styles when he inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. “She knows what you need—advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl; she’s got you covered.”

Styles makes us some tea in the light-filled kitchen and then wanders into the convivial living room, where he strikes an insouciant pose on the chesterfield sofa, upholstered in a turquoise velvet that perhaps not entirely coincidentally sets off his eyes. Styles admits that his lockdown lewk was “sweatpants, constantly,” and he is relishing the opportunity to dress up again. He doesn’t have to wait long: The following day, under the eaves of a Victorian mansion in Notting Hill, I arrive in the middle of fittings for Vogue’s shoot and discover Styles in his Y-fronts, patiently waiting to try on looks for fashion editor Camilla Nickerson and photographer Tyler Mitchell. Styles’s personal stylist, Harry Lambert, wearing a pearl necklace and his nails colored in various shades of green varnish, à la Sally Bowles, is providing helpful backup (Britain’s Rule of Six hasn’t yet been imposed).

Styles, who has thoughtfully brought me a copy of de Botton’s 2006 book The Architecture of Happiness, is instinctively and almost quaintly polite, in an old-fashioned, holding-open-doors and not-mentioning-lovers-by-name sort of way. He is astounded to discover that the Atlanta-born Mitchell has yet to experience a traditional British Sunday roast dinner. Assuring him that “it’s basically like Thanksgiving every Sunday,” Styles gives Mitchell the details of his favorite London restaurants in which to enjoy one. “It’s a good thing to be nice,” Mitchell tells me after a morning in Styles’s company.

MITCHELL has Lionel Wendt’s languorously homoerotic 1930s portraits of young Sri Lankan men on his mood board. Nickerson is thinking of Irving Penn’s legendary fall 1950 Paris haute couture collections sitting, where he photographed midcentury supermodels, including his wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, in high-style Dior and Balenciaga creations. Styles is up for all of it, and so, it would seem, is the menswear landscape of 2020: Jonathan Anderson has produced a trapeze coat anchored with a chunky gold martingale; John Galliano at Maison Margiela has fashioned a khaki trench with a portrait neckline in layers of colored tulle; and Harris Reed—a Saint Martins fashion student sleuthed by Lambert who ended up making some looks for Styles’s last tour—has spent a week making a broad-shouldered Smoking jacket with high-waisted, wide-leg pants that have become a Styles signature since he posed for Tim Walker for the cover of Fine Line wearing a Gucci pair—a silhouette that was repeated in the tour wardrobe. (“I liked the idea of having that uniform,” says Styles.) Reed’s version is worn with a hoopskirt draped in festoons of hot-pink satin that somehow suggests Deborah Kerr asking Yul Brynner’s King of Siam, “Shall we dance?”

Styles introduces me to the writer and eyewear designer Gemma Styles, “my sister from the same womb,” he says. She is also here for the fitting: The siblings plan to surprise their mother with the double portrait on these pages.

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“My mum loved to dress us up,” she remembers. “I always hated it, and Harry was always quite into it. She did some really elaborate papier-mâché outfits: She made a giant mug and then painted an atlas on it, and that was Harry being ‘The World Cup.’ Harry also had a little dalmatian-dog outfit,” she adds, “a hand-me-down from our closest family friends. He would just spend an inordinate amount of time wearing that outfit. But then Mum dressed me up as Cruella de Vil. She was always looking for any opportunity!”

“As a kid I definitely liked fancy dress,” Styles says. There were school plays, the first of which cast him as Barney, a church mouse. “I was really young, and I wore tights for that,” he recalls. “I remember it was crazy to me that I was wearing a pair of tights. And that was maybe where it all kicked off!”

Acting has also remained a fundamental form of expression for Styles. His sister recalls that even on the eve of his life-changing X Factor audition, Styles could sing in public only in an assumed voice. “He used to do quite a good sort of Elvis warble,” she remembers. During the rehearsals in the family home, “he would sing in the bathroom because if it was him singing as himself, he just couldn’t have anyone looking at him! I love his voice now,” she adds. “I’m so glad that he makes music that I actually enjoy listening to.”

Styles’s role-playing continued soon after 1D went on permanent hiatus in 2016, and he was cast in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, beating out dozens of professional actors for the role. “The good part was my character was a young soldier who didn’t really know what he was doing,” says Styles modestly. “The scale of the movie was so big that I was a tiny piece of the puzzle. It was definitely humbling. I just loved being outside of my comfort zone.”

His performance caught the eye of Olivia Wilde, who remembers that it “blew me away—the openness and commitment.” In turn, Styles loved Wilde’s directorial debut, Booksmart, and is “very honored” that she cast him in a leading role for her second feature, a thriller titled Don’t Worry Darling, which went into production this fall. Styles will play the husband to Florence Pugh in what Styles describes as “a 1950s utopia in the California desert.”

Wilde’s movie is costumed by Academy Award nominee Arianne Phillips. “She and I did a little victory dance when we heard that we officially had Harry in the film,” notes Wilde, “because we knew that he has a real appreciation for fashion and style. And this movie is incredibly stylistic. It’s very heightened and opulent, and I’m really grateful that he is so enthusiastic about that element of the process—some actors just don’t care.”

“I like playing dress-up in general,” Styles concurs, in a masterpiece of understatement: This is the man, after all, who cohosted the Met’s 2019 “Notes on Camp” gala attired in a nipple-freeing black organza blouse with a lace jabot, and pants so high-waisted that they cupped his pectorals. The ensemble, accessorized with the pearl-drop earring of a dandified Elizabethan courtier, was created for Styles by Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, whom he befriended in 2014. Styles, who has subsequently personified the brand as the face of the Gucci fragrance, finds Michele “fearless with his work and his imagination. It’s really inspiring to be around someone who works like that.”

The two first met in London over a cappuccino. “It was just a kind of PR appointment,” says Michele, “but something magical happened, and Harry is now a friend. He has the aura of an English rock-and-roll star—like a young Greek god with the attitude of James Dean and a little bit of Mick Jagger—but no one is sweeter. He is the image of a new era, of the way that a man can look.”

Styles credits his style transformation—from Jack Wills tracksuit-clad boy-band heartthrob to nonpareil fashionisto—to his meeting the droll young stylist Harry Lambert seven years ago. They hit it off at once and have conspired ever since, enjoying a playfully campy rapport and calling each other Sue and Susan as they parse the niceties of the scarlet lace Gucci man-bra that Michele has made for Vogue’s shoot, for instance, or a pair of Bode pants hand-painted with biographical images (Styles sent Emily Adams Bode images of his family, and a photograph he had found of David Hockney and Joni Mitchell. “The idea of those two being friends, to me, was really beautiful,” Styles explains).

“He just has fun with clothing, and that’s kind of where I’ve got it from,” says Styles of Lambert. “He doesn’t take it too seriously, which means I don’t take it too seriously.” The process has been evolutionary. At his first meeting with Lambert, the stylist proposed “a pair of flares, and I was like, ‘Flares? That’s fucking crazy,’ ” Styles remembers. Now he declares that “you can never be overdressed. There’s no such thing. The people that I looked up to in music—Prince and David Bowie and Elvis and Freddie Mercury and Elton John—they’re such showmen. As a kid it was completely mind-blowing. Now I’ll put on something that feels really flamboyant, and I don’t feel crazy wearing it. I think if you get something that you feel amazing in, it’s like a superhero outfit. Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with. What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing. It’s like anything—anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never really thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something.”

