#he already had hurdles to conquer when the band ended

[dearly]

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#anyone who thinks aborting louis' solo launch 3 months in #only to postpone it by 1+year only to guest on a dying exploitative geographically limited show #was in any way a good idea #has 0 working brain cells and 0 interest in louis having a sustainable career #i don't know what kind of brainwashed you've been if you think that #losing momentum and going silent #is in any way helpful or good #he already had hurdles to conquer when the band ended #and this break and XF stint has made those hurdles x5 bigger #he has more than just the boyband stigma now #and he's STILL under the label that gives NO SHITS about him #ZERO #and has made ZERO effort to promote him #honestly fuck off with your braindead bullshit #ETA and that's not because i think louis is a 'poor dumbdumb who doesn't know what's best' #it's because i'm very aware of how these big music corporations work #how they've abused and derailed and erased so many other artists #so many people who had more clout and more money and more support than louis has #and yet it's considered an impossibility? #it's considered a 'victimization' to say that all things considered it looks like he's fine? #when he objectively straight up is not? #the fucking syco ceo doesn't even know a louis #but let's trust that he's working his sbb magic y'all! #it was his plan all along!!!!!!!!

[kingstylesdaily]

Why Harry Styles Just Scored His First No. 1 Song

Like any boy band alumnus, he first had to overcome radio’s bias against teen heartthrobs.

Late summer is a great time for sleeper hits: songs that have been hanging around the charts for months and finally hit their stride. Four years ago, in August 2016, Sia’s “Cheap Thrills” reached No. 1 after knocking around the charts since the prior winter, getting its final boost from a Sean Paul remix. In September 2018, Maroon 5’s year-old “Girls Like You” slipped into the top slot after wafting around the Top 10 for more than four months, with a Cardi B verse putting it over the edge. Last year around Labor Day, Lizzo finally topped the Hot 100 with “Truth Hurts,” a song that was two years old and had been rising gradually on the chart since the spring.

This year’s sleeper hit is “Watermelon Sugar,” a wisp of a song by boy bander–turned–self-styled rock star Harry Styles. With a name inspired by Richard Brautigan’s hippie-era, post-apocalyptic novella In Watermelon Sugar, Styles’ lackadaisical tune is not only a sleeper but a grower, the sort of hit that sneaks up on you—I wasn’t sure it even had a fully written chorus the first time I heard it, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. Indeed, the whole nation took its time deciding that this quirky ditty would give the starriest, most eccentric member of One Direction his first-ever U.S. chart-topper.

“Watermelon Sugar” is the third single promoted from Styles’ second solo album Fine Line, which was released last December. That alone is remarkable, given the challenge in the digital age of generating chart interest in anything other than an album’s first couple of singles. Generally, in an era when all of an album’s songs are available to be consumed the day the album drops, you need a remix or a special guest of some kind to gin up chart action months after the song first hits streaming. “Sugar” has none of those. To be sure, there was some gimmickry fueling the song’s leap to the top, albeit of an old-fashioned kind: The song had its best week of sales ever thanks to an assortment of limited-edition vinyl and cassette singles that came bundled with a digital download. Those sales got “Sugar” the last mile on the charts, but Columbia Records wouldn’t have put the physical goods on sale if the song wasn’t already a radio smash—“Sugar” currently has the second-biggest U.S. airplay audience—and they knew they had an opening between current hits by Taylor Swift and a pair of lascivious female rappers I’ll almost certainly be writing about in this space next week. So, fair play to Team Harry: They took advantage of an open chart window, a tactic as old as the Hot 100 itself.

As “Sugar” leaps from No. 7 to No. 1 on the Hot 100 this week—essentially switching places with his ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift’s “Cardigan,” which falls to No. 8—Styles scores only the second-ever chart-topper by a member of One Direction. That includes all of the hits by 1D itself. In its five years of recording, from 2011 through 2015, the band never scored a Hot 100 No. 1. This despite topping the Billboard 200 album chart with its first four studio albums, the only group in history to launch a career with that haul. So … what was that other 1D-affiliated Hot 100–topper I mentioned? It was by ex-member Zayn Malik, the only member to break from the crew while it was still active. Zayn’s smoldering, Weeknd-esque boudoir jam “Pillowtalk” debuted at No. 1—and spent a solitary week there—in the winter of 2016, fueled by blockbuster streams and downloads ginned up by 1D superfans still mourning his departure the prior year and the group’s resulting, presumably permanent hiatus.

