Not really ever spoke about it in depth like this.
Nothing prepares you in life for those kind of situations.
But I felt like I'd failed at the time.
That's the truth.
And it's still something that I'm unpacking still, to be honest.
Louis, we spoke to your sister, Lottie, about this.
Would you like to see it?
I didn't spend my life as a young lad thinking I was going to be a singer.
I grew up in a working class town.
Seven of us living in a three bed house.
My mum used to work a lot of nights.
She had to play dad as well.
So I would have to get my sisters ready for school.
So people in Doncaster didn't get those opportunities.
And then the X Factor came along.
I auditioned three times.
The first time I failed, the second time I failed.
I remember thinking, this is utterly crushing.
Just sobbing to me more.
But she made me feel like I could do anything.
So instead of running away, it was like, I know I deserve it.
I know I can.
So how do I relearn confidence and go for a third time?
When I think about what happened in the preceding five or six years, it is crazy.
Yeah.
And the toughest thing to deal with is just the lack of normality.
And part of growing up in a working class town, I have this guilt for the success and money that I've earned.
And then personal worth within the band, I really, really struggled with.
But you co-wrote 15 platinum singles.
But I wanted to do more.
But mostly for me, I didn't realize the value of family time.
And the more time I spent at the band, the more time I spent away from home.
Like two of my sisters who are identical twins.
I've never told them this, but I wasn't confident enough to tell them apart.
That shows just how little I was at home.
And then it ends.
And what was really strange was being 24 years old, realizing that the only way is down from it.
Louis, there's so many things that happened in your life.
How does a young man grieve?
It's not really something I speak loads about, but I'm happy to because I cannot have that define me.
The floor is yours.
Just give me 30 seconds of your time.
Two things I wanted to say.
The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week.
It means the world to all of us.
And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place.
But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started.
And if you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24 of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app.
Here's a promise I'm going to make to you.
I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future.
We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to.
And we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about the show.
Thank you.
Louis, to understand you, what is the earliest context that I need?
Something that played a massive role for me in my life was the fact that maybe for the first four or five years of my life, it was just me and my mum.
My first proper memories are just kind of having really nice and warm and really emotional conversations with my mum.
I think something that I'm kind of proud of is that I'm, I'm.
I find it easy to be emotional and I kind of like talking about my feelings and I like getting into conversation with the people about that.
And that was definitely something that she instilled in me from from like a really young age and something that still definitely really helps me today especially, you know, navigating through the life.
Like I have those kinds of things have been able to talk about your emotions and your feelings like vitally important actually for the job that I do mentally, you know.
So your, your father wasn't around.
He, your biological father left soon after you were born.
Yeah, it's not really something I speak loads about, but I'm happy to.
Yeah, he wasn't involved in my life at all.
I've met him like three times ever.
So your mother played, I guess, several roles in your life.
Yeah, my mum was always really good at that.
I think she realised the fact that my dad wasn't going to be around, that she had to play dad as well.
And she had this kind of mischievous instinct in her mum and definitely kind of inspired some of that.
And part of that was her being her, but part of that was also trying to play that kind of dad role, you know, where you kind of lark about and encouraged to do kind of silly things that aren't going to hurt, you know.
She was just, like, I could get emotional.
She's just the best woman I ever knew, definitely.
And also just I feel so vitally like lucky to be able to have her as my mentor, because she just everything that I look to in, like friends and partners, et cetera.
They're the kind of things that she embodied really.
And you had siblings.
Yeah.
Lots of them.
And the more I've thought about that as I've got a bit older, it's because I just never had an opportunity to be when I was young.
When you live in a house that, you know, it's three bedroom, there's seven people living in it.
You're literally all living on top of each other.
And I loved that.
Like it was like one of the best things that ever happened to me being an older brother.
Like I just, it's just, it's like one of the definitions of my purpose, I would say.
I just like to look after people, man.
So like being an older brother is like a role I feel like I was always supposed to do.
And then I think even you know, as we move through life and a couple of things got more challenging, that role has become more prevalent, definitely.
I was fortunate enough to speak to quite a few people that have known you over the years.
I heard.
That was cool.
That was cool.
Yeah.
And I was just listening to some of the recordings of those conversations.
Like Nizam.
Yeah.
He's your childhood best friend.
Yeah.
Cal, who's your photographer and videographer.
Yeah.
Love Cal.
Throughout the years.
And Lottie, who's your youngest sister, six years younger.
Mm-hmm.
And it's interesting that one of the things they all came back to is that you really haven't changed.
I appreciate that.
But that's what they said.
Your best friend from childhood said that's one of the most remarkable things, that you're still made out of the same stuff and you've never turned around and thought you were anything more than you were back then, when he knew you.
And that's one thing I love about him, you know, as a friend.
I've never said this to his face.
But, you know, he's a real guy.
Like, you know, he's never turned around to us and never said, oh, I'm this big shot now.
Or that ego, you know, that's never played and he's never been embarrassed of us.
He's a real guy. it's at least 50% conscious that, or at least it started out as that idea.
Because I think, when you enter a crazy situation and One Direction being like the pinnacle of that idea there's people around you that all of a sudden feel that used to feel really, really similar and all of a sudden they feel really different.
I'm not talking about day-to-day conversation, but I'm talking about stuff that we can relate to problems that I might have had, that I might talk to them about.
And I think that's quite an alienating feeling.
So instead of... instead of kind of just submitting I've always always resisted that it's been really important to me and those kind of things you know hearing that and hearing other people say that about me that that does make me really proud because it's definitely you know it's definitely a lifestyle that can kind of sweep you away but I think the other side of that and getting swept away I don't really like the idea of what that might look like and I think you need people around you that are going to tell you if you're being a dick like vitally important in this job definitely And those things, I think when you're surrounded, you know, like a lot of successful people are, when you're surrounded only by success, it... breeds a funny kind of narrative to be respected from people in Doncaster like that that means a lot to me definitely so that's why another reason why you know I wouldn't drive through the streets of Doncaster in a fucking Ferrari or whatever and you went to school in Doncaster Hayfields yeah Hayfields where I did most of my time and then I failed my A-levels and then went somewhere else for a year you failed your A-levels I failed my A-levels yes That was the first time I'd ever, ever got a real bollocking off my mum.
A real, real dressing down.
Because she was really, really fair.
But there was something that she was kind of strict on with schoolwork.
And I remember getting in the car and she said, you fucked your life up.
And she never swore.
She never swore.
And I remember I got goosebumps thinking about it there.
I remember thinking maybe I need to do something with my life at 15 years old.
15, 16 years old, you join a drama group and i was watching.
Actually, just before you arrived at 17 years old, you got the lead role in greece.
The foundations were set and you ultimately, at 18 years old, decide to go and audition.
Yeah, that was the third time I auditioned for The X Factor.
So every year previous to that.
So that would have made me 16 when I first auditioned.
There's like three producer auditions and then you get to see Simon, you know, it's the main one.
And the first year, I didn't get through any of them.
The second year, I got through the first round.
And then for a final time, I said to myself, well, I'm going to give this one more shot.
Because that was another thing at that age.
It's one thing saying you're resilient.
And I do think I am.
But it's a lot easier to be resilient at that age as well.
Definitely.
It's really surprising that someone would go to X Factor once, be rejected, essentially.
Go again, not make it.
And then go again without having their self-esteem or their confidence knocked to the point where they go.
I'm not going to go through that again.
Because every time you've got to come home you've got to tell your friends and family it didn't work out.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, the first year I can remember it being utterly crushing.
Like I'd not really had real rejection at that point.
I hadn't really experienced that kind of thing.
The second time I went was even more challenging, because I went with what I'll describe as like the hottest girl at school at the time.
Right.
So she's also a singer.
We got talking like months ago.
Turns out she wants to audition for The X Factor as well.
I'm like, well, let's go together thinking this could be like a smart little play.
And she goes before me.
And I think at this point I feel like I was still in the queue and she showed me that she got through to the next round.
It was like a gold ticket.
I then didn't get through.
And then we got, because I was with her and I was traveling with her.
We then got ushered into a room of say, 200 people and every single person in the room had a yes.
I remember that being really, really challenging.
You're just surrounded by people that are dreaming.
You know, they're really, really excited about what does the next stage look like?
And that created a bit more fire, I think.
It was like, okay, how do I get on the right side of this next year?
How do I be in this group of people next year?
Did your mum play a role in you going for that third year?
I can't remember specifically, but I would say if I would have had any level of doubt, 100%.
The musical that you just referenced that I did at school, I didn't want to go to that audition.
And she literally picked me up and drove me there.
And I was so thankful that she did.
She was often very, very good at...
You know, pushy parents, that's not good.
She was never like that.
She always had the right amount of force, you know.
Because sometimes you need that as a kid and especially, actually even as adults.
You know, in a situation where you're second guessing something, as soon as someone goes, go on.
You can do it, you're okay.
So I think that definitely played a big role in that.
Even if I suggested that I wasn't going to go to this audition Throughout the year, she would have been giving me a hundred different reasons to go.
Now, not literally, but just from a confidence point of view, the way that she was talking to me, how she always used to put me on this amazing pedestal.
She made me feel like I could do anything, definitely.
And I think that... that helps in those kind of situations.
Going for it for a third time because my mum's saying I can do it, so maybe I can.
So you do the audition where you sing Make You Feel My Love.
That was boot camp.
So that was the second part of the audition.
My first audition was a song called Hey There Delilah.
It did nothing for me, like, sonically.
Like, obviously now I can say this because I've got a bit more experience, but as a young lad you're not thinking about any of these things.
It was just, I like that song, I'll sing that song.
It was bad.
It was really, really bad.
And to the point where like, it still makes me deeply uncomfortable, like listening to or watching that audition.
The only thing I'd done like this is the school production of Grease, and that was to about 250 people over two nights.
And that felt like a fucking mountain of people.
Cut to then your live TV audition at the MEN in Manchester and there's 3000 people in the audience.
3,000 people is a big gig for anyone to play, like, full stop.
Like, if you do 3,000 tickets, you're doing really, really well.
So, like, it's the definition of being thrown at the deep end.
And I think that's part of what they want, but it's not going to yield the best results from everyone.
Some people it is.
But I just remember feeling like a fucking deer in the headlights, like really really shaky, like really really just felt, really really uncomfortable.
I just wanted the ground to swallow me up.