“He’s up for it,” confirms Lambert, who earlier this year, for instance, found a JW Anderson cardigan with the look of a Rubik’s Cube (“on sale at matches.com!”). Styles wore it, accessorized with his own pearl necklace, for a Today rehearsal in February and it went viral: His fans were soon knitting their own versions and posting the results on TikTok. Jonathan Anderson declared himself “so impressed and incredibly humbled by this trend” that he nimbly made the pattern available (complete with a YouTube tutorial) so that Styles’s fans could copy it for free. Meanwhile, London’s storied Victoria & Albert Museum has requested Styles’s original: an emblematic document of how people got creative during the COVID era. “It’s going to be in their permanent collection,” says Lambert exultantly. “Is that not sick? Is that not the most epic thing?”

“To me, he’s very modern,” says Wilde of Styles, “and I hope that this brand of confidence as a male that Harry has—truly devoid of any traces of toxic masculinity—is indicative of his generation and therefore the future of the world. I think he is in many ways championing that, spearheading that. It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence.”

“He’s really in touch with his feminine side because it’s something natural,” notes Michele. “And he’s a big inspiration to a younger generation—about how you can be in a totally free playground when you feel comfortable. I think that he’s a revolutionary.”

STYLES’S confidence is on full display the day after the fitting, which finds us all on the beautiful Sussex dales. Over the summit of the hill, with its trees blown horizontal by the fierce winds, lies the English Channel. Even though it’s a two-hour drive from London, the fresh-faced Styles, who went to bed at 9 p.m., has arrived on set early: He is famously early for everything. The team is installed in a traditional flint-stone barn. The giant doors have been replaced by glass and frame a bucolic view of distant grazing sheep. “Look at that field!” says Styles. “How lucky are we? This is our office! Smell the roses!” Lambert starts to sing “Kumbaya, my Lord.”

Hairdresser Malcolm Edwards is setting Styles’s hair in a Victory roll with silver clips, and until it is combed out he resembles Kathryn Grayson with stubble. His fingers are freighted with rings, and “he has a new army of mini purses,” says Lambert, gesturing to an accessory table heaving with examples including a mini sky-blue Gucci Diana bag discreetly monogrammed HS. Michele has also made Styles a dress for the shoot that Tissot might have liked to paint—acres of ice-blue ruffles, black Valenciennes lace, and suivez-moi, jeune homme ribbons. Erelong, Styles is gamely racing up a hill in it, dodging sheep scat, thistles, and shards of chalk, and striking a pose for Mitchell that manages to make ruffles a compelling new masculine proposition, just as Mr. Fish’s frothy white cotton dress—equal parts Romantic poet and Greek presidential guard—did for Mick Jagger when he wore it for The Rolling Stones’ free performance in Hyde Park in 1969, or as the suburban-mom floral housedress did for Kurt Cobain as he defined the iconoclastic grunge aesthetic. Styles is mischievously singing ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to himself when Mitchell calls him outside to jump up and down on a trampoline in a Comme des Garçons buttoned wool kilt. “How did it look?” asks his sister when he comes in from the cold. “Divine,” says her brother in playful Lambert-speak.

As the wide sky is washed in pink, orange, and gray, like a Turner sunset, and Mitchell calls it a successful day, Styles is playing “Cherry” from Fine Line on his Fender acoustic on the hilltop. “He does his own stunts,” says his sister, laughing. The impromptu set is greeted with applause. “Thank you, Antwerp!” says Styles playfully, bowing to the crowd. “Thank you, fashion!”

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berlinini · 3 years

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"I think it’s a natural reflex to wonder why Louis isn’t getting the same recognition as Harry when they were bandmates" they are literally different people. Different music, different voice, different face, totally different appeal. I think this is something everyone has clear by now - Louis was, and is the 1d fandom favorite, but there's a world of people outside and Harry was always the favorite there, something many people here can't accept

Except.... no?

1) "but there's a world of people outside and Harry was always the favorite there". Outside where...? Sony's HQ? Harry only got mainstream with Fine Line and that's because the album/ Harry Styles™️ really got pushed. Different appeal? HS1 and FL being so different musically tells you that it's a question of marketing. And Harry has been so heavily marketed for his second album - HS1 definitely didn't do enough to get him recognition as a solo artist. He's only gotten "mainstream" with WS and you can tell a lot of work has been put into that.

So if by "the world of people outside" you mean Irving Azoff and how solo Harry was in the works long before the hiatus, OK. It was decided that Harry would win the 1D Hunger Games and that's not based on what the "general public" wanted. The general public probably disregarded them all as boybands who makes music for obsessive 14 years old girls. Literally any of the boys could have make it as big as Harry - they all got the looks and the talent. It's just the same old industry playbook that there's one successful solo artist that comes out of boybands. The only thing I think Harry had that maybe the others didn't - as they were surprised by the hiatus - is hunger for fame. He wants to be a celebrity, it's clear as day today.

2) Louis could have been marketed just like Harry has been. He was making pop/mainstream music at the start of his solo career. JHO BTY and Miss You had good streaming numbers and proper promo. And then... nothing? LT0 never saw the light. Walls promo and Fine Line promo overlapped. There was no proper promo for Walls.

Just compare Louis' situation with any of the 1D boys and it's just.. not normal? From how long it took to have Walls, to the lack of promo for the Away from Home Festival concert and stream.

3) "Different music, different voice, different face, totally different appeal." Louis still makes music that would play very well on the radio and could have gotten 1 or 2 summer singles, with Always You or Defenseless. Louis has a great voice. Louis has a great face and looks amazing in photoshoots. Different appeal... ok sure - so where's the promo for him to reach people who listen to britpop or "his type of music"? There is literally no effort made to market Louis as a serious solo artist. You said it yourself, Louis was a fans favourite in 1D. So we agree that he has the potential to be a beloved artist? So... what's going on?

Thinking that things just "happened" and Harry was simply "the world's favourite" - well it isn't that simple. May I refer you to this excellent scene in The Devil Wears Prada as a reminder that what is mainstream today is nothing organic - it's people in power making business choices, years before you see the "product". So no, who's getting a song about oral sex on the Billboard 10 (Harry) and who's not getting any type of recognition even though they have a huge, active fanbase (Louis) isn't simply based on them being "different people".

#answered ask #anon #harry styles #louie discourse (serious)#louis promo #the devil wears prada

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twelvedaysinaugust · 2 years

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I suggest you do leave it behind! I did. I still go into my blog to stalk fandom when I get bored, just cus. When I say leave it all behind- I mean leave FANDOM behind , I don’t mean stop being a fan. You CAN still enjoy Louis and his music and his cute personality and his pretty face and how he is on stage, without being a Stan. I saw him in Cincinnati yesterday, best gig I’ve been to in ages! And I think it’ll only get better from here. I saw 1D live in 2013, and that’s something that I will carry with me for life because it’s just such a happy memory, those boys meant everything to teenage me. Tbh, they always will. I even saw Harry in 2017, had a blast. No regrets. I personally dislike him these days(and have for a while) so I just ignore his existence now, don’t get involved in any rad or larry drama, even if I was a sort of a rad after being a larrie for 6 years. I was a super hardcore larrie during the band, had a decent size blog and everything. Now looking back… I’m truly not sure if the babygate theory is yk- babygate. Bc I just don’t think it would last this long. Louis claims F as his. But It’s just all so confusing.