Explaining how the top-selling boy band of the 2010s could shift so many CDs and downloads but generate only two No. 1 singles means briefly recapping the fraught history of boy bands and the charts. Selling albums has never been hard for pinup pop groups, since the days of Meet the Beatles! and More of the Monkees. And in the ’70s and ’80s, such precision sing-and-dance troupes as the Jackson 5, the Osmonds, and New Edition managed to generate both gold albums and chart-conquering singles. In 1989, New Kids on the Block had the year’s second-biggest album and four of the year’s top singles, including a pair of No. 1s. But starting in the ’90s, as U.S. radio networks consolidated (fueled by the 1996 Telecommunications Act) and programmers more narrowly targeted specific demographics, radio stations shied away from maximalist teen-pop that appealed primarily to under-18 audiences. By the end of that decade, even as boy bands were enjoying a new wave of TRL-fueled popularity, radio became a chart handicap for them. The Backstreet Boys and ’N Sync had the top-selling albums of 1999 and 2000, respectively—the diamond-selling Millennium and No Strings Attached—but only scored a solitary Hot 100 topper between them, ’N Sync’s “It’s Gonna Be Me.” (Backstreet never hit No. 1: The deathless “I Want It That Way” peaked at No. 6.)

This radio bias against boy bands has persisted into the 21st century. And ever since the Hot 100 went digital about a decade and a half ago, teen-pop’s chart placements have been the result of a battle between rabid downloaders and radio gatekeepers—massive digital sales compensating for modest radio play. For example, radio was what kept the Jonas Brothers from scoring any chart-topping hits during their original wave of teen idoldom; their biggest hit of the ’00s, the No. 5 hit “Burnin’ Up,” sold 2 million downloads but only ranked 55th at U.S. radio. By the ’10s, the same fate befell one-man boy band Justin Bieber. In this long-running Slate series, I have chronicled the blow-by-blow between Justin Bieber and radio programmers that swung from Justin as hit-starved teen idol in the early ’10s to dominant young-adult chart-dominator in the late ’10s. In the early ’10s period, Bieber was a YouTube and iTunes demigod with not a single radio smash to his name. He could sell a half-million downloads of “Boyfriend” in a week and still fall short of the No. 1 spot, thanks (no thanks) to radio.

For One Direction, the chart patterns were the same. A Frankenstein’s monster that Simon Cowell famously threw together in 2010 on his televised competition The X Factor from five solo competitors—Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson—1D continually found its singles dragged down on the Hot 100 by radio, even as the band sold truckloads of albums. The pattern was set in fall 2012 when “Live While We’re Young” debuted with a staggering 341,000 downloads but could only get to No. 3 on the Hot 100, thanks to its 50th-ranked radio airplay. In the summer of 2013, the slyly Who-interpolating “Best Song Ever” became 1D’s highest-charting hit ever, debuting at No. 2 with record video views and near-record downloads, but at radio it never got past No. 53. “Story of My Life” (No. 6, 2014), “Drag Me Down” (No. 3, 2015)—no matter how many downloads sold or videos viewed, 1D could never top the Hot 100 so long as its radio spins remained limited.

The reason I’m running down all of this granular chart data is it reveals the hurdles both 1D and its post-breakup soloists had to overcome to top the Hot 100. Like Justin Bieber, they had to become credible radio fodder with adults as well as kids. With his early break from the group, Zayn was the first to pull this off. Though “Pillowtalk” debuted at No. 1 largely due to massive sales and streams, the carnal song did eventually become a No. 4–ranked airplay hit. Cleverly, Zayn had chosen a then-current EDM-inflected R&B mode and dropped his debut while the Weeknd was between albums. Other former 1D-ers have had their share of solid radio hits, including Liam Payne’s hip-hop–inflected “Strip That Down” featuring Quavo of Migos (No. 10 on the Hot 100, No. 4 on Radio Songs) and Niall Horan’s softly bopping pop jam “Slow Hands” (No. 11 Hot 100, No. 2 Radio Songs).

And Harry Styles? He decided to make things harder on himself. His 2017 debut album was chockablock with old-school classic rock. This would be like launching a career in 1964 with big-band jazz. While Styles’ fame ensured a big launch for his Bowie-esque single “Sign of the Times”—it opened, and peaked, at No. 4 on the Hot 100, fueled by strong downloads—radio showed only moderate interest. It eventually reached a modest No. 21 on the airplay chart. Later Harry singles like the twangy “Two Ghosts” and the thrashy “Kiwi” missed the Hot 100 and had little radio profile beyond a handful of pure-pop stations that were loyal to Styles from his 1D days. One admired Harry for following his artistic muse—more Joni Mitchell than Justin Bieber—but as a pop star, he arguably squandered his momentum coming out of One Direction.