I'd never been in a situation where I was quite a confident young lad, so it wasn't very often I'd even been out in my comfort zone like that.
And I just felt like a deer in the headlights, definitely.
Yeah.
Am I right in thinking that they probably had the idea to construct a band much sooner than They must have done?
They must have done.
Knowing Simon, I will have had these conversations with him in the past, but I can't remember now.
Knowing Simon, yeah, I think you know what he's like, right?
He will have had that in his mind for at least for the year before.
He loves a boy band as well.
He's got a track record.
Yeah, yeah.
They make him a lot of money.
And so you come third on the X Factor as a band when you're put together.
And then you signed at 19 years old to Simon Cowell's Psycho Music.
And it's crazy because when I think about you signing at 19 years old and I think about what happened in the preceding five or six years, I mean it is crazy.
I mean, it's only now, outside of being in One Direction, that I actually have a little bit of a concept of what happened, and even you know the craziness of it, because nobody has any context to it before it happens.
So we definitely... We felt like things were going really, really well.
But we also.
There will have been part of us, especially in that first year of just assuming this is what you know.
Success looks like.
You know, a successful artist does these things.
And the first moment that I remember distinctly, actually, that...
I realized that maybe this was bigger than like, let's say like the average thing at the time.
We got booked on a support gig with a, like a Disney band called Big Time Rush.
And before that tour, show our manager.
But our like senior manager, the kind of guy you only see, you know like six gigs a year.
And that just happens to be Vegas and LA and all the best places in the world, you know.
And he sat us down.
It was like this dressing down.
It was like, look, this is what you need to expect from a gig like this.
Expect people to only know the singles.
And even if they know the singles, you know, like that's a real win.
They're not going to know the words to the album tracks.
It's going to be a very, very different show to what you expected.
So we're all ready to go out fighting because we'd not really had that at that point.
Most things that we'd done, we felt really confident doing.
So like we were kind of going on the back four.
And then I can remember when we walked out on stage and I think we opened with something that wasn't a single and people were just locked in like massively locked in.
And it was really, really fucking loud in there.
And I think that was a moment where I remember again.
I had this kind of side to me when I was younger.
I was so excited to tell Richard, who was our manager at the time.
I was so excited to tell him post-gig about how it actually went.
Did you see it then?
Because that was obviously not how it played out.
And I remember feeling pretty smug about that, but I think it was once I kind of got to bed that evening I was kind of thinking I don't know, I wasn't an overly deep thinker at that point, but I was still thinking occasionally on a deep level.
And I'm looking at this music manager and I'm thinking like, this guy's like uber experienced like he's been in this situation countless times so if he was to predict it wrong like maybe he did i'm like well maybe we maybe something is happening how do you take care of yourself amongst that because you know one of the things i've learned from doing this podcast is i've learned so much about the brain i've learned so much about dopamine and and and sleep and circadian rhythms and all these all these things and so i when i fit that into the context of what your life was like at an age where these neuroscientists tell me that the male brain is still growing it's still forming itself you're putting this tremendous external pressure on it you're like shocking it every night i remember when i interviewed liam um your former bandmate him telling me that he would like, he remembers walking out on stage and I think it was Dubai.
It was like a hundred thousand people there.
And then thrown in.
You probably remember the gig like thrown into the taxi, taken back to the hotel room and locked in there.
And he was like, I remember him saying to me, stage, car, hotel, locked, stage, car, hotel, locked.
Fuck.
Yeah.
I would say the way that we both handled it, me and Liam, was quite different.
I think that's often why I kind of had a good relationship with Zayn from early on, because neither of us are kind of rule abiding.
And not in a way that's like utterly disruptive.
It's just we have our own ideas, you know, and that at least alleviated a little bit of the pressure.
Knowing that deep down, if I wanted to just go and do something, I would genuinely just go and do it.
Whereas I think Liam and the other boys actually to a degree, there was an element of a little bit of fear, I think you know.
And also Liam had, you know, he'd worked so hard from the age of 14 to get there.
Liam's journey was a lot different to mine.
I just felt like a happy-go-lucky guy who won the lottery.
You know, whereas Liam was very, very precise and deliberate and he got there for all his hard work.
So I think we also came from a slightly different point of view.
Another benefit that I had during that time and I still have is I'm not a dweller.
I'm an overthinker for sure, but I wouldn't say like I'm a dweller.
So I wouldn't use this phrase to me very often, but like there's definitely an element of ignorance, is bliss during that whole time.
Yeah.
I find it so fascinating that you talk about this idea of you having the minerals or the personality where you would push back against the system a little bit.
Because when I spoke to your former cameraman and videographer, he said that you were the one in the group that stood up against the label.
So you'd be the one to turn around to the record label and say, we need a day off.
And it's interesting again because one of the things I learned from doing this podcast is this idea of learned helplessness and control and autonomy.
Basically TLDR.
It says that people who feel like they have control have much better physiological health outcomes.
They have less stress.
They're more insulated, better psychological states, less anxiety, less depression, because they feel like they're in control of the situation.
Yeah.
There's this crazy study that I was reading about when I was writing my last book about these rats, where they learn that they can't do anything about the situation.
And they basically give up and they become submissive and they stop trying.
And I think about this in the context of humans as well.
From what your videographer told me, Cam, you were clearly not that.
You were clearly someone that would push against Simon Cowell's record label as a young man.
Yeah.
And that's something I've had a few conversations with my friends, similar things about this.
And I'm not certain why that was like inspired by, because it's brave, right?
To stare someone who at the time, at least in pop, was one of the most successful people in the music industry and say no, you've got it wrong.
Here's me, an 18 year old with no experience telling you you've got it wrong.
I think what gave me confidence in those ideas is, even if it wasn't a collective voice, even if it was just my voice delivering the message, it was always with collective intention.
It would always be for the good of all of us.
Making those decisions now on my own, they're not quite as easy.
There's a lot of different kind of things at play.
And again, it kind of comes from that Big Brother kind of role.
Again, I was the oldest in the band.
It was kind of my role in the band, I think, to kind of do that.
And I realised that by far I was the most opinionated in the band, definitely.
So I think I wanted to use that for good and not just chatting shit about someone on Twitter or something.
Another important distinction about One Direction is...
This is not disrespectful to Ed.
I appreciate I was in a boy band.
I know that, right?
But if there would be one genre of music that I would think might be the most naff, it's boy band, if you could call that a genre.
It's kind of like snobby musically, you know.
There's like real music and then there's boy bands, you know.
So having that kind of feeling going into it, that was why it was easy to kind of push against some of these old school ideas, because they were the ideas that I didn't.
The reasons I didn't like these bands is because they all looked the same and because they all felt very kind of PR pressed, you know.
It was always a really interesting project for me to try and to look at One Direction and think well, how could we make this a little cooler?
I remember the real turning point in One Direction was when we put up the pre-order for our first single, What Makes You Beautiful?
We don't release any music at this point.
And I remember thinking that's fascinating because they don't know what it's going to sound like yet, but they're invested.
That felt like power early on.
And it also felt like that we could rewrite the rule book because people were invested in us first.
As much, if not more than the music.
I think that's fair to say.
Was there a part in the evolution and the journey of One Direction where you had that moment?
Where you go?
There's elements of my life that I love, that I no longer have access to because of this success.
I would say that it's more gradual than that, really.
You know, you start to lose some of your own independence to a degree.
And then I think...
Also the age I was, right?
So like I was 18 when I first joined the band.
And I always say this that year of my life before I auditioned for The X Factor at least up to those 18 years was the best year of my life.
You know, you've got independence at that point.
I was thriving.
You could go out.
Like, it was just... It was so fascinating socially.
There's always something to do.
So to leave that behind was quite gutting, actually.
That took me a second to get used to at first.
Now I always felt incredibly grateful and really excited every time I was doing something with One Direction.
But any kind of time for reflection, I was really, really missing home.
Like me and Zayn, when we were younger, we had countless conversations of like you know, should we just pack it in?
Should we just call it a day?
Why?
Because you feel alienated.
You've got... You are living this lifestyle that... And there's a million different reasons, right?
But the fame thing's really difficult.
And mostly for me, it was about being alienated.
And I can't Like any of my life experience was now not so relevant to some of my friends, you know.
And I think that also I have this.
I have this guilt for the success and money that I've earned as well.
And I think that also is kind of part of the same thing.
I think it's kind of like two different things.
The fame thing, I'll never be okay with.
Of course, every artist says this, but if I could just do the music in a house, be amazing.
That would be amazing.
I suppose I could on a lower level, but I wouldn't get the same rush that I do.
I think it's almost, yeah, it's almost everything else that comes with that.
It's interesting when someone says they felt isolated, which is something I've heard a lot from people who've had great public success, where they've got a big fan base, because we think of like isolation as not being around people.
But I guess isolation in the context you describe, it's more about connecting to people, relatability and Yeah, but it's also like the metaphor would be like what's that really famous crossing in Japan?
If you took a drone shot and you pulled right out from that and you would just become a little dot amongst the noise.
Sometimes that's kind of how it feels.
Because also, it's not the real world.
Even in the way that people perceive you, it's not the real world.
The first moment that One Direction got the first big pay packet was a merchandise deal that we got.
And we always did really good merch.
How old were you?
19.
That was the first kind of moment where I felt really, really excited.
And so I rang my mom straight away and told her about it like I always would.
And she was really excited for me.
And obviously, you know, she's just proud.
That's it.
And then I remembered the feeling of, but who else do I tell now?
Cause like, do I call up Nizam and tell him well, He'll be into that and he'll be really proud of me.
But bear in mind, he's just seen me on the X Factor.
And this is another thing I realize about people is they think, if you're successful, then everything is just, you know successful, and that's how it goes.
So I think you know, if I didn't call Nizam, but if I had called him, he probably would have been really nice.
But in his head, when he shrugged his shoulders, like well, obviously you know, things are going really well for you.
So I think there's definitely a lack of understanding there, rightly so.
There's also a gill, you know, especially at that age.
People like life's really, really expensive at that age.
People are like up to their eyes in student loans.
It was only about two years ago that I put all the plaques up on my wall at home and my awards, like the Brit Awards and stuff that I got in the past from the band.
They still annoy me even now in my lounge.
Because if I'm having a conversation with someone, I don't even really want... I want to just be me.
I don't want to be that guy that won those awards.
We can be and we can conversate like that.
But truthfully, if Nizam came over to my house for a chat and a coffee...