Nowadays… fandom just isn’t fun like it used to be. There’s serious discourse on subjects we truly know nothing about. I don’t doubt ALL(larrie, rad, solo harrie/anti Louis, even directioner) blogs are manipulative to an extent. The only part of fandom I partake in is reading fics and, like I said, catching up with Louis (and sometimes Niall) on here. Like you, I know a lot but am certain of very little because louis’ personal life is SO confusing. We don’t know shit. We probably won’t for a very long time. Just wait for LT2 and enjoy that(if it ends up being your music taste), we can’t know the full narrative of the kind of person he truly is, especially w all the fandom theories. He’s a multimillionaire- I’m sure he’ll be fine w less stans and more casual fans. We don’t need to have a parasocial relationship w him.

I don’t think Eleanor is his long term monogamous partner, and I can’t be convinced unless they get married and pop out babies or something. And you’ll never convince me larry wasn’t real at one point… u just won’t. At the very least I’m sold on 2010-2013 larry. His sexuality is also something that confuses me. And larry post 2014 confuses me even more. I hope they are together and happy, and by they I mean Louis and whoever his partner is. If it’s Harry, great! They made it. Good for them. If it’s Eleanor, I’m very confused, but good for them. The details are so convoluted that, no matter what side you’re on, you can’t make conclusions that have no plot holes. And that applies even more to babygate. I’ll always believe Louis is a good person at heart, he’s shown it in the smallest and simplest of ways. He’s never shown to be the type to do bad things for fame or do bad things w/o reason, even if he’s not perfect, I’m certain of that. But I also don’t know the full extent of anything in his personal life. Especially his paternity and relationship w his son. And tbh - idc anymore. I wish everyone a good and happy life as long as they deserve it. And i will simply buy/ listen/ support a career if I think it’s quality work. 4/5 solos(sorry Liam) are quality work. And yes, even if I dislike Harry, I stream some of his songs bc they’re good songs w next level production. Even if 1D weren’t such decent boys, I would’ve still seen them in concert, cus midnight memories and four slapped. It’s so much better when you seperate the art from the artist, believe me, you’ll be thankful when you leave fandom behind! I’d tell this to larries and some rads even, but we both know they don’t listen.

Thank you for taking the time to send this. Everything, everything you said resonated. I wish you all the best.

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supop · 3 years

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There’s been a lot of talk about the parasocial relationship between BTS and ARMY lately. What are your thoughts on this? Also do you think BTS will enlist and renew their contracts once it expires?

BTS’s enlistment? If they do, they do. If they don’t, they don’t. If I were them, I would. No offense, but I wouldn’t want to feel like I owed my country anything years down the line. At the end of the day, none of the members’ intentions for becoming idols had to do with creating some sort of big, global cultural impact. They simply wanted to make music, perform, and get paid for it. And in the case of any future controversies, people are extremely quick to turn their backs on you. Today your the nations’s pride, tomorrow you’re scum who lacks discipline because you never enlisted. Though I do think bts intends on enlisting. Most of the direct comments I’ve seen about them in this regard have come from politicians attempting to make some sort of statement. Even k-armys never bring up bts’s enlistment. It’s really not a conversation worth venturing into because only time will tell.

That said, I doubt bts will renew their contracts for a 3rd time. And I’m not saying this from a kpop perspective, but from one of age, maturity, and priorities. Most artists (western ones included) that enter their 30s tend to be interested in one of two things: 1.) starting a family or 2.) branching off into other creative ventures. And I’m not saying you can’t do both, but when it comes to bts, there isn’t just one person’s opinions or goals to consider, but 7. It’s normal if, after 14+ years all 7 of them are no longer on the same page in regards to career goals. That being said, the time their current contract is set to expire is 2026. By then Jin will be well into his mid-30s and Jungkook 30 himself (going by Korean age). Lol, ironic especially since some younger fans currently get a kick out of teasing Jin about his age. Anyway, the discussion of parasocial relationships that’s been brought up as of recent only further complicates the identity between bts and army. When you have a significant other (and perhaps even a child), it’s kind of hard to keep up with the whole, “army are my soulmate, eternal life partner, the reason why I’m happy, why I smile, why I live, why I breathe, why I work hard, etc” sthick. Rain and Taeyang are a prime example of idols who, after getting married, eventually drew hard lines between “real family” and “fan family”.

Truthfully, I don’t really care if bts disbands. My only hope is none of the members end up with the short end of the stick, and they all go on to do whatever makes them happy. Fans/solos often bring up mistreatment/favoritism between members, still no “hard” evidence has ever been brought up to prove this. Sure, we can make guesses from what the members have said in interviews, and line distribution results, but at the end of the day they’ve also said things to negate all these points. Seemingly, the only proof of this would be if bighit suddenly decided to heavily allocate its resources into certain members’ solo careers if all 7 choose not to renew their contracts. Though, it’s clear bighit intends on keeping it ot7. ot7 content maximizes profits way more than even the most popular member ever could. If not, they would have properly marketed rapline’s mixtapes as albums/significant bodies of work rather than treating them as passion projects. The truth of the matter is, if bts falls apart, so will army (just as it did with one direction). Bighit knows this and bts themselves know this. So it really comes down to whether or not the members’ choose to prioritize their own happiness or the happiness of their fans. That is of course, if their individual happiness involves distancing themselves from the ‘bts brand’.

Sure, “most” fans are there for all 7 members but we all tend to have our favorites and will readily choose sides if it comes down to it. Lol, if one of the members going on a solo tour, would it still be appropriate for a said member to call their fans ‘army’? Though, that question only stands if bts have a bad falling out (again, just like with 1d). If not, they could very well still go on to do solo activities, and regroup as BTS by releasing new music every once in a while. If they all chose to renew, I have a feeling it would be on this basis and their schedules would be a lot more laid back with a lot less content production.

#supop thoughts #supop ask #bts #bangtan seonyandan #bts thoughts #bts opinions #bts enlistment #bts army #parasocial relationships #ot7 #solo stans #ask #bighit #hybe labels #hybe

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hldailyupdate · 3 years

Text

Playtime With Harry Styles

“There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something”

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

Styles cuts a cool figure in this black-white-and-red-all-over checked coat by JW Anderson.

“It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence,” says Olivia Wilde

There are references aplenty in this look by Harris Reed, which features a Victoriana crinoline, 1980s shoulders, and pants of zoot-suit proportions.

#harry styles #harry update #article #vogue #november 2020

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hlupdate · 3 years

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Over the summer Styles took a road trip with his artist friend Tomo Campbell through France and Italy,setting off at four in the morning and spending the night in Geneva, where they jumped in the lake “to wake ourselves up.” (I see a pattern emerging.) At the end of the trip Styles drove home alone, accompanied by an upbeat playlist that included “Aretha Franklin, Parliament, and a lot of Stevie Wonder. It was really fun for me,” he says. “I don’t travel like that a lot. I’m usually in such a rush, but there was a stillness to it. I love the feeling of nobody knowing where I am, that kind of escape...and freedom.”