What has made Fine Line, Styles’ sophomore album, such a clever left turn is he retained the rock flavor he naturally gravitates toward but converted it into mellow California-style surf-pop, and he let his production team—Tyler Johnson and Thomas “Kid Harpoon” Hull—fashion the songs into percolating radio jams. Each single has opened the door a bit wider: “Lights Up,” a No. 17 last October, is lightly strummed beach music with ethereal backing vocals. And “Adore You,” a No. 6 hit in April (for my money, still Styles’ best single), is thumping electropop. “Adore” in particular served as Styles’ entrée onto radio’s A-list—it reached No. 1 on mainstream Top 40 stations and No. 2 on Radio Songs by early summer.

With this beachhead established, Harry was finally free to let his freak flag fly with “Watermelon Sugar,” which is simultaneously his oddest single and his most infectious. The chorus consists of nothing more than the line “Watermelon sugar high” repeated a half-dozen or more times, with emphasis on the “HIGH.” (TikTok users have keyed into this idiosyncrasy, sharing videos in which the “high” gets its own video edit of the user playacting her best stoner face.) Last November, when Styles did double-duty hosting and singing on Saturday Night Live, “Sugar” was one of the songs he performed, and in that indoor setting, it came off as willfully quirky and seasonally incongruous; the song’s first verse line is “Tastes like strawberries on a summer evenin’.” Now, timed for 2020’s beach season—complete with a video filled with beautiful people on the shore, shot just before the pandemic and, according to a title card, “dedicated to touching”—it’s sitting atop the hit parade.

In short, Harry Styles finally has a profile on the radio and on the Hot 100 that matches his profile on magazine covers, and he achieved it on his own schedule and something like his own terms. Like John Lennon in the ’70s—the founder and nominal leader of the Beatles but the last former Fab to reach the toppermost of the poppermost as a solo artist—Styles just had to find his own way. As that onetime teen heartthrob sang, “Whatever gets you to the light, it’s all right.”

source: Slate

#kingstylesdaily #harry styles #hs: watermelon sugar #august 2020

[n3rdlif343va]

Because I love your Isabella from bmcy!, Isabella and high heels please! Does she love them or hate them? ( for the birthday game.)

I love you for prompting me to indulge in my cheesy love for Isabella, especially as Yuuri’s best friend in Be my chef, Yuuri. Consider this little one-shot as a side fic to the next chapter of I now pronounce you Dorks in Lovewhich should be out any day now… if I can get my act together ha ha

I only have one prompt left pending in the Nerd Birthday Game !! I will post my answer to that one sometime tomorrow night ;) Alright, I hope you enjoy this @artdefines06!! (It ended up almost 2,000 words because really, what is self-control and how do I get some??? so there is a cut because of length)

The bedroom was bathed in the softmorning light, spectacular diamonds dancing over the blue carpet as sunbeamsshone through the parted curtains. On the dresser the kitten who had invadedtheir hearts only a week ago, was batting Isabella’s hair ties onto the ground.Through the thin wood of the bathroom door came the sounds of running water,mixed with JJ’s boisterous singing voice. Tilting her head, Isabella listenedfor a moment before losing herself in giggles over JJ’s exaggeratednineties rock band persona.

Dragging a brush through her wethair, Isabella winced as the tangles were pulled into smooth strands. Her usuallight makeup was already in place and her pink shirt was neatly tucked into thewaistband of her pleated skirt. Locating shoes and wrapping presents were thelast hurdles to conquer before leaving for the party, and she flipped her phoneover to check the time. They had plenty to spare, even if getting JJ out of thehouse would be more like a long distance run while wearing a parachute than ashort sprint.

Giggling at her own thoughts,Isabella reached over the bed to retrieve the cardboard envelope whichcontained her printed pictures. Leaning over her knees, she snagged the pictureframes stacked on the corner of the bed. Carefully, she withdrew the two picturesfrom their envelope and set the second one aside.