I would hate that the conversation might end up then gravitating to me or my success.
It's much more about just what those relationships and conversations look like in the real world.
That's what I'm craving is that real normality.
All I want. is to just be on an even playing field with everyone in any kind of conversation.
I think that was the toughest thing to deal with is just the lack of normality in every sense of the word.
How does things like alcohol play into this?
Because you're living a crazy, crazy life where your dopamine and your brain is being tested in all different ways.
I remember Liam saying to me this is really when he started to have a problem with alcohol in the early years of the band.
And I'll never forget him talking to me about the mini bar in the room.
Mm-hmm, like one of the things I didn't realise is okay, you've just been out on stage in front of 100000 people, then you're back in a hotel room with a minibar.
Feel the pull from alcohol.
And I definitely drank quite a bit when I was when I was in the band.
But I think an important distinction post show would be I'd smoke my weed and go back to my tour bus and I'd go and smoke my weed and Zayn would smoke with me too.
I hope he doesn't mind me saying that.
I'm sure he won't.
And that was great.
And actually, like, you know, people do things for different reasons.
And that was my vice.
That was my choice.
Now the reason why that kind of suited my brain at that time was i've just had all this noise in my head, i've just had this crazy experience on stage, and that's the noise that you kind of need to quiet down sometimes.
So what we would do is we'd get back on the tour bus, we'd play call of duty zombies, we'd smoke our weed and like that's all we'd think about and that's all we do.
And then we get into cliche stoner chats of deep conversation probably ufos, you know all that kind of shit and And as daft as that might look and feel, again it's our normality.
It's creating the normality on tour.
It's a version of what our friends were doing back home as well.
But also it just it was such a lovely way to kind of debrief from those moments away from the manicness.
You've just got this kind of really subdued, nice environment.
The juxtaposition actually felt quite nice.
Yeah.
If you could go back to the day that you signed the contract with Psycho, what is the advice that 33-year-old Louis would give 18 19-year-old Louis?
That is a really, really big question.
I think I would say to be confident in the earlier years, because the older I get, the more I realize most people in their earlier years of doing said thing are to a degree faking it.
And I think for a long time I was just thinking.
Well, you know, I didn't spend my life as a young lad thinking I was going to be a singer, so I'm playing catch-up and all of those things.
And also there's another thing I'm more than comfortable enough to say.
I'm not the best singer in the world.
I'm okay with that, right?
But there was definitely a time where those things were challenging as a young lad.
And I think I would just cut myself a bit of slack as a young lad, because it's been a lot of my defiance and decision making that's got me to where I've got.
And that should give me confidence.
So I think as a young lad I did really just felt like a deer in the headlights and I didn't really have any kind of context, what was going on?
And I think when I'm talking about these things, I'm not talking about.
No, we're not going to do this Disney performance, because I don't think it looks good for One Direction.
I'm talking about more like introspective, personal worth within the band, all those kind of things.
I really, really struggled with that as a young lad, big time.
So I would say I would give myself a bit more credit there.
You really struggled with that?
I found it really tough.
So as I said before, I was the kid who won the lottery.
I sang my first audition for The X Factor.
I didn't feel like I did a good job.
I was really surprised that I got the three yeses.
Now, that was maybe four months before the first edition's air.
So I've told everyone at this point, obviously.
I'm in a band, I'm on The X Factor, and I have told anyone that will listen, like everyone.
And actually neither me nor Niall got any TV time on our audition.
So the irony is we get put in this band, but people have no idea who we are.
There's no context for the viewers to actually see this and actually really care.
I felt like I was playing catcher from that moment in.
I remember it was like really like real nothing, typical X Factor thing.
We went filming for the Judges' Houses, which is the stage.
You have the auditions, then boot camp, Judges' Houses, live shows.
And we went filming for Judges' Houses.
And I was already questioning.
I wasn't really singing at all.
I'd not had like any individual thing to sing.
It was all like harmony stuff.
And I got stung by a sea urchin, right?
Random story.
My foot blew up like an elephant.
And we had to film all this.
You know what X Factor's like, right?
We had to film all this jeopardy.
This, like, how will the boys audition without Louis?
It was awful.
It was awful because... there was no credibility to that statement.
The boys could have auditioned straight away.
At that point I was doing a lower harmony and I would be shocked if anyone could even hear me in the mix at that point.
So that was really challenging.
Where you know, I'm already starting to feel those things, and then you get something like that.
That's quite literal, and they're trying to sell this jeopardy.
And I remember thinking, oh, like, it just really...
I wanted to do more.
I just didn't know how to do that.
Again, there's no context.
I thought I was a good singer before I went on The X Factor.
Then I get through the audition.
They put me through.
I'm like, okay, well, I must be all right.
Then they don't show the TV audition.
You're like, oh, maybe that's like a personality thing.
I don't know.
Maybe it is my voice.
There's a lot of, especially as a young lad in this situation.
There's a lot of unanswered questions.
Did you ever ask those questions?
Did I ever ask him why I was in that band?
No, I would love to, though.
I would have loved to.
But do you know why I would never with him?
Simon was always very brilliant at making me feel, uh like worthy in the band but but, as you said before, like i was often a voice between the band and the label, he was the label.
Well, you put me on side, and that's a smart move, isn't it?
One thing he would always do steven, is he would always say my name.
Now, when you're a 19 year old lad, and simon cowell says do you know what the thing is about that idea?
Louis, you are empowered.
Now what we like people using our names.
Now imagine that simon cowell and you're 19 years old, There is a spell that comes with that and there's a power that comes with that.
And I think for a long time, I kind of fell for all those kind of ideas.
Now, I think Simon, again, is an interesting person.
He is a brilliant businessman.
Now, I learned a lot from him.
I still deeply respect him.
And I was in awe of him as a young lad.
I love to be around him.
I love to listen to him make decisions and all of that.
And I thought he was definitely brilliant at that time.
He just he built me up on a pedestal to the point where I thought that it would actually have a real world meaning, not just a thanks darling kind of vibe.
When did you realize that it didn't?
When I joined Psycho on my own... So this is after the band.
Yeah, sorry.
So the band split up and... No, I didn't have my pick of record labels.
It was never like that.
But even if I had, I could have had 10 offers on the table.
Let's just assume they're all the same money.
I would have picked Simon always.
Because, again, a little bit like the North of England...
Loyalty is like a really important currency.
It really is in these kind of, you know, working class places.
It's really, really vital.
And I think like for me, it was, that always meant a lot to me.
So I thought well, if I'm, I'd heard that some of the other boys were thinking about going to other labels, which was they were right to.
And I found out I was the only one that was going to stay with them.
And that just motivated me more.
So all the other boys went and joined different record labels, some of them not even within labels that were in Sony, which Psycho was part of.
And I'm thinking oh wow, this is like it's amazing for me actually that all the boys have done that.
Because like, look how good this makes me look to Simon.
I look really loyal.
And I'm like, some of it was like deliberate, but mostly that's just how I am as a person.
Like I would rather just keep the happy family kind of vibe.
That suits me.
One of the things people don't talk about is the impact that your success has on everyone else back in Doncaster, including your mum.
I spoke to your sister, Lottie, when my team did, and I was listening to the recordings.
And she said that it was especially hard for your mum because you leave home suddenly at 18 years old.
And from everything you've described, you're more than just a kid.
You are, in some respects, a partner in raising the family.
And best mates as well, man.
Yeah, definitely.
Did she ever speak to you about the impact it had on her, all of that?
That's something that I can remember really clearly.
And she used to do the university analogy.
And she used to say I knew you were going to leave home at some point, but I had at least a timescale to that.
I could like work towards in my head.
Okay, you know, in three months time he's going to leave for uni and that's that.
One Direction never happened like that.
You know, it all ran away with itself.
So I think...
We felt like we all blinked.
And before we knew it, I was no longer living at home.
So my mum had no time to even grieve the idea of like and just for context I mentioned this and I made a like a film and documentary.
And it kind of sums up me and my mum's relationship perfectly.
The first person I told when I lost my virginity was my mum.
Like I was as if I was telling one of my lad mates.
I was just, and I wasn't telling her for any other reason other than to show off and be like guess what happened to me.
And that, we definitely had that kind of energy together.
You know, we, I always, always saw her more as a best friend than anything else.
And especially because I was her first.
She helped me when she was 19.
We spent the first few years together without a male role model.
So it was a little deeper than your average, you know, son and mother situation.
So I think it really hit me, Mum, like a ton of bricks.
If I had my time again, I would have been more present and aware of those kind of ideas.
And I actually... Here's a story, actually.
I...
I've never told Daisy and Phoebe this.
Daisy and Phoebe are two of my sisters who are identical twins.
And they're about four or five years younger than Lottie, so they're about 21.
Now, I could always tell them apart perfectly, but they look utterly identical, these two, especially when they were really young.
And I can remember the more time I spent at the band, the more time I spent away from home.
I wasn't confident enough to use their name to them.
You know, it would be always like oh babe, or like you know something.
That way I wouldn't have to mention the name, because I wasn't certain who was who.
These are two sisters that I spent my life with and grew up with, but I think shows just how little I was at home.
And my mum would come out to see me, which was great, but other, you know, the kids were at school and stuff like that.
So there was a long time for those.
Out of those five years we were in the band, a long time spent not spending enough time with family.
And I would say that was 85, the job and the situation and One Direction and stuff, and then 15 me too.
Like I could definitely have done more like that.
But, you know, when you live in a life like we did in One Direction, free time is so competitive.
And when you're young, you're not smart enough to realize the value of this family time.
And you were on an absolute rocket ship up until you're sort of.
You must mean what sort of 23, 24 years old when the band announces that it's breaking apart.
See in March that year.
Zayn says he wants to leave to have a normal 22-year-old's life, which shocked the world.
How do you reflect on Zayn's decision now?
Because were you pissed off at the time that he was breaking things up or...? was fuming really i was again it it's not something we've discussed enough yet but um me and zane i mean but again it comes back to like loyalty for me and i just selfishly i'd wished he'd had a conversation with me first because me and zane i'd like to think that he would say this too i think he would there was times where like we were like let's put it like this is a good way of describing it.
On the last tour that Zayn did, we always said we would never be this band, the type of band that would have all their own individual dressing rooms.
Well, sometimes when you've got a lot of guests and stuff, it can be challenging, but we always said we wouldn't be that band.
And on the last tour, Zayn did, Harry had his own dressing room, Liam did, Niall did and me and Zayn shared.