GROWING UP in a village in the North of England, Styles thought of London as a world apart: “It truly felt like a different country.” At a wide-eyed 16, he came down to the teeming metropolis after his mother entered him on the U.K. talent-search show The X Factor. “I went to the audition to find out if I could sing,” Styles recalls, “or if my mum was just being nice to me.” Styles was eliminated but subsequently brought back with other contestants—Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik—to form a boy band that was named (on Styles’s suggestion) One Direction. The wily X Factor creator and judge, Simon Cowell, soon signed them to his label Syco Records, and the rest is history: 1D’s first four albums, supported by four world tours from 2011 to 2015, debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboardcharts, and the band has sold 70 million records to date. At 18, Styles bought the London house he now calls home. “I was going to do two weeks’ work to it,” he remembers, “but when I came back there was no second floor,” so he moved in with adult friends who lived nearby till the renovation was complete. “Eighteen months,” he deadpans. “I’ve always seen that period as pretty pivotal for me, as there’s that moment at the party where it’s getting late, and half of the people would go upstairs to do drugs, and the other people go home. I was like, ‘I don’t really know this friend’s wife, so I’m not going to get all messy and then go home.’ I had to behave a bit, at a time where everything else about my life felt I didn’t have to behave really. I’ve been lucky to always feel I have this family unit somewhere.”

“There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something”

Behind its pink door, Styles’s house has all the trappings of rock stardom—there’s a man cave filled with guitars, a Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks poster (a moving-in gift from his decorator), a Stevie Nicksalbum cover. Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was one of the first songs he knew the words to—“My parents were big fans”—and he and Nicks have formed something of a mutual-admiration society. At the beginning of lockdown, Nicks tweeted to her fans that she was taking inspiration from Fine Line: “Way to go, H,” she wrote. “It is your Rumours.” “She’s always there for you,” said Styles when he inducted Nicks into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. “She knows what you need—advice, a little wisdom, a blouse, a shawl; she’s got you covered.”

Styles, who has thoughtfully brought me a copy of de Botton’s 2006 book The Architecture of Happiness,is instinctively and almost quaintly polite, in an old-fashioned, holding-open-doors and not-mentioning-lovers-by-name sort of way. He is astounded to discover that the Atlanta-born Mitchell has yet to experience a traditional British Sunday roast dinner. Assuring him that “it’s basically like Thanksgiving every Sunday,” Styles gives Mitchell the details of his favorite London restaurants in which to enjoy one. “It’s a good thing to be nice,” Mitchell tells me after a morning in Styles’s company.

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence,” says Olivia Wilde

#harry styles #vogue #131120

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dailytomlinson · 4 years

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How does an artist find himself after leaving the biggest boy band on the planet? He leans into authentic self-expression. “I'm aware that to a certain degree, I'm swimming against the tide,” Louis Tomlinson tells Apple Music. “I've had all this amazing success with One Direction, I realised that I might as well just follow my heart.” And so the English singer-songwriter has: Walls, his solo debut, is electric pop-rock, triumphant in the face of tragedy—he writes with diaristic precision (the balladic ode to his late mother on “Two of Us” and the ’90s Britpop guitars on “Kill My Mind”) and consideration for his most ardent fans (the 1D-channelling “Don’t Let It Break Your Heart” and the life-affirming “Perfect Now”). In this track-by-track guide, Tomlinson opens up about Walls, revealing a side of himself previously undiscovered.

Kill My Mind

“That song was written for two reasons: One, I was listening to the album and it annoyed me that I didn't quite have that moment of excitement, and I think that song definitely evokes excitement. [Two,] it was a bit of a statement of intent. ‘This is where I want to be, this is the space I want to move into.’ But I'm aware that's a transition as well. I wasn't going to put ten ‘Kill my Minds’ on the album, because I don't think that would've been right.”

Don’t Let It Break Your Heart

“Straightway, that chorus reminds me of a big One Direction song. It's got that big, great, hopefully hooky chorus. In terms of concept, it almost sits in the same world as the Steve Aoki song I did, 'Just Hold On'. It's just one of those songs that's trying to promote hope regardless of what life throws at you.”

Two of Us

“I wasn't ready to write that song. The original lyric on the verse was ‘So I'll leave a message after the tone.’ And it always f**king bugs me, listening to it, because there's so much beauty in that song. Then I changed it to ‘So I'm not alone’, and I think that really captures the weight, emotionally, of the song. And that song is probably the most special song that I've ever written.”

We Made It

“I wrote ‘We Made It’ about three years ago, so I had about 20 different mixes. That took a second to get right, and we made it. Listen, I like the song, I like the song. Would I say it's one of my favourites? No, probably not. It was one of the record label’s favourites. So I kind of rolled the dice on that one, really. The strive for authenticity is a constant battle. That's something that I have to be strong on, as often as I can.”

Too Young

“I can remember that feeling of being 18 and meeting the person that you might spend the rest of your life with. We all made mistakes when we're younger, and I just wanted to capture that idea of true honesty. Look, I wasn't ready for that responsibility. And now I reflect, and I'm older, and I can look back with experience. I can see why that was wrong. But at the time, there's a lot of 18-year-olds—especially 18-year-old lads—they're not ready for that responsibility. I wanted to capture that.”

Walls

“We had an amazing moment for this song in London. I went down to record some live strings for ‘Walls’—that was a real f**king breakout moment for me, because there's been times on this album where I've been pretty frustrated and it's been hard to keep with the get-up-and-go because the creative process can get frustrating. But I had this moment, in this massive, amazing studio in London called Angel Studios, watching—I don't know how many people were there, but let's speculate 15, 18 people there for my song. I feel like the live strings on it really give it an extra edge of credibility.”

Habit

“It's got quite a storytelling lyric that I know hardcore One Direction fans will like: There's a line about the place that we all grew up with in the band, and that was an apartment complex called Princess Park. It's like an Easter egg for fans. I'm sure they'll like that.”

Always You

“It’s autobiographical, me making that realisation that it's always been that one person and that no matter what you do or what you see, you miss that person.”

Fearless

“What I wanted to try and capture with the song is the idea of feeling youthful and how important that is. I'm at this age where I'm on the cusp—I'm definitely not a teenager, I'm not a young lad anymore, nor am I old, but I sit in this space where I'm aware of my age now. I hear it as a playground or going back to real youth.”

Perfect Now

“I worked on this with Jamie Scott, who was part of the One Direction writing team. Lyrically, it's kind of an extension of ‘What Makes You Beautiful’, One Direction's first single. It was written quite deliberately as an attempt to write a fan favourite song. There is a long history of people coming out of bands and then talking s**t about that band. I absolutely f**king love One Direction. I love the music. I love the music that we made, the fans, the culture, and everything behind it. There are songs like ‘Kill My Mind’ and ‘Walls’ where I’m trying something different, but of course there’s always room for those [1D-like] songs on the album.”

Defenceless

“I’m trying to be vulnerable and I’m trying to be honest. I’m trying to write as many different feelings as I can. One day you might be feeling great, youthful and amazing, and the next day you might be feeling a little bit down in the dumps. I wanted to capture that.”