Flipping the first of the twomatching frames over, Isabella pulled the backing away and gently slid thepicture into place. Pinching the metal brackets, she hummed to herself, pleasedwith her idea. Turning the frame over, her grin grew wider as she examined theflawlessly framed picture in her lap.

The beach of St. Petersburg loomed inthe background as Victor’s figure stood framed by the ocean. Splashing in thebackground were the rest of their friends, arms waving to beckon Victor to jointhem. Sun glistening off of his bare shoulders, Victor held his hair back fromhis face with one hand as the other rested on his hip. Cheerful smile andrelaxed eyes exemplified every bit of the happy-go-lucky guy Victor had oncebeen and now was as he smiled toward Yuuri from the water’s edge.

That joy had disappeared in themonths following the death of his parents. Isabella could distinctly rememberthe stoicly stern face, pointing directly toward the matching urns at the frontof the church. As the priest spoke the final prayers, the shadow remained overVictor, robbing him of the easy happiness that normally danced around him.

A happiness that would finally returnfour months later with the sudden appearance of Chef Yuuri Katsuki.

Setting the first picture aside,Isabella repeated the process with her second picture. It wasn’t nearly asartistic as the shot she had snapped of Victor, but there was a playful spiritto it, a reflection of the fun and laughter that Yuuri brought into all oftheir lives. Victor had gained a partner in love and life, but Isabella hadgained a best friend and the brother she always wanted. Humming louder,Isabella slipped both frames into their respective bags as she fondly recalledthe photographed day with Yuuri.

“Bells,” Yuuri hissed, grabbing herarm with an alarmed look, “this is a shoe store.” There was a wild look in hiseyes that told Isabella that Yuuri hadn’t heard a word she had said on thephone.

“I asked you to come shoe shoppingwith me!” Isabella giggled, threading her arms around Yuuri’s and pouting up athim. “You aren’t going to make me pick out my wedding shoes by myself are you?”Fluttering her eyelashes, she watched as Yuuri’s resistance cracked and thesmile broke onto his face.

“I didn’t listen again, did I?” Hesheepishly stared at his feet, scratching at the back of his head. The pink onYuuri’s cheeks made him look younger than his chronological years, and Isabelladidn’t resist the urge to ruffle his hair. When he let out a relieved chuckle,she continued to tug him to the back corner of the store.

There were rows and rows of whitebridal shoes ranging from the highestheels to the flattest soles. Intricate lace, confusing beads, and shinysatin covered each pair of delicate footwear that Isabella passed without asecond glance. Letting Yuuri’s arm fall away from her, Isabella bent toretrieve a box from the bottom shelf.

“Blue?” Yuuri questioned, raising aneyebrow while extracting one of the shoes from the box. “That’s a thing, right?Something blue?” He gently flipped the royal blue shoe in his hands, smilingwhen he dropped it back in the box.

“It’s a thing,” Isabella laughed,turning to place the shoe box on the nearest bench, feeling slightly proud thatYuuri had retained some of the inane wedding knowledge she had been shoving athim. “I want blue shoes. Could you help me find all the options? Size six.” Yankinganother box from the shelf, Isabella crinkled her nose and shoved them backinto place. She wanted to wear heels for her wedding, not look like a hooker.

For fifteen minutes, they scoured allthe shelves, pulling down every pair of blue dress shoes that they could find.Yuuri had jokingly shown Isabella a pair of blue tennis shoes, and laughed whenIsabella had taken his suggestion of blue flip flops seriously. The sparkly thong sandals were already resting against her purse, ready to be purchasedeven if nothing else was found.

“Can I help you?” The smiling saleswoman approached the ever growing shoe wall with a glance between Yuuri andIsabella.

“Uh, wedding shoes,” Yuuri answered,his eyes trailing to Isabella. She winked at him as she examined her feet inthe full length mirror.

“Bride and Groom?” cheerfullyinquired the woman, stepping forward to slip another box from the wall andadding it to Isabella’s pile. She startled when Yuuri and Isabella burst intolaughter.

“Bride!” Isabella pointed to herself,the giggles still coming as she watched Yuuri struggle with his own. “Brother,”she said pointing at Yuuri and watching the joy spread over his face. Everytime she used the word to describe him, there was a spark that flashed in hisbrown eyes. It made her heart sing knowing that their relationship was asimportant to Yuuri as it was to her.

Stepping around Isabella’s side, thesaleswoman continued to politely smile. “Well, may I offer you a glass ofchampagne? It is a little something we usually do for the brides trying ondresses, but the shop is empty today so someone should enjoy it.”