So I think that kind of like testament of the relationship is So I felt a little bit hard done by.
I felt like, not like throw these boys under the bus, but let me know.
But just a little bit.
I thought that we had a relationship where he could have had that conversation with me.
In reflection, and he hasn't told me this, we'll see when I chat to him about it.
But I think if he told me, I would have tried to tell him to stay.
And I think that's probably one of the reasons why he didn't.
Because he knew I was always very opinionated.
So how did you find out?
That evening, the night before we found out, everything was normal.
We're in the hotel room.
We were somewhere I don't know where, somewhere in the world maybe, where weed isn't legal, but we were having a joint.
And everything was normal, you know.
And then I think he maybe left at like 11.
He was cool, wasn't like in a bad mood or anything like that.
You know, good night, lad.
And then next morning I woke up, we had a shoot with like Coca-Cola for some sponsor thing.
And we found out that he wasn't coming.
Now, I had this in me too, but like Zayn was quite prolific for it.
Like this wasn't out of the ordinary.
Like if Zayn, I always rated him for it.
If he didn't want to do something, like he literally wouldn't do it.
Like you name the thing, it doesn't matter.
He just, if it's not right for him, then he won't do it.
So I think, well, that's probably why he left the band, you know.
And that's what I admire about him, because if I was in his same situation I would have probably put six plasters on it just to hold.
That we can stay playing happy families.
You know, I want to know if he regrets it, not in the way that.
Like his own personal success has been incredibly successful and he's done really, really well like that.
But he must miss it.
Like, he must do.
Because I know Zayn really well.
And Zayn has a bit of the kind of energy I do, in such a way that sometimes this whole job can just be a little bit fussy.
It's just a bit fussy in general.
You know, there's just a lot going on like that.
Now, when you're in a band, you can share that wealth.
It's like, you know, let's say you're sat in an interview you're not enjoying.
You just kind of shut up a little bit and let someone else pick up the pieces, and they'll do that role.
We could share the things that we didn't like to do as much.
There must definitely be times that he misses the comfort of that, for sure.
But it's kind of like the elephant in the room, to be honest.
I've met up with him a couple of times recently, but it's not often something we'll discourse.
But there'll be a time for that, for sure.
I would like to have those conversations with him.
But it crushed me, man.
It absolutely crushed me.
I was devastated because it felt like, oh, is this the beginning of the end of the band?
But then also I'm like, this is like my best mate in the band at the time.
So it was, I'd lost a friend and someone in the band.
It's funny.
You know, I've heard you say that you weren't prepared for the success of One Direction, but you also weren't prepared for the end of One Direction.
Oh no, and you describe it as hitting you like a ton of bricks.
Yeah, it was awful.
It wasn't until after the event that i realized that i actually computed all these feelings, but it was like i was straight grieving for it.
That was grieving the band.
I'm someone who unfortunately, has a little bit of experience in grief and albeit it felt different, but it was a version of the same thing, it was something that i really wanted, that couldn't have any more.
I think, like anything like that.
You know like, if you're like I'm a glass half full kind of guy.
So like I felt the wheel start to turn in motion like that.
But you're looking the other way.
You're like, no, it's fine.
It's not going to play out like that.
It's never going to come to that, whatever.
And then we had a meeting one day and it did.
What happens in that meeting?
What's said?
Is it Simon saying something?
Is it the boys?
Is it representatives?
It was us boys, which was great.
Always how it should be like that, obviously.
But I think it almost might as well have been representatives.
What's really fascinating is those real serious moments.
We wouldn't have a lot of them in one direction, we were just kind of going with the flow and really happy, you know, for each other and stuff like that.
But i think those kind of moments where you have to be selfish, It was an atmosphere that I never really felt in the band because normally, like I said, we're arm in arm.
It's all this camaraderie.
And then, all of a sudden, you get someone thinking more independently and more for themselves which, by the way, they have every right to do, of course.
But the room felt cold that day.
I can remember that in particular.
I'm trying to find the right metaphor for it, but it was something where...
These are all the same faces that I've seen every single day, but I'd never quite felt an energy like that in the room.
There was like a, there was this emptiness.
And I think, probably because we knew, we all knew collectively where it was going, you know, and that's probably some friction between those ideas.
The thing that really bothered me was and this again is naive, was so naive at the time, but I was adamant on having some kind of indication of, because it was originally said as what's that fucking word we've used a million times.
Hiatus.
Yeah.
By the way, it's just such a cringy word.
So it was originally pictures that.
I was like, it'd be good to know how long this break is going to be for.
So let's speculate.
A year, two years, five years, 10 years, 15 years, whatever.
I never really got an answer to that question, which I understand now because truthfully, I don't think the people or person involved was brave enough to answer that question deep down.
I think they probably knew the reality and that's why it was tough.
And does Simon try and persuade you back into the band?
Let me say that by this point, And I'd say Simon was aware of this, but maybe not quite so aware.
Because we're a band.
After about two years of One Direction nobody, absolutely nobody, could tell us shit.
Now, we were nice boys.
We were never, like, rude or anything like that.
But, like...
So like if Simon had just, we didn't have that, he wasn't, he might have had that relationship prior, like back in the 90s when all that stuff was kind of prevalent.
But I think we'd always had our own kind of confidence like that.
So he was never involved in those kind of decision makings.
In fact, he was smart enough to realise that that would rub us up the wrong way.
Makes sense.
And then it ends and your life goes from absolutely crazy to less crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's something.
It's still something that I'm unpacking still, to be honest, and still trying to work out all of those kind of things.
I remember something I spoke about before, but Julian Bonetta, who is a producer who worked on a lot of the One Direction stuff.
We had a great relationship with him, really cool guy.
We had this crazy night at, it was like some kind of billboard awards in Vegas.
Julian.
He pulled me aside and he said and it was like really it's funny because he's not really like this heavy, but it's a real heavy statement.
He'd obviously had a few vodka, red balls or something and he was like where do we go from here now?
By the way, the we upset me a little bit.
It's like I understand that and we are all in this together, but that question is a hell of a lot deeper for me than it is.
You, I understand, I get it, but at the same time, you're probably and what he did end up doing is carrying on doing what he did, And I still don't really know the answer to that question.
And I still, in fact, maybe I don't think you can.
I think a lot of people's not everyone's, but most people's natural trajectory of let's just call it success.
I could make a pedantic argument for it not being specifically that.
But, you know, they have a kind of lineal journey.
The older they get, the more successful that they get.
What was really strange was being 24 years old and realizing that the only way is down from it.
There is no alternative reality where I at least keep up or supersede.
No way.
There was no chance of that.
And that wasn't, you know, it was very obvious.
It was very obvious to anyone around it.
And still it's something that is challenging, definitely because you've had a look behind the curtain, you know.
Now, some of the things... that maybe I had then that I don't have now, I'm not overly pressed for.
Like a billboard for the album in LA or here in New York.
I don't get those kind of opportunities anymore.
Do I lose any sleep over it?
No, no, not really.
But I think the feeling in general of...
I have to work really hard to compete at the level I do.
That is just a fact.
I just got a number one record and the last record on Faith in the Future.
Never in a million years, never in a million years, when I started my solo career, did I ever think that I would be getting a number one record.
It's a testament to my fans, testament to the record, the producers, etc.
But I've always had to work on my own anyway.
I've always felt like I've had to work really, really hard just to kind of keep my head above water.
Now the reality of that statement is and I realize that, as I say it out loud, my version of head out of water or head above water is very different to a lot of people.
Because from 18 to 24, that whole landscape looked very, very different.
That's why I've always found it quite unrealistic to not compare the two.
I completely agree with that, because you cannot compare them, the two being One Direction and my own solo career.
But it's something that you can't ignore.
I do a cover.
It's stupid of me to call it a cover.
I realised how funny that is.
When I do a One Direction song, I call it a cover, which is really ironic.
But I do night changes on my tour show.
And I can remember this one show in particular, I think it was like a 5,000 capacity room.
And I think maybe we'd done like 1,200 tickets, which, you know, is okay.
That's all right.
But when you're singing night changes at a gig like that, when you can vividly and visually remember singing night changes like that at say, Wembley Stadium, And you're literally singing, look how fast the night changes.
And you're looking out to this sparse room.
It's like a brutal kind of poetry.
And that's the point about it being unrealistic is I could be the most and I am I could be the most glass half full guy in the world.
But life is going to constantly challenge me like that.
Definitely.
Because that was the pinnacle.
Yeah, I mean, it's very, very human.
Obviously, the example and scenario you're talking about is one no one can understand.
But the comparison is how we work.
It's how we understand the value of things.
And, as you say, going to the top of Mount Everest at 24 means that you're always going to have some kind of sort of even unconscious comparison to everything thereafter.
What do you do about that?
Do you have to use a different yardstick of measurement?
I try to.
These are words, aren't they?
That's it.
And some days I live by it.
Some days I live by it, definitely.
I wrote something on my social media probably like four or five years ago now, but it was on Instagram, I think and about my interpretation of the word success.
Because I'd spent a long time and I only knew through the lens of One Direction.
And I think that's a constant battle.
It's a constant conversation with myself internally that I can measure my own success in a different way.
It doesn't have to be a numbers game, you know.
In terms of like fulfillment, for example and, like you know, going doing like this latest record that I've just written.
Like I feel really, really good about it.
There's been an element of me kind of swimming against the tide a little bit to this point.
It's like that, the feeling of fulfillment is like, that's, that's legit.
Did you have conversations with your, your former bandmates about how they were coping with these?
Yeah.
Yeah.
All different.
To be honest, that would only happen me and Liam, like, between the other boys.
Like, not that it's not like emotional, because like it is and it's definitely deeper than surface level, but it's more, It's more.
I would struggle to text the other boys as much.
Why?
I mean, just I would love to hang out with them in person, like that, but I just There's an element of it feeling.
It's just all a bit small talk, you know?
Like, which is lovely and it's nice and it's nice to catch up like that.
But me and Liam would always speak on a much more deep level because And like he definitely I felt bad saying this because I feel arrogant, but I shouldn't.
I wanted to look after him, definitely, Liam.
Like, that was...
That was like a role I feel like I was there to play.
And, like he definitely, you know, often his the way he would like perceive certain parts of his life.
Like he was someone who really brave at times, which like, contrary to sometimes what he put out, but really really brave.