Only the Brave

“The crackly sound goes way beyond my production comprehension. The way the guitar was recorded, I don’t know. But what I love about that song is that it feels classic, like going back in time. It’s one of my favourite songs because it doesn’t have a traditional structure. You only really get the chorus once. You haven’t heard a song like that the whole record, and then you get it at the end. There’s something interesting about that.”

#300120 #apple music #quote #louis tomlinson #wpress

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seasurfacefullofclouds1 · 1 year

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Not just his music though Sea, if they are so concerned about that child why are they actively participating in the “exploitation” of that child? For their own entertainment? The best thing would be to ignore the existence of the child would it not be? That way there is no exploitation of the child? Don’t follow the family members, don’t engage in any discourse about Louis’ personal life. Imagine if they don’t get gossipy content, what else would they talk about?

Gossip is a normal part of fandom life, I suppose. But in Louis’ case, Larries should know that gossip doesn’t support ANYTHING.

Other artists have positive articles, album reviews, photo shoots, normal fans, concert reviews, radio play, festival circuits, fashion moments, red carpet moments. So gossip attracts attention but is a tiny part of the artist’s brand.

Very early in Louis’ solo career, in fact, before the career had any chance (in 2015), gossip about his paternity / sexuality was established as the PRIMARY thing about him as an artist. Syco and Sony gave the tabloids the very first stories about Louis “wildly partying” and becoming a dad. That was a very clear marketing decision.

Louis can talk until he’s blue in the face about his song production; it won’t make any difference until he can rebrand. (Why won’t he? Why can’t he? Why is Simon Jones still on the payroll?)

But let’s rewind. In 2015, Sony was marketing Louis’ paternity full blast, but who was the marketing for?

For One Direction, a boyband marketed as the guys being “always” available to fans? For One Direction, about to fold?

For Louis Tomlinson, who didn’t know 1D was about to end? And therefore had no plans for a solo career.

I’m asking one more time. Even if Louis is a dad (let’s assume yes), Larries are blaming Louis for a Sony marketing decision made in 2015, carried forward into 2016-17-18-19-20 with multiple syndicated articles about his paternity through the same tabloids — Daily Mail and The Sun in the UK, People in the USA.

Louis certainly knew he was a dad. The world already knew he was a dad.

So what was/is the marketing about?

Maybe the 1D boy that Sony signed for $80 million in 2016.

The guy who knew very well that 1D was done. That his three solo albums were being signed to Columbia/ Sony. That this decision had been made years before. And that “Larry Stylinson” was something that absolutely had to be extinguished before the solo career took off.

In the music business, and for Harry’s team (Sony/ FSM), it is ALWAYS about the money. Always follow the money trails.

#louis tomlinson #instead of blaming the beneficiary - Larries concentrate on the guy who bore the brunt of it all #of course.#they’ve been trained by astroturfers and older Larries #to remove Harry from any blame - and to hate ‘rads’ who talk about marketing #Harry deserves everything. Louis nothing. that’s basically the gist of Larries today

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liam-93-productions · 4 years

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Liam Payne has had a busy lockdown during the coranvirus pandemic. Not only has he been working on new music projects but he’s also helped to raise more than $10million (£7.9 million) for charities fighting COVID-19 just by playing the video game FIFA.

The Stack It Up singer joined premiership footballers and pro esports players to play FIFA 20 together online in the biggest esports charity event in history this week, with charity Gamers Without Borders raising money for COVID-19 relief.

In Liam’s match in the tournament, he played against Liverpool FC right-back Trent Alexander-Arnold. He may have lost his particular back-to-back matches, but “to be able to do that and make money for unfortunate people at the same time, what an absolute winner – it’s just absolutely amazing to be a part of it,” Liam said, at the event.

In his only exclusive interview during the event, Yahoo UK caught up with Liam to discover the celebrity he’s been practicing his FIFA skills with in lockdown, the secret music he’s been working on, his plans for TV domination, and what he’s most excited about for post-lockdown (...)

Yahoo UK: How have you been getting on in lockdown? Liam Payne: I think lockdown has been hard for everyone – but in so many different ways. I count my blessings everyday, I’m very aware of how lucky I am. My family and I all have our health and a safe place to stay, so I’m really grateful for that. I’ve been trying to use the time productively. I released a single during lockdown, so I’ve actually had a fair bit of work to do from home. I also donated to the Trussell Trust – a really important charity - and have been down to a food bank in London to help out.

Have you been working on any new music projects with this time at home? I’m always working on something new! There are lots of ideas going around my head at the moment and songs being written on my computer and phone.

Fans will be excited about that! When can we next expect new solo music? Soon!

You’ve been filming your own roundup show on YouTube each week during lockdown – would you be up for your own talk show on TV? I’d never say never! I’ve really enjoyed doing the YouTube videos, it’s been a great way for me to connect with my fans through this time.

Have you been keeping in touch your One Direction bandmates in lockdown? Have any 1D Zoom parties happened yet? Yes, we’ve all been in touch with each other – no Zoom parties as yet though.

You’ve just been part of the Gamers Without Borders charity FIFA tournament, raising more than $10million to fight COVID-19 – why was being part of the esports event important to you? We’re all just trying to do what we can to help, and this seemed like a really simple, and fun, way to raise some money.

(...)

Yahoo UK: Do you play much FIFA 20 at home? Who have you been practising your FIFA skills with? I wouldn’t say I’m an avid gamer – but I do like to play a bit. I recently played Alesso at FIFA as well, which was good fun.

What sort of FIFA player are you? The attacking players on FIFA are always really quick, so I like to play on the counter attack. When I get the ball I pass forward quickly and try and catch my opponent off guard.

Could you tell us your number one FIFA tip? My number one FIFA tip is to practice your timed finishing. If you practise your timed finishing on the game, it will help you score a lot more goals. It really improves your accuracy of shots.

Aside from the gameplay we love FIFA soundtracks... if you could compose the soundtrack for a video game, what would it be? I’m not sure which series, but it would have to have light and shade... some moody moments to add tension and some big electronic choruses for the celebrations.

#liam payne #yahoo uk #liam's interviews #15.06.2020

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transparenttriumphzombie · 3 years

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Harry Styles On Vogue

Source:

https://www.vogue.com/article/harry-styles-cover-december-2020/amp?__twitter_impression=true

From Vogue MAGAZINE

Playtime With Harry Styles

“There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never thought too much about what it means—it just becomes this extended part of creating something”

I ask her whether her brother had always been interested in clothes.

“He’s up for it,” confirms Lambert, who earlier this year, for instance, found a JW Anderson cardigan with the look of a Rubik’s Cube (“on sale at matchesfashion.com!”). Styles wore it, accessorized with his own pearl necklace, for a Today rehearsal in February and it went viral: His fans were soon knitting their own versions and posting the results on TikTok. Jonathan Anderson declared himself “so impressed and incredibly humbled by this trend” that he nimbly made the pattern available (complete with a YouTube tutorial) so that Styles’s fans could copy it for free. Meanwhile, London’s storied Victoria & Albert Museum has requested Styles’s original: an emblematic document of how people got creative during the COVID era. “It’s going to be in their permanent collection,” says Lambert exultantly. “Is that not sick? Is that not the most epic thing?”