Shrugging at each other in acceptance,Isabella nodded her head in the woman’s direction. “I guess a little champagnewouldn’t hurt!” Flicking the shoes off of her feet, she shrugged again in Yuuri’sdirection as the saleswoman left to collect their bubbly refreshment. Yuurichuckled and tossed another shoebox into Isabella’s waiting arms.

As it turned out, champagne and shoeshopping had a more entertaining result than Isabella had expected. Halfwaythrough the bottle, which was mistakenly left with them as the store employeereturned to her spot to lazily scroll through her phone, Isabella was yankingYuuri’s shoes from his feet as they both giggled wildly. Shoving the impossiblyhigh heeled dress shoe onto Yuuri’s foot, Isabella paused to stare up at herbest friend. “Why do your feet look better in heels than mine do?!” her voicehad a squeaky pout to it and Isabella laughed into the back of her hand at thesound. “This is really not fair!” Shoving the other shoe onto Yuuri’s foot,Isabella stood and pulled Yuuri to her side.

“I can walk in them too,” Yuuriteased, bending to roll his pants legs slightly higher on his calves beforestanding to strike a pose. Lightly kicking boxes out of his path, Yuuri put onehand on his hip and strode down the aisle like it was a catwalk.

Isabella howled with laughter,dropping her weight onto the shelf for support. Yuuri had consumed enoughalcohol to be sassy, but not enough to fall on his ass, and the result was anamazing strut that Isabella had to commit to record. Slipping her phone fromher back pocket, she aimed the camera at Yuuri as he was beginning his walkback over the carpet. She snapped several stills as the video was running,praying that her giggles wouldn’t make the pictures blurry.

“Like what you see, pretty lady?”Yuuri pretended to lean toward Isabella, his attempts to sound pretend sexy were ruined by the giggles that bubbled from his throat.

She caught Yuuri as he stumbled, bothof them toppling onto the nearest bench and leaning on each other as the laughtertook over. There was no one in her life, including JJ, who could make Isabellalaugh as hard as Yuuri could. Tossing an arm around Yuuri’s waist, Isabellaleaned her head onto his shoulder. “I picked out my shoes four pairs ago,” sheadmitted casually, clicking the toes together of the patented leather monstrosities currently strapped to her feet. “I’m glad I waited to tell you untilafter the floor show though!”

Her peels of laughter caused thesaleswoman to slide from the stool in shock as Yuuri began to poke Isabella inthe sides. “Whatever, I am going to buy these shoes and wear them to therestaurant,” Yuuri tried to look serious as he slipped the shoes from his feetand back into the box.

“Victor would die a thousand deaths,”Isabella deadpanned, grabbing the shoes from Yuuri’s hands. “If I buy them, youhave to wear them, even for five minutes. Deal?” Sticking her hand out, shenarrowed her eyes at Yuuri in challenge. When he grasped her hand, Isabellahooted in triumph and retrieved her own wedding shoes. The extra thirty dollarson the strappy stiletto sandals was going to be more than worth it.

The sound of the bathroom door openinghad Isabella returning from her trip down memory lane. Smiling as JJ saunteredin the room, still shirtless with his feet bare, she shook her head at herlovable husband. “JJ…” Isabella warned as he leaned over the bed to kiss her, “youneed to get dressed so we won’t be late.” Feeling him chuckle against her lips,she raised a hand to touch his cheek. “Come on, love,” she emphasized eachword with a kiss to his lips. Smiling as JJ returned to a standing position,Isabella unfolded herself from the bed and leaned her presents against thepillow.

“What did you get them?” JJ pulled ashirt from the closet and slipped it over his shoulders before working at hisbuttons.

“Nothing big,” Isabella smiled at thebright bags as she slipped on her shoes, “something simple. A reminder really.”Even though JJ gave her a weird look, Isabella didn’t clarify. She knew whenVictor and Yuuri opened their respective bags, they would both find the beautyand the humor in pictures, a small reflection of the magnitude of theirrelationship. Yuuri brought the lost light back into Victor’s eyes and Victorbrought the laughter into Yuuri’s; they balanced each other and brought thebest of each other to the surface. Smiling up at her own loving half, Isabellatook JJ’s offered hand as they set out to celebrate the bachelor party of theirfavorite dorks in love.

#fyeahyoi #victuuriwriters #victuuri #yoi #yuri on ice #bmcy #nerd birthday #I hope you like this!