Like he would ask anyone anything with a smile and like you know he had a really good way about him, like that.
I would say he was the closest to being my brother.
Love him deeply, could spend hours and hours and hours with him, but there was an element of always checking in and just making sure that he's cool like that.
Did you worry about him?
Always, always, yeah.
Because... Because I knew he was a little misunderstood, but also...
You know like interestingly, the record when when, when you start out as a solo artist.
The parallels of people who know themselves made the best records.
Definitely.
So if you're still unpacking all that information of who you are as a person, as an adult, which we all were post One Direction, it's near impossible to point and go.
This is who I want to be as an artist.
Because essentially it's just a metaphor for who you are as a person, or at least the best stuff is.
Liam would be someone who candidly, I could say to him really honestly, like bro, fucking hell, I miss being in the band.
And we could have a really honest conversation like that.
Whereas...
And I don't mean this in any kind of way, but if I'd said that to any of the boys I'd be worried that they might think oh, things aren't going well in his solo life, you know.
Whereas Liam, I never had to worry about those things.
It was like brothers like that.
He wore his heart on his sleeve, didn't he?
So Liam was Liam yeah yeah definitely, and I just it's really fresh that it's a really really cool way of living because we all say, even like I would like to say, I wear my heart, my sleeve, but you know there's still 10 of me.
It's God in the right places.
He'd certainly had his, his way of being.
I like to, I do like, as we were saying, and I do wonder if that made him slightly more susceptible to um, the pressures, because sometimes you know if you can, if you can put on a second face yeah yeah, yeah.
What's helped me in this job and there's no truer time that that kind of shows itself, it's me as a parent is there is a real distinction this is me, there is me at work and there is me not work.
Basically so, either being a parent or being a friend or a partner or whatever, that's always helped me to have that kind of distinction of.
You know, when i'm dad to freddie, I'm a full-time dad and I'm not a singer, you know.
And any of that world outside does not really matter.
It's not relevant to me as a father, which it isn't.
Did I ever tell you about the data breach that we had at my previous company?
Yeah, I remember hearing about that. which was a total nightmare.
So I'm glad that we now use 1Password.
What actually is it, Steve?
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I've never found more photographs of a person's life in my life.
Cute, nice little denim jacket.
What do you think when you see that photo?
It looks like, yeah, it reminds me of a nice time.
This one?
Yeah, I remember that vividly.
We did like a full photo shoot in my living room.
Yeah.
God, the pose with the hands in the pockets.
It's much more nonchalant than I would have actually been feeling.
I mean, these ones are all the band photos.
I mean, it's just fucking unbelievable.
Like looking at some of the crowds and these images is insanity.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, my mum took this picture.
This was the first picture ever taken of us and my mum took this.
You look super young.
Yeah, yeah.
Again, yeah.
So I was the oldest, 18.
Then you've got Harry, Liam and Niall, they were 16, saying 17.
And of course you're...
Yeah, I love that picture.
I love that picture.
It kind of really sums up mine and Liam's relationship.
I love it.
I love it.
He would have been telling me a joke that I didn't think was like hilarious at the time.
So I'll be giving him that kind of face.
And then probably about an hour later, I would have laughed to myself about it.
And I have these, these beautiful pictures of your beautiful mother.
Oh yeah, they're lovely.
I love this one.
I love this one.
This is cute.
Yeah.
Yeah, I got a very similar picture to this by my bedside table at home in my bedroom.
About a year after you leave One Direction, your mother passes away from leukemia.
Thinking about the timing of all these events, thinking about the shock of being thrown into a very different life, one without the boy band around you, and then your mother getting leukemia, which people don't know is the 12th most common form of cancer.
She passes away at age 42.
The timing of all these things is quite unthinkable to me, because there's so much transition in your life.
I'm just terribly sorry.
I appreciate you saying that.
I don't really have anything else to say other than just understanding what she meant to you and the role she had in your life.
I'm terribly sorry.
There was definitely, as you said, the timing.
Obviously, there's no good time for anything like this, but I think the timing that's what created a bit of It didn't last too long.
I want to say maybe six months, but of true resentment for the world, like real resentment.
Just feeling really hard done by...
One thing I remember about grief when you're in the midst of it.
You could stub your toe, right?
And something like that is utterly unjust.
Now, that's something you might have done.
None of this ever happened.
You stub your toe.
It'd be annoying, but you just get over it.
Little things like that I really, really struggled with when I was grieving.
So it's things that should work a certain way that don't.
There's a zip on my jacket that won't quite go all the way up.
Real, micro, non-important little things, right?
But I think, because of the weight of the stuff that had happened, there was just Yeah, there was a moment in my life, as I said, for about six months, where it just felt like I couldn't win.
In fact, I could only lose.
So that's where even just stubbing your toe, you'd be like, another fucking thing.
Now, it sounds stupid to say, but once you're met with these...
When you're met with that kind of mindset of feeling hard done by the smallest things definitely can amplify that.
When did you hear that she was sick?
I got friendly with a footballer called Jamie Vardy and he'd invited me to his wedding.
So I was at the wedding and it was like the party afterwards and it was like 10pm.
At this point I'd already had quite a few vodka red bulls, which was not ideal for the weight of the conversation.
My mum called me.
I was stood outside.
It wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for my mum to call me, so I wasn't worried or anything like that.
She called me like most days, if not every day.
And then she told me.
And you know what it's like.
Anything like this in life, when you hear something like that, carries any kind of weight, like the first 10 thoughts are, either.
It can't be true.
Maybe she's got it wrong.
Maybe the doctors have got it wrong.
Just all these stages of denial before actually, you know, even embracing the thought.
It wasn't really, it wasn't kind of really like me.
I didn't even feel like it was like a cry for help at the time.
But that night I got absolutely battered.
I got really, really drunk.
There'll be nights where you know and this has been nights in the past where I'll have a little bit too much to drink.
More from not knowing my limit.
But in this kind of situation, it's not something I've ever really used drink for, to be honest.
But I, just that was the felt, the only way just to completely escape that moment in that, in that, at that night.
Yeah, what I found really challenging during even that first conversation with her about it was I still wanted to inspire hope.
I still wanted to like cause she was really hopeful and she was like.
So I was trying to have this genuine worry that any son would, but I also was trying to shield a bit of my mum from that.
I didn't want her to feel like she'd upset me, even though obviously it wasn't her choice.
But I can remember that idea of really trying to...
I would be real with my mom about how I was feeling.
But there were times when I wouldn't be because I wouldn't want her to feel guilty.
So she told you over the phone that she'd had a diagnosis?
Yes.
Yeah.
She told me that she had leukemia.
My first answer was, I don't know where, again, this is just like the definition of denial.
My first answer, word for word was, oh, that's the good one to get though, right?
Meaning that has the most survival rate.
And bless her, she has to be like...
And how long was it from that phone call to her passing?
I have no idea.
My guess would be 18 months.
I think it might have been quicker than that.
The anniversary of her death.
I get texts all the time on, whenever the anniversary is, and someone will say, thinking of you today.
And it's only at that point that I know that that's the day.
Because it's deleted from my brain.
She passes because you don't have a... Your biological father isn't around.
You're very much at that point.
You know you're the.
In some respects you're the father of lots of siblings because you're the big brother.
You went out on stage three days after her death for an X Factor performance.
From what I understand from Lottie, she very much pushed you to do that before she passed away and told you that you you needed to do that performance.
I'll never forget the X Factor final performance that he did with Steve Aoki when my mum had only passed away a couple of days before, which I still can't believe he even had the strength to do.
But my mum was just so proud of him and especially him starting his solo career.
Even in her final days, she was like, if I don't make it, I still want you to do this performance.
And when she did pass, we were like there's no way, no one would have expected him to do it, but he wanted to do it for her.
And I knew exactly what that was.
I knew why she was telling me.
She was telling me because she would have hated something that she, Something that had happened to her, affect my career and my life as a person.
I would do it again for her.
I don't think I'll ever have a more challenging time in my life than those three and a half minutes on stage.
I did it only for her.
I didn't.
It's not something I look back on and go I'm really proud.
I am proud that I did that, but that that you almost say those kind of things when you want to do something right, I'm really proud that I did that.
I that wasn't.
It felt like it was taken out of my hands.
I didn't want her to have that guilt, but it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, like obviously, like I just it was.
It was horrible and also the song alluded to.
The song was called just hold on.
It's weird how empowering those moments are.
I can sit here now and comfortably say that the chance now obviously they could, but the chances of my life being as dark as it was in those three minutes alone, like I would be desperately unlucky to ever be in a situation like that again, where I was so young.
I was in a situation where, as you said, all the timing was, and then I felt like I'd, you know, been encouraged to go on stage, but it wasn't really something that I did, that I wanted to do.
It puts everything into perspective, you know?
So like, like nothing's going to get as hard as that.
So I think it there's.
There's times where my job will weigh me down, even like today.
You know, not today, but I mean in this current head.
And yeah, It's just where it helps me remember and helps me put things into perspective that you know, just because a radio station isn't playing my single, you know that hurts 0000001 in the same as something like that.
So I think, because I was so challenged emotionally and I survived the experience, it's given me a weird kind of confidence, to be honest.
Just knowing that life probably won't get that dark again.
You sometimes don't realize that the role that your parents were playing until they're not around, that they were almost a sort of tectonic plate underneath everything was that.
Was that a realization?
At that point, big time i i there was this true dependency on my mom that i did not realize until i'd got, until i'd lost my mom um, so i think there was definitely stuff that i've had to learn, like being like on my own, and And often she would inspire confidence.
You know, I'd say, I'm worried about this.
I don't want to go to this audition.
Or I don't want to do this.
Or I'm worried about this song.
And she like, you know, she always did.
Made me feel like I could do anything in the planet.
And she'd actually made me feel stupid for even questioning the fact that I couldn't do anything.
You know.
So I think there's moments like that where you have to you've almost had to relearn confidence like that.
And how does a young man grieve the loss of his mother at such a young age?
Everyone, obviously everyone's grief is completely individual.
Something I found out more recently, purpose was mine.
Now, this is, again, not a luxury that everyone has in a situation like I found myself in.
I grieved and I had moments where I was deeply, deeply upset.
But these were fleeting moments because there was too much to do for my sisters.
There was too much to do for my nan and grandad.
There was too much to do for me family where it gave me something to do.
It gave me a true purpose.
It gave me a reason in the darkest days to get out of bed and confidently get out of bed.