“It’s pretty powerful and kind of extraordinary to see someone in his position redefining what it can mean to be a man with confidence,” says Olivia Wilde

Hairdresser Malcolm Edwards is setting Styles’s hair in a Victory roll with silver clips, and until it is combed out he resembles Kathryn Grayson with stubble. His fingers are freighted with rings, and “he has a new army of mini purses,” says Lambert, gesturing to an accessory table heaving with examples including a mini sky-blue Gucci Jackie bag discreetly monogrammed HS. Michele has also made Styles a dress for the shoot that Tissot might have liked to paint—acres of ice-blue ruffles, black Valenciennes lace, and suivez-moi, jeune homme ribbons. Erelong, Styles is gamely racing up a hill in it, dodging sheep scat, thistles, and shards of chalk, and striking a pose for Mitchell that manages to make ruffles a compelling new masculine proposition, just as Mr. Fish’s frothy white cotton dress—equal parts Romantic poet and Greek presidential guard—did for Mick Jagger when he wore it for The Rolling Stones’ free performance in Hyde Park in 1969, or as the suburban-mom floral housedress did for Kurt Cobain as he defined the iconoclastic grunge aesthetic. Styles is mischievously singing ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” to himself when Mitchell calls him outside to jump up and down on a trampoline in a Comme des Garçons buttoned wool kilt. “How did it look?” asks his sister when he comes in from the cold. “Divine,” says her brother in playful Lambert-speak.

#harry styles #non binary #men wearing dress #harry styles in dress #transgender #trans pride #transgender woman #dresses #men in dresses #dress

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louistomlinsoncouk · 4 years

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He became a bona-fide teen pop superstar as part of One Direction, then suffered unthinkable personal loss. Louis Tomlinson talks to Guy Kelly about fame, family and what comes next.

Louis Tomlinson took part in an online video recently, in which he was tasked with answering the internet’s most-searched questions about him. It was fairly tame, as you might expect of a pop quiz thrown at a pop star. ‘How do you pronounce Louis Tomlinson?’ the first read. There’s an interesting answer to that, actually, but we’ll come to it. ‘How old is Louis Tomlinson?’ was the second. He’s 28. And then came the third. ‘How is Louis Tomlinson?’

In the video, the man himself looks a little bewildered, dismissing the query as ‘random’ before moving on. But underneath, in the YouTube comments – one of the few nooks of the internet where love and goodwill still thrives – a fan repeated it. ‘“How is Louis Tomlinson,”’ they wrote, ‘the only question that matters.’ More than 7,000 people ��liked’ it.

Given all Tomlinson’s been through in the past four years, it seems reasonable to ask. In 2016, the band he’d been in man and boy, One Direction, went on an indefinite hiatus after six years. Since being welded together by Simon Cowell on The X Factor in 2010, ‘1D’ had enjoyed perhaps the most stratospheric rise in music (five platinum albums, four world tours) since The Beatles. It hadn’t been Tomlinson’s decision to break up the band, and he wasn’t – still isn’t – particularly happy about it.

In December of that year, his beloved mother, Johannah Deakin, died a few months after being diagnosed with leukaemia. She was 43. Tomlinson pressed on with his nascent solo career, but unimaginable tragedy struck again. In March 2019, his 18-year-old half-sister, Félicité, was found unconscious at her flat in London and couldn’t be revived. An inquest later found she had died of an accidental drug overdose. Again, he buckled down, looked after his remaining siblings, and committed himself to finishing his debut album.

Settling down with Tomlinson in the corner of a west London photo studio, then, it seems as good a place as any to start: how is he?

‘I’m good, mate, I’m feeling good,’ he says, spreading his arms across a sofa. After wearing a series of high-end outfits for our photo shoot (‘I never feel super-comfortable on shoots; I’ve got one f—king pose – moody’), he’s in a black ’90s-inspired collared jumper, black trousers and black trainers.

He pushes his fringe to one side. The Doncaster accent, which softened in his 1D days, is back to pure, unfettered South Yorks. It’s all ‘in t’band’, ‘I didn’t know owt’, and swearing like a navvy. He’s honest, funny, and if his feet were planted any more firmly on the ground he’d be unable to walk.

I tell him about the YouTube comment, which seems to reflect the genuine care his fans have for him.

‘Ah, yeah I know, they’re considerate, they are. We’ve got a special, interesting bond. They’ve grown up with me – and I’ve been through some personal stuff and they’ve always been there for me.’

Tomlinson’s album, Walls, has been a long time coming. Immediately after One Direction split, he released a couple of singles – dance-y pop collaborations – which were fine, but not what he wanted to make. Halfway through writing Walls he realised, ‘If I’m chasing radio with every song I write, I’m not going to be doing this job for very long.’

So he relaxed, and the result is a mix of strong, melody-driven pop of the kind One Direction mastered, and what Tomlinson is really into, namely guitar-driven indie and Britpop. Some songs for the fans; some nodding to the future.

‘It’s a five-album plan. There’s bits where I’ve been almost selfish, and bits where I’ve been respectful to the fan base and what they love listening to,’ he says. ‘Then the next will be a step closer to the stuff I want to make. But I’ve got to earn my stripes.’

The dominant theme, I say, appears to be resilience. On the single Don’t Let It Break Your Heart, he advises, ‘Even when it hurts like hell / Oh, whatever tears you apart / Don’t let it break your heart.’ On the rousing title track (which features a writing credit for Noel Gallagher, who gave his blessing for a chorus strikingly similar to an Oasis tune), he sings, ‘These high walls that broke my soul / I watched all come falling down.’

It could be to do with grief, professional struggles, or his relationship. He nods.

‘Yeah, I write very autobiographically and had so much going on in my head, but in the struggle I’m trying to paint the message that you’re always left with a choice: to see the glass half-full or half-empty. It’s showing there’s hope.’

Some songwriters have found grief productive, others paralysing. Tomlinson was the former. One track on Walls is the previously released Two of Us, a beautiful, simple song written about his mum (‘You’ll never know how much I miss you / The day that they took you, I wish it was me instead’).

‘What’s amazing about this job is that regardless of the situation, you get something positive at the end of it. That’s obviously an emotionally heavy song for me, but fans have come up to me in floods of tears and talked about how it’s helped in their own tragedy. It’s incredible. From the dark, you can give hope.’

For the first three years of his life, Tomlinson was raised alone by Johannah, who split from his father, Troy Austin, when he was a baby. They lived above a launderette in Doncaster, where his mother worked multiple jobs, principally as a midwife, before she married Mark Tomlinson, a van salesman who became Louis’s stepfather. The three moved into a two-up, two-down, which was soon filled with half-sisters: Lottie, now 21, Félicité, then twins Daisy and Phoebe, now 16.

‘It was mad. They’re manic, young girls…’ he says. ‘Mum and Mark had a decent income but they couldn’t spread it around [a family of] seven. At times things were really good, you’d get 20 quid in a birthday card, but others were really difficult. I remember the electricity meter – you’d get five quid on the house as an emergency when you couldn’t top it up. Sometimes it’d be a gamble when it’d run out…’

Tomlinson wasn’t particularly academic – ‘though I’m not daft or owt’ – but loved school. There, he joined a band at 16 and found he was OK at singing, so he applied to audition for The X Factor. He failed, twice, but succeeded on the third try, in 2010, performing a fairly terrible (he admits it) version of Plain White T’s Hey There Delilah.

A few months later, at the ‘bootcamp’ stage, Cowell had the idea of creating a band comprised of Tomlinson and four other solo boys: Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Liam Payne. They were to be called One Direction. Tomlinson, who’d been intimidated by the standard of other vocalists in the competition, ‘bit their hand off’ at the offer. ‘I was like, “This is my ticket.”’

The show came just after his second run at the first year of his A levels. He’d failed the first time, with UUE in psychology, PE and English, which his mum had ‘absolutely ripped [his] head off’ for. The second time he’d gone one better, UEE. So he lied, telling her he got a smattering of Ds, and came up with a plan.

‘I waited until after the X Factor final, when we were all sat around drinking champagne, and told her, “By the way, I bulls—tted you on those results. I failed again, but hopefully we’ll be all right now…”’ he laughs. ‘She was fine. I picked my moment well.’

One Direction came third in the final, losing to runner-up Rebecca Ferguson and winner Matt Cardle, a former painter-decorator who now performs in the West End. But it was always felt that the group would go furthest, not least because Cowell was such a supporter (all the other boys have now left his record label, Syco, but because ‘loyalty is the biggest thing’ for Tomlinson, he’s stayed).

Eighteen when the group started, Tomlinson was the oldest member (the others were 16 and 17), ‘just allowed to drink, just allowed to drive’, but suddenly everything in his life was controlled.

‘You’re ready to be reckless and stupid, but then I was in the band and couldn’t ever act like that, especially not publicly,’ he says. They went on their first headline concert tour in 2011, and soon had fans surrounding their hotels overnight, wherever in the world they went. Naturally, they embraced partying.

‘There was a good 18 months where I was going out all the time. The press love to write about that as if it’s this chaotic thing, and at times it was, but it’s also an escape. Once you have a couple of drinks down you in a club, you’re just someone in the club, part of everyone else, and not everyone is looking at you.’

Even when he was away, he kept in contact with his mum by phone – or in person, when she could join him – as much as possible. The two were impossibly close: she had access to his emails; he told her when he lost his virginity; she knew about his finances.

‘One thing I’ve learnt since losing her is that any decision, even if I knew the answer, I’d call her,’ he says. ‘I didn’t realise how reliant I’d become on her. That was the hardest thing for me, understanding that living life after meant making decisions on my own. I thought I’d always have a sounding board. There was a different level of credibility with my mum, because I idolised her.’

Styles has recently joked that One Direction were ‘grown in test tubes’ by Cowell, but Tomlinson insists that part of their appeal lay in the fact that they all had their own personalities and talents, which weren’t forced on them. Still, it took him years to know where he fitted. Styles was cool, a heart-throb. Malik was moody and mysterious. Horan was cute and Irish. Payne was whatever Payne was. But Tomlinson wasn’t sure.

‘You’ve got to be dead cocky in Doncaster to survive – it’s either that or be picked on. So I used to walk around with a chip on my shoulder. But I’d always been the funny guy, centre of attention, so I never struggled to make mates,’ he says. ‘It was weird suddenly being in a situation where one or two members are constantly in a better position. It took me a while to understand my strengths. I was the oldest and it wasn’t until the third album when I made it my mission to write the most.’

He succeeded: Tomlinson’s writing credit appears on 39 of the 96 songs One Direction recorded, four more than Payne and dozens more than the rest. But it was intense. There were times when he considered quitting the band, if only to allow him to escape the attention, but he likens that to children running away from home. ‘By the time you get halfway down the street you regret it and go back…’

‘Directioners’ were ‘fanatical’ about the boys, to a frequently absurd degree. And not every encounter was surreally funny. The year after the hiatus began, in 2017, Tomlinson and Calder were involved in a scuffle with paparazzi and fans at the airport in LA. Fists possibly flew, and Tomlinson was arrested, only for no further action to be taken. The fans now are still loyal, still ardent, but they’ve matured with him.

What kept him grounded, as the money rolled in (I have heard that each of the boys amassed a £40 million fortune from the band, and that collectively they still earn around £38,000 a week from royalties, merchandise and so on) and the fans bayed, was keeping friends from Doncaster around. When I arrived at today’s photo shoot, Tomlinson was busy doing his singular pose at one end of the room, while at the other, near the free pastries, a young redheaded bloke in a tracksuit lurked, scrolling through his phone.

He introduced himself as Oli, Tomlinson’s ‘mate from Donny’, who has spent the better part of a decade travelling the world with his pop-star friend, and seems to operate as a walking comfort blanket. They live together when Tomlinson’s in LA.

They also live together when he’s in London. I imagine there’s space for house guests wherever he is, though: it has been reported that he put his Hollywood Hills mansion on the market last year for $6.995 million, and the previous year valued another property in California at $13.999 million, after apparently renting it out for $40,000 per month.

‘I’m hoping to do a bit of work with Louis’s tour manager this year,’ Oli says, cheerfully. I later discover he’s so ever-present with Tomlinson that he even has his own fan accounts on social media.

‘I remember bringing a mate out for our first US tour. He called from his hotel with his mind blown by being able to pick up a phone and they’d just bring you food,’ Tomlinson says. ‘I go back to Donny and hear heavy s—t – struggles with jobs, money, family, health. That humbles me, and gives me a better emotional intelligence.’

He reckons ‘eight out of 10 people have an ulterior motive’ when they meet him. Luckily he can tell if someone’s a pre-fame friend. His name is pronounced ‘Loo-ee’, but he wasn’t keen on it as a child, so had mates, like Oli, pronounce it ‘Lewis’, which they still do. Unfortunately Cowell guessed at ‘Loo-ee’ on The X Factor, so that was that for the stage name.

By 2015, some members of One Direction felt an itch to break off – or just have a break – and try their own thing. Malik had gone in March, and while a full split seemed inevitable, Tomlinson was still caught off-guard.

‘I was f—king fuming at first. We were working really hard – people [namely, Payne] have said overworked, but we weren’t overworked, that’s just what happens when you’re a band that size, though I understand. I thought I’d mentally prepared myself for a break, but it hit me hard.’

He was finally feeling comfortable in the band, and hadn’t thought about a solo career.

‘About a week after, I sat there thinking, “Strike while the iron’s hot,” but I wasn’t ready. I was bitter and angry, I didn’t know why we couldn’t just carry on. But now, even though I don’t fully understand everyone’s individual reasons, I respect them.’

They’re ostensibly all still mates, despite going in radically different musical directions, though some are closer than others. Tomlinson seems to mention Horan with most affection, and the pair performed at the same event in Mexico in November, titillating 1D fans by sound-checking together with one of the band’s old songs.

If it was up to you, I ask, would the group still be going? He considers this for a moment.

‘It if was up to me, yeah. I’d maybe have said, “Let’s have a year off.” But yeah, probably. I’m sure there’s a better analogy out there but it’s a bit like [shutting down] Coca-Cola. You don’t say, “Right, let’s hang the boots up on that,” because it’s a massive thing.’