Cause I had, there was stuff that needed to be done.
And at that time my sisters were so so, so young and I'm so terrified of what kind of effects that would have on them.
And luckily they impressed me every day.
They're amazing, amazing women.
My role felt like the, the strong one in that situation.
And someone who's willing to give someone, you know, Daisy had called me and she'd be really upset.
And by the end of the call, she can just see the glimpse of a glass half full.
That was my job, you know.
The grief became less relevant because of the need to look after everyone else.
Like sometimes you might get asked like, you know, what advice would you give to people with grief?
It's just an impossible question to answer just because I'm still feeling it.
And the interesting thing about that is you could spend two weeks with me and you never knew me and you never knew my life story.
Never in a million years would you think, I don't carry myself like that.
I'm not someone who's down in the dumps like that.
But it's still there.
It will never go away.
What are the symptoms of it still being there?
There is like this air of, I suppose, air of unpredictable.
This feeling of And that's sometimes where my positivity comes from too.
Like things could change tomorrow.
So I suppose that is and that kind of jeopardy and that kind of idea.
That's how I would interpret it.
Because for any grief that I've experienced, it has been relatively quick.
I haven't really had a lot of time to compute these kind of ideas.
Does that create a certain anxiety with life and a certain worry for life, that you know, if the foundations are uncertain and bad news can arrive at any moment, one would you know that seems like the breeding ground of worry and anxiety.
I actually wrote that down earlier, because when we were speaking earlier you said I wasn't a worrier back then.
Yeah.
Yeah, I didn't used to be a worrier.
Now, I'm sure most people can say that, right?
Your worry levels, or at least for most people, you have less worry when you're younger.
You haven't quite understood all your emotions yet, really.
Do you have anxiety?
Do you struggle with it?
Yeah, I experience it all the time.
Is it something that kind of controls me?
No.
You know, I'm sure you've heard about this.
My vocal coach always used to say to me that the feeling of being anxious and excited are near identical in feeling.
And that was something that always kind of stuck with me, really, because...
Not always, but a lot of stuff that feels really good can be quite intimidating beforehand.
There's an anxiety that comes with doing something that is out of the ordinary, I suppose.
I can distinctly remember, not so much now, but on the first tour I would literally, before going out on stage, I'd literally, as futile and as ridiculous as it is, I'd think to myself, how do I run away from this?
How could I literally run out the door and not do the gig?
So maybe that would be a version of anxiety.
But it didn't stop me getting up there and doing it, I suppose.
Maybe there's the difference.
A couple of years after the passing of your mother, you lose your younger sister, Felicity.
And the circumstances of her death are deeply, deeply tragic.
When I was speaking to several people in your life around you, they talked about how you had done so much since the passing of your mother to support your sisters, how you'd really taken on the role as being the quote-unquote head of the family is what they told me.
And the tragedy is deepened by the fact that she's 18 years old at the time.
Again, an unthinkable tragedy for one person to go through in their life.
But for you to go through two of these things in succession is, I mean, I don't have the words.
Yeah, that was kind of what I was speaking of before, that moment of stubbing your toe and that kind of aggravating you.
That was just like that idea accentuated.
I just couldn't believe, I couldn't believe how deeply unlucky we've been as a family.
That was just, now, you know, maybe it's not overly uncommon.
People that you lose parents young and obviously struggle to deal with a bit at the time.
I felt angry at life, and I felt angry mostly on behalf of my family.
Now it wouldn't be like, obviously I would know that I was included in this idea, but I wouldn't be.
I wouldn't be thinking what have I done to deserve this?
It was more.
Daisy and Phoebe are so young, they've already had so and Lottie as well already had so much to deal with.
Why this and why?
Now I just it, just it was.
It did feel incredibly, incredibly unfair.
That's something that's interesting about grief is just how different each thing feels.
Um, because that definitely it hit me in a different way and it was.
It was completely sudden and immediate.
I uh Again, one of the most challenging moments in my life.
So I'm sat in my house in London and everything was like fine.
I was a little bit worried.
I've been worried about Felicity for the months prior, as I was worried about all my sisters.
And I was just sat in my front room, smoking a joint, not thinking about anything really.
And then the doorbell rang at like one in the morning or something, or maybe like midnight.
And I had this feeling come over me straight away.
And I'm not really this kind of guy where I'm.
You know, on another day I might have been worried that the police were coming to grab me weed, but it wasn't like that.
I just had this thing come over me straight away and I knew it was bad.
I knew that, look, when someone rings your doorbell at that time, it's not, it's rarely good news.
And I saw, and then I opened the gates.
I've got these gates.
And I opened the gates and I saw the police car and the policeman And then they told me that she passed away and I literally was like okay, right.
I can't tell you why.
Cause it was.
It was just.
It was just.
It was only me and my best friend and my ex-girlfriend at the time.
So it wasn't like a pride thing of maybe like, okay, like I'm cool.
I'm fine.
I just I think I didn't.
I just Not only was I in denial at that moment, I just refused to even compute it.
It was just like, okay, cool.
And then I remember shutting the door.
And then I told the people I owned the house with.
And obviously then they start crying.
And obviously then I think your brain starts catching up with you.
Yeah.
And something that was really, really tough for me at this moment in time and this is a stupid thing to say, because I know that he was more than willing to be there for me but my best friend, who I was living with at the time, he was here today.
I remember him saying, I'm just so sorry.
And he was crying his eyes out.
I was just like, I'm just so sorry.
I'm so sorry.
I felt guilty that he felt like that, which is stupid.
And so I'd said before about how this is.
You know me and my family are some of the characters in the story, but often what's not spoke about in the name of grief is people like my best friend and the role that they have to play.
Now, these are not trained therapists.
These are not people who've had any kind of reference of this kind of pain.
And all you're doing as a best friend.
There is actually demanding pain, just praying, hoping that they give you something in return.
That will not change the reality, but just you know, be there for you or whatever.
And that, nothing prepares you in life for those kinds of situations.
That's something that I will forever forever, ever be in debt to him for because yes, you know, this is an unfathomable, it's a really impossible situation for me and my family to have found ourselves in.
But there are other people at play too, you know, and I can only imagine how hard that was.
And he knew how hard it was for me and how I just lost my mum.
And there are no words, right?
I'm sure you're just scrambling your brain trying to find the words and there isn't any.
Also, bear in mind everything that I've said before this.
If I was to dumb my role down to like one thing in life, I'd maybe say like to look after people.
Well, like in the context of my sisters, they're protector, right?
To lose my sister in the manner that we did, even though I knew that it wasn't fair on myself like I felt.
I felt utterly guilty.
I felt powerless.
And I felt like I'd let my sister and like I'd let my mum down, really.
My mum said to me in the last couple of weeks of her life she was like you.
Better promise me you'll look after your sisters.
And I'm like, yeah, you know, of course, you know I will.
And she was like, but specifically Felicity, you know, she's fragile.
I felt like I'd failed at the time, that that that that's the truth.
Um, i know now that i didn't, and if she was here now she would say that you didn't.
Um, but yeah, it doesn't change the feeling and that's again.
You know that that was, that's always been the role i played in the family.
So, and all i was trying to, all i was trying to do after my mom was just put me and my sisters and my grandparents in a bubble and just like, let's just nothing's gonna get to us, you know, so that that uh, It sounds like a really arrogant thing to say.
I mean this more metaphorically, but it truly undermined me.
It undermined all the hope that I'd had, all these kind of ideas that I was instilling post A Life Without Our Mum.
It just kind of undermined all those ideas.
It made it a lot more challenging for me to say them and feel them and believe them.
But it's the same with my sisters, like so it just made everything obviously infinitely more difficult.
The only thing I'm thankful is that my mum wasn't around to see that, because that would have been horrible for her.
I actually learnt this from being around, Liam.
When someone is struggling with their own demons per se, unless you've been around someone who's really struggling, you probably don't understand how helpless it often feels And in hindsight it's.
You know.
Someone that's not been in those situations thinks well, you just, you just go over there and you sit with them and have dinner and then you fix it.
You just stay.
But actually the reality of helping someone who's struggling is they often do things in private and in secretly you referenced you knew that Felicity was was struggling with something was.
Was that the passing of your mother that she was struggling with, or was it life generally?
I think it was a bit of both, I think.
I think obviously, mom passing definitely amplified any of those things.
Um, but I think with Felicity she was one of these people that um, She was uber intelligent from a young age.
Really, really, really intelligent, which is ironic.
I'd say we're a relatively smart family, but she was like in her own league.
Really, really intelligent woman.
And I think that brought its own social frustration for her.
Definitely, you know, you hear these people that are intelligent from a young age.
She would always have felt like she was on the outside looking in, but only because of...
Like her intellect really.
And, you know, that's tough for kids when they're younger.
Definitely it's not something I can personally relate to, but I can imagine how that would be really alienating and tough.
Felicity was probably the most like me mum.
So that also carried its own weight because it felt, I'd say, Felicity looked the most like my mum as well, like visually.
I mean, she's... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's crazy.
You look like each other, to be honest.
Yeah, we do.
I used to get that when I was younger.
People always used to say how much I look like my mum.
And as a young lad, that's not really what you want to hear.
But I feel really proud there.
Yeah.
Yeah, you can see how much I love her there, bless her.
But you see, I've alluded to some of this stuff in the past, not really ever spoke about it in depth like this.
And part of the reason for that is – and this is the correct forum and it makes sense – but part of the reason for that is I can't think of anything worse than being – what's the word –?
If someone like this was talking to me about this and I had not experienced that, I'd feel really sorry for them, naturally.
I don't like that.
I don't like those feelings.
I don't like those ideas.
I appreciate that it's weighty and people should, of course, feel sorry.
But I think the reason that I'm always quite selective when I talk about it is because I cannot have that define me.
I can't.
It's not fair to my family.
It's not fair to...
Felicity, it's not fair to my mum.
Like, I can't.
And you know the problem is, if we walked out of here and we just happened to get papped right in the article the Daily Mail print Every single time, they will write about this stuff.
You know, like every single time.
It could be me and you going to get coffee and then you know they do that thing where it's like a 20 new article and then they just fluff out the rest of the 80 with basically the narrative that they want to push.
But that's something that I can't escape and...
I find that really frustrating because I'm not someone who is a glass half empty kind of guy.
I don't want those kind of feelings and emotions.
I empathize and understand with anyone hearing these stories.
Of course, maybe you would feel bad for me.
But I think my biggest worry in these kind of things... is to not be defined by it.
And an example of that would be when I released a song called Two of Us, which was a song that was written essentially about my mum's passing.
Yeah.
And...
I didn't realize, by releasing that song, how A it would open the floodgates to have many people kind of you know put a lot of their trauma on me as well, which is okay.
But also creating this thing where anyone just feels like they could ask anything then.
So I remember going on to BBC Breakfast News and uh, it's one of those things, it's fucking early morning slot.
Like not even the percenters want to be there, never mind me at that time i'm not good with early mornings anyway.
So i'm going on to talk about two of us, the single.
Now we distinctly said you know what it's like, you know these are, these are the things that are okay to mention, and do not mention these things.
Now, if I was going to go on and talk about what the song was about, then fair enough.
That's one thing.
But I actually had a journalist at the time who asked me directly about those things and I'd known that we'd said don't.
Now, it's very different.
Sometimes on that list we might have don't speak about One Direction.
This is not what I've got a problem with.
But when someone's had their own grief and you're still then going to ask those kind of questions, I think found that really, really troubling.
And I think what was interesting was I left the interview and I used to be good at this when I was a bit younger and I obviously took to Twitter.
I was like, I'm never fucking working with the BBC again, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then he came back at me, this journalist.
He said, well, if you write a song about grief, expect to be asked about it.
And my instinctive reaction was, there's somebody who hasn't experienced grief.
They couldn't possibly have.
Because if they had, they wouldn't make such a horrible, horrible comment.
That just lacks all kind of empathy.
So I think it's those kind of moments where I'm quite guarded with this kind of information, just because, as I said, I think a lot of people, if I never spoke about it, I don't carry myself as someone that looks like they're really hurt.
At least I hope I don't.
I don't think I do.
Do you know what I had?
It sounds like a crazy thing for me to say, but I had no idea.
Okay, right.
Yeah, okay.
Okay, yeah.
So we met at Soccer Aid.
Okay, right.
I had no idea.
Oh, I like that.
Okay, that makes me feel good, actually.
You know, it's just me being honest.
I had no idea.
I'm not someone that, I don't really read newspapers.
I don't stay close to tabloid stuff.
I had known Liam, but Liam hadn't spoken to me about these things.
I'd met you, we'd hang out for a couple of days at Soccer Aid.
I had no idea.
Yeah, okay.
And it was only in researching your story and your background and understanding where you've come from and really what inspires a lot of the music and different things like that, that I started to understand these things.
So you're certainly not someone that carries yourself with any particular identity.
Really, that one could discern other than just being a normal guy.
And the other thing that connects us is it was Liam.
And I think it would have been Liam's birthday a couple of days ago.
His birthday was three days off mine.
So his 29th of August, I believe, and mine's the 26th.
And we both knew him a little bit.
You knew him an awful lot.
And he passed away while on holiday in Argentina.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I just couldn't believe it.
And you to him, because he had told me, he talked about you all the time.
Through the pandemic.
I know you were doing things together doing sort of these sort of live shows and stuff.
And he would talk about you as if you were his best friend in the band all the time.
And I guess you reciprocate that feeling with him, right?
Especially thereafter the band, you know?
Definitely thereafter.
I'd say in the first couple of years me and Liam used to speak about this.
We kind of butted heads a little bit.
Like I said before, Liam had been.
You know he'd been working really, really hard since the age of 14 to get to where he was in One Direction.
My journey wasn't like that.
So there was definitely, you know, if I wanted to do something And I might be going out late at night and then Liam might say something along the lines of we've got a photo shoot at nine o'clock in the morning tomorrow.
We never saw eye to eye on those kind of things because I'm just like well, I've got this amazing opportunity, so I'm still going to go out and you know, party or whatever.
But I think Liam...
He came from a very, very sensible point of view, but mostly because he had given so much more time and energy to it by that point.
Like, as I said yes, it was my third audition, but really they weren't too taxing the moments of the rejection.
I just got on with it and got through it and it was fine.
The only time X Factor was relevant to me was the times when I was auditioning those days.
Whereas Liam, it became his life from 14 right up until 16.
Um, you know, he'd, he'd sang at like West Brom Stadium before like any of us had done anything.
Um, When I put my post up about him, and by the way, it's so utterly challenging that.
There are just too many words and too many memories.
It could just be infinite, the post.
I really wanted him to be remembered the way that he should be remembered.
But I could just go on and talk all day about how amazing he was.
But I think...
We all looked up to him.
I don't think I would have been brave enough to say at that age when I was in the band.
I think I would have had too much pride.
But we all looked up to him massively for the reasons that I just stated.
He was vastly experienced, before any of us had done anything.
Um, he was also like the safest pair of hands, like in every sense of the word.
So like vocally interview, music video, you know, like whatever it would be, and he'd be like working and doing it, like he would always be the safest pair of hands where you maybe if me, and say in the back, like either smoking a joint or doing something stupid, he would always, always have his eye on the ball which ironically, created more space for the.
Young lads don't reflect and go, oh, I can see he's picking up a lot of the pieces.
I'm going to do a bit more for him.
Well, no, you just see that.
Like, my role in the band might have been to be disruptive and have conversations with record labels or management or whoever.
And that was for me to be disruptive and go against the grain.
Liam's role was the opposite, but equally, if not more, important to just keep everything going, you know, and be that safe pair of hands of keeping everything in check.
That's why from a very young age he was called the sensible one in the band, which I also don't think lived on him loads of favours mentally either.
He was wildly misunderstood.
Big time.
Big time, man.
Big time.
And oftentimes people maliciously misunderstood him.
Yeah. which was hard, you know, it's hard.
I don't know if I have the right words for this, but if you knew Liam Payne and then you went on the internet and saw the way that he was described when you know certain moments in press and there was that interview he did in LA and things like that you could only feel awful that he was so poorly misunderstood because he was often painted as being arrogant or whatever.
But the reality of Liam is like the opposite of whatever the word arrogant is.
Pure is the word.
Really, yeah, really nice way of describing him like that.
Had and I don't mean this in a remotely rude way or derogatory way he had a bit of puppy dog energy about him.
You know, he's just like, when you say pure there, that's what it makes me feel like.
He's just the kind of guy that you might you know, you might get a bit of banter wrong and it comes across a bit cutting and you see him go, oh and you go oh, just just such, a just really wanted to be liked.
Now we all do obviously, like that, that's in all of us, but I think for Liam it was.
It was vitally important.
But also he missed out on some of the social life because from 14 to 16 he was actually working at that point like he was still at school and stuff.
But His brain and his dreams, and probably every night that he went to sleep he was thinking about how is he going to achieve what it is that he wants to achieve?
So he definitely had a very different journey to all of us.
Where were you when you found out?
In the car in LA and I just dropped, I'm pretty sure again, my memory isn't good at these moments in time, but I think I just dropped Freddie off at school with my son and we were just about to pull back up home.
Yeah, I think that's how it went down.
It was actually... I found out through Niall.
He told me and then...
I, yeah, I think you said, Niall said something like, on the lines of, have you seen the news?
And I knew as soon as you said that, I kind of knew what it might have meant.
I had the same feeling that I had of Felicity.
You know, and I think anyone has this when they're around someone who's struggling emotionally.
My 150% wasn't nearly enough.
And that's where we, you know, it's my own arrogance thinking that I could have helped really, because it was so much deeper than what I could have done for him.
He was definitely, you know, he was definitely struggling at that time in his life.
And a lot of people said this, and it really resonated with me, just he never... If he could...
If he could just see, just for five minutes, just live in your head or my head and see how we perceive him, he would be so shocked.
He would be like honestly, even the fact that you two were friends and I didn't know about that until you mentioned it at Socrate, or maybe he mentioned it loosely.
He would have loved that.
He would have loved that.
You would have been someone definitely, definitely that he would have felt really proud to know.
Because you come from also a very credible space, and that's something that was always really important to Liam.
Business, very, very important to Liam.
So the fact that you saw him, That would have meant the world to him, definitely.
He just, yeah, he very, very misunderstood.
But I think also the fact that he was misunderstood is because he was like I said before about all of our solo endeavours.
When most bands or artists start out, they do a development stage for six months, 12 months, 18 months, two years.
We had to do this development in the public eye post being in One Direction.
Liam was still working so much out.
So the fact that he might have been misunderstood.
You can't you know, there's some things that people definitely can be judged for.
But in terms of him occasionally coming across like that, you can't even judge people on looking, because they just see what they see.
But in reality that's just someone navigating, almost in the way that if you went down to and just people watched for two months, you would see some stuff you know of people that were struggling with some things and whatever, or you know complete walking contradictions.
You'd see someone in their first year who says that they swear by this brand and they'll never wear this brand, and then next year they'll be wearing said brand.
When we're at that age, we're all still just working it out.
So there's so much room to be misunderstood, right?
Because you don't know yet, you know?
And I think that was a tough thing for all of us is working out.
Who am I outside of?
Liam in one direction.
Louis in one direction.
Who am I and what does that look like?
And that question's intimidating, really, really intimidating.
You lose a friend there, but you also, in some respects, it marks...
It's grieving the band again, is it not?
You know what I mean?
It definitely brought up feelings like that.
Look, there's now only three other people on the planet that can deeply understand my professional journey.
Like, never say never, but never, like, I just can't, I can't ever imagine.
I'm not sure it would be right to him.
Like, say, sake of argument, 25 years time, it's like a fucking Oasis thing.
They offer us an arm and a leg and they're like, come back and do this many shows.
I don't know.
Yeah, I think it just completely put a pinning all that, and the irony is there was no one campaigning for one direction to get back back together more than Liam and, like I would say, I came in a close second actually.
Like, definitely another important thing to mention about Liam which I thought was incredible there's a time where I felt like me and Liam were professionally losing together.
We were struggling to to um be solo artists and find true success and we're kind of struggling together.
And then Liam had little moments where he had really successful singles and they streamed really well and he'd feel really good about that.
But at that time, nothing was really working for me in my job.
So I was really proud of him and I'd message him and stuff.
And then not to the same weight, but kind of role reversed a little bit and Liam was struggling a little bit more professionally and I just started to understand the picture a little bit more, started doing more touring and stuff like that.
And like, for example, when I made a documentary in a film about my life after One Direction and Liam came to the premiere.