Afterwards he muddled around for a bit, including releasing those early singles – one of which he performed on The X Factor, rigid with grief, just days after his mum’s death. Then he returned to the show last year as a judge, alongside Cowell, Robbie Williams and Williams’s wife, Ayda Field.

Did he get on with Robbie? He smiles, arching an eyebrow. ‘Why do you ask?’ Well, he came out of a boy band, went solo…

‘Oh, yeah, he was all right. He’s a good man, we were just different from each other. Certain moments I thought, “F—king hell, Robbie, just sit down for five minutes, I’ve got something to say.” I love his missus though, Ayda, she’s sound.’

Tomlinson liked mentoring, and during our conversation it becomes clear he’s fuelled by responsibility. He was the oldest sibling in his house, and although Mark Tomlinson and Johannah’s second husband (after divorcing Mark in 2011, she married Dan Deakin in 2014; they had twins Ernest and Doris) are still around, he became a paternal figure after she died. He’s particularly involved in the lives of Daisy and Phoebe, to whom he’s ‘a kind of second parent’.

‘Without being too soppy, I like looking after people, it’s cool. At the moment I’m stressing trying to convince Daisy and Phoebe to go to sixth form. They’ve been to private school near Donny, and it’s proper expensive. I’m paying for it thinking they’re staying on, but now they don’t want to go. I told them education is important. I’m like, “You’re 16, you haven’t got a f—king idea what the real world is,”’ he says.

‘What’s difficult about those two is they’ve only known the 1D craziness. They’ve grown up in this elitist way, which is very different from my upbringing and Lottie’s, and the values my mum taught us.’

He gives a ‘kids, eh?’ sigh. ‘Consistency is the big thing. I’m trying to get better at being in their heads enough so they think, “I wonder if Louis thinks this is a good idea?”’

Lottie lives in Hackney, east London. When she was a teenager, Tomlinson got her a job assisting One Direction’s make-up artist, and within a few years she’d become a ridiculously popular Instagrammer (currently with 3.4 million followers, still 10 million shy of Louis). Her big brother told her Instagram’s fine, but she must ‘become a proper businesswoman’ in case the bubble bursts. In 2018 she launched Tanologist, a successful fake-tan brand.

‘I’m so proud of her. She’s just been in Australia, where she’s stocked in Melbourne’s version of Boots!’ Tomlinson says, beaming.

Félicité, known to the family as Fizz, was also a budding Instagrammer. After her death last March, a post-mortem revealed ‘toxic’ levels of anti-anxiety and pain medications, as well as cocaine, in her blood. Six months later, an inquest heard that she had visited her GP in August 2018 and ‘gave a history of recreational drug use… on a consistent basis since the death of her mother’. She had taken overdoses and been admitted to a rehabilitation clinic.

Tomlinson hesitates to say anything was ‘easier’, comparing the deaths of Félicité and his mum, as ‘both felt very individual, and hit me with a big impact… but I think dealing with the family, how I can be there for them, that was a lot easier the second time because the first time I was grieving and didn’t know what to say. As time went on I grew to understand what to say to my sisters.’

Prioritising the feelings of your sisters in the immediate aftermath is understandable, I say, but I wonder if anyone took care of you. He looks surprised.

‘No, but friends and family, my best mate… I feel their support but I get most out of doing stuff for other people. I don’t say that to sound like a good guy, it’s genuinely what gives me strength.’

Did you ever consider grief therapy?

‘Nah, a lot of people recommended it but I’m a little bit old-fashioned when it comes to therapy. I’m sure it’s incredible, but I thought I’d be all right, and I have been till now.’ One of his many tattoos consists of the words ‘It Is What It Is’ across his chest. ‘I know the things I’ve been upset about in my life are s—t, but I can’t change them, so you have to make the best of what you’ve got.’

Tomlinson gives his own big smile. Our time’s nearly up, and he’d like a cigarette. After all you’ve been through, I tell him, people would have understood if you’d called it a day. You could have lived off royalties, enjoyed a quiet life.

‘Definitely, definitely. But do you know what? It didn’t cross my mind once. I somehow have an inability to worry, and just get on with things,’ he says, shrugging. ‘It’s definitely made me stronger. I’ve gone through every emotion, and I’m just f—king excited now.’

I think we have an answer. How is Louis Tomlinson? Hopefully, he’ll be just fine.

Walls is released on 31 January

#some things have been removed #louis tomlinson #17jan20

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elceeu2morrow · 4 years

Link

By Guy Kelly 17 JANUARY 2020 • 8:00PM

He became a bona-fide teen pop superstar as part of One Direction, then suffered unthinkable personal loss. Louis Tomlinson talks to Guy Kelly about fame, family and what comes next.

[complete article below the cut]

Settling down with Tomlinson in the corner of a west London photo studio, then, it seems as good a place as any to start: how is he?

I tell him about the YouTube comment, which seems to reflect the genuine care his fans have for him.

It could be to do with grief, professional struggles, or his relationship – he’s happily with his girlfriend, 27-year-old fashion blogger Eleanor Calder, but they’ve been on and off over the years. He nods.

Eighteen when the group started, Tomlinson was the oldest member (the others were 16 and 17), ‘just allowed to drink, just allowed to drive’, but suddenly everything in his life was controlled.

They also live together when he’s in London, along with Calder, to whom it was recently reported that Tomlinson is engaged (his representatives denied the rumour). I imagine there’s space for house guests wherever he is, though: it has been reported that he put his Hollywood Hills mansion on the market last year for $6.995 million, and the previous year valued another property in California at $13.999 million, after apparently renting it out for $40,000 per month.

He was finally feeling comfortable in the band, and hadn’t thought about a solo career.

If it was up to you, I ask, would the group still be going? He considers this for a moment.

Did he get on with Robbie? He smiles, arching an eyebrow. ‘Why do you ask?’ Well, he came out of a boy band, went solo…

He gives a ‘kids, eh?’ sigh. ‘Consistency is the big thing. I’m trying to get better at being in their heads enough so they think, “I wonder if Louis thinks this is a good idea?”’

‘I’m so proud of her. She’s just been in Australia, where she’s stocked in Melbourne’s version of Boots!’ Tomlinson says, beaming.

Prioritising the feelings of your sisters in the immediate aftermath is understandable, I say, but I wonder if anyone took care of you. He looks surprised.

‘No, but friends and family, my best mate, my girlfriend, my son… I feel their support but I get most out of doing stuff for other people. I don’t say that to sound like a good guy, it’s genuinely what gives me strength.’

Did you ever consider grief therapy?

What he’s got is an album to launch, a world tour to prep for and, immediately, a flight to catch. He and Oli are off to see Freddie. ‘When I’m working I definitely don’t see him enough,’ Tomlinson says, ‘but he looks just like me, which is cool. I’m excited to see his big smile.’

I think we have an answer. How is Louis Tomlinson? Hopefully, he’ll be just fine.

Walls is released on 31 January

#unedited #lt interview #lt news #telegraph 2020 #1.17.20 #walls promo #elounor 2.0 #baby stunt #rip jay #rip fizzy #family #oli #1d mention #who's taking care of you #paying for the twins #being a parent

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