Now I'll just say this, because I was going to mince my words, but none of the other boys would have done that.
Fact.
Boys out of the band, the lads in One Direction.
Would I have even done that?
I'd like to sit here now and say, yeah, I think I would, but I don't know, truthfully.
And the point being that, me empathizing how I was a couple of years prior to that, Liam was sat in a cinema watching a film about how I'd been successful in the last 12 months when he was struggling with his own things.
And it's something that...
I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to do it.
I'm not sure the other boys would have.
And basically all that is to sum that up is just utterly putting himself second.
There's no way that that wouldn't have had a certain kind of weight on him.
Because as you said, we're all human and we naturally compare.
So, you know, there might be things that were happening there that he was wanting for.
I just imagined how challenging that could be.
And it's just a real testament to Liam.
And he couldn't have been more happy.
And that's another great example right of this, of where the fucking internet is just a horrible place at times.
He put up and luckily I know someone with a screenshot of it, because he deleted it in the end but he put up this beautiful post after my premiere for this documentary like an essay, a fucking essay, like stuff that he's never said to me before.
It was like the sweetest, nicest fucking shit.
And then about two days later he deleted it because the fans were just caning him for it, just saying that he was, like you know, bandwagon kind of like.
Like you know what it's like?
It's a very small percentage of people, but they make a lot of noise and sometimes it'll push you to a point of like even deleting a pose.
But that, being an example of him just really putting himself second and really trying to say to the world how proud he was of me and and the end goal was more ridicule and save happened right when he was in argentina.
He was there yeah, watching nile yeah, performing.
There was lots of similar narrative around his, his appearance there and and all i would say in any regard like that not just Liam, in any person like that after you judge because sometimes it's human nature to judge after you judge just give those things just a little bit more thought.
So take the tour thing, for example.
And he's at the tour show and people were making comments of how much he was loving the attention.
On the surface level, that's someone who wants attention.
If you just look a little bit deeper, that's someone who's just been in the biggest band in the world and wants those situations again, who hasn't had those live situations again and craves for them.
The reason also Liam could be misunderstood is because he didn't really operate with a filter.
So he would just feel something say it and there you go.
Is there anything else that you've been meaning to say?
No.
It's a great provocative question, that.
Because that always is, right?
No, no, there is, there is, there is.
Well, we should talk about Freddie for a second, my little boy.
Follow the hit.
Yeah.
Which is, again, something that happened to me.
I was young.
I was 24 when I had Freddie.
Now, what a lot of people, the emotions that a lot of people go through when they become a new parent.
Some of those will be different for me, because I've always been uber excited about it, even from being a young, young lad.
But also, truthfully, I felt utterly confident.
I just, I felt like I was going to be a good dad.
I really, really wanted to do that and to play that role.
And he's just, honestly, he is just the sweetest kid, man.
He's just so kind.
Like, that's what, honestly, I could well up thinking about it now.
Like, that's what makes me feel deeply proud.
I mean, that's what I did ask Lottie and a few others about him.
And the quote that I got back is, Louis is the most amazing dad.
His little boy is the nicest, sweetest, most polite boy ever.
And that's obviously because of how Louis has brought him up.
I try to take a lot of advice and be more like him with my parenting.
And that came from Lottie.
And I have multiple accounts of just how wonderful of a young, young man Freddie's growing up to be.
He's great, man.
I tell you what I'm at this age 33 a few grey hairs on my head, starting to be a bit more aware of my age, feeling a little bit older.
There's nothing that makes you feel better than when I go pick him up from school.
I am a young dad.
For that age group, I'm still a young dad.
So, yeah, it's good for my ego as well.
The other thing that can sometimes be challenging like that with Freddie is it took...
It was like the elephant in the room for ages me talking about, like my life, and specifically the fame like, specifically like those kind of things.
Because I think to a kid, they just see it in the pure sense of a singer.
You know, there's someone who sings and that's that.
But I think where it became inevitable that I'd have to have conversations with them.
It'd be like say, we're out, you know, at Target in America, and someone stops me for a photo.
Now, I'd like to say I'm pretty good with photos.
I'll do them eight times out of ten.
Whenever I'm with Freddie, there is a 1,000% no chance.
Like, that is just not happening.
I don't get enough time with him as it is.
I'm always balancing my time between tour and going to see Freddie in the UK.
So, like, it's just a flat no every single time.
And after, like, the second or third time that that had happened, I just played on my mind.
I put into bed that night and I was reliving it and I was thinking, he's going to think I'm a dick.
Yeah.
Because you know it's really important that you know I push kindness on him and respect and seeing the good in people and all of that.
And all of a sudden I was doing this thing.
That was really contrary to what I was kind of trying to teach.
So I did have to have a conversation with him about it.
But again, you're trying to explain algebra.
As I said to you before, when I'm not at work, like I would be more than happy to like nobody to ever recognise me when I'm not at work.
When I'm at work, I'll need it for the promo.
Give me a bit of that.
But when I'm not at work, like I could go out my way to just never have any of that.
Hood up, no one, cool.
So when I'm picking up Freddie from school, I am certainly not.
Some guy used to be in this band and this singer like not at all.
I am there like everyone else as a father or as a mother.
It was last day of term.
Go to pick him up.
I go into his class and I could just hear what sounded like karaoke.
And I'm thinking of all fucking days of me going to pick him up, like doing karaoke today.
And she had absolutely no problem asking me, in front of everyone, if I wanted to come to the front and do one of the songs.
Now, I'm there as a parent, like, you know, that's that.
And what's really tough is in front of Freddie and all his friends, I have to quietly decline.
Now, I don't really like how that's going to make Freddie feel.
You know, those kind of situations are really, really tough, like that, where now some people may well just grab the mic and just took the stage, you know.
But I those.
There are moments like that that I think I don't think he's going to truly understand until he gets a little bit older.
He's been to a couple of gigs and that definitely added like some context to it all.
He came and saw you in California, didn't he?
Yeah.
When you performed out.
Yeah, that was amazing, man.
That was so amazing.
I did something at 24 years old that has had a profound impact on my life.
I set myself the challenge of posting every single day on my social media channels.
And at the time I was doing it to grow my following.
But it had this profound impact on my life and two remarkable things happened when I did that.
I managed to learn faster because every single day, I'm capturing what is happening to me and trying to distill it down into something that I can share with the world.
But, more remarkably, it led me to building a following of many millions of people, and that's the basis that I used to launch The Diary of a CEO.
And that's why I want to tell you about our sponsor today, Adobe Express.
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That's adobe.ly slash Stephen.
I guess we should talk about the music.
Yeah.
Which I'm very excited to talk about.
So you've been working on this album.
And I think what's the important context we've had is.
I'm curious to know how much everything we've talked about today and the season of life that you've arrived at at 33, you're now in love as well.
Your girlfriend is set up there from all the people I spoke to.
You're very smitten.
I think your friend from back home described you as being whipped.
Was that Nizam?
Yeah.
Sounds like him.
That's funny.
And you went Instagram official.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
New territory for me, all that.
Yeah, I'm learning on the job.
How does that all weave into the music?
And how is the music different this time around?
Like, what are you thinking going into the studio?
You know, all those things are so relevant.
They are like, you know, personal life and how happy you are and fulfilled and content.
All those things, of course, play into the record, definitely.
I think, because of you know a lot of the conversation we've just had, there's been a certain kind of weight to the music before now.
Like I said, I wrote that song about my mum called Two of Us.
And there's just a certain.
I could imagine you know, listening to my first record, like I'd be pretty exhausted after listening to it emotionally.
It's like, fucking hell, just put in a couple of nice, happy, fun songs, you know.
But it wasn't true to me at that time.
So, like, I think now...
Now I feel in a comfortable place to be like positive and like happy and confident.
You know, that's one thing I was thinking about with this record is like, my intention is just to maybe feel good.
And that's a really cliche and like obvious thing to say, but...
I'm not sure some of my other music did that.
It made you feel.
It was honest.
It was painful at times, but it didn't feel that good.
So I think now I've got this almost like a new sense of life, a new sense of happiness and purpose and fulfillment, all of those things.
But also it's something I've – like the older I get, the more hippie I can get on these kind of ideas.
And if I would use like an analogy – on the last two records i had a very small palette of paint of the colors i was choosing from, and a lot of them were kind of darker colors, whereas on this record it feels like the palette is a lot deeper.
There is a lot more to say, but there's a lot more color on there as well.
That makes me really good, because that that i must feel good to make that record.
You can't fake like that, or at least i can't anyway.
And how much does love come into all of this?
As I said, I'm like deeply, deeply romantic person.
It's also easy to be romantic when you are creative.
You know, those two things are just, they're tight.
But I think for me...
I really struggle to write in a fictional sense.
I really, really struggle.
So like for me, I have to have been living it.
I have to.
It has to be literal.
It has to be real to me.
So if I wasn't feeling so good right now, I wasn't feeling so in love, the record probably would have a slightly different feel to it.
Just because, you know, things like that are in everything that I, we do, I would say.
And what is success for you this time around?
We talked about the comparison and this and that and all these other yardsticks we can use.
I'll tell you what success is.
Success for me... is actually successfully computing what the new idea of success is.
So I know what my old idea is.
But true success for me and I'm not there yet is getting to the point where I don't just say this is my new version of success.
I mean it implicitly.
And what's really difficult is the music industry is an industry that is A a numbers game and B competitive.
Now, you can pretend to have this different version of success, and you can get there in the end.
It genuinely shouldn't matter where my album charts.
Let's just say, like, the UK, for example, where my album charts in the UK.
It shouldn't really matter that much to me, but it does.
I've not quite got there yet and i think the irony is i just started to get there on the last record, and the last record obviously high class problem i get that went to number one, and then all of a sudden i'm like obviously i want it again now.
So i i started to have the answer for what the new thing of success looks like until i succeeded, i superseded my own idea of success and then i'm like, oh Well, then the barriers just change.
And then you're basically just playing the same game you were before.
Where are you in your journey of happiness?
Like if you had to plot your life on a timeline of, like you know.
It makes me feel good.
It feels like I'm on the home straight.
Okay, nice.
Beautiful.
Like I feel like...
Truthfully, obviously not what I would have told my sisters back in the day, or my family or anything like that, but it was more of a concept the idea of me getting over this and being truly happy for a long time.
It was like a concept as opposed to any kind of form of reality.
It was like, oh, well, I'm sure logically that makes sense in my head, but will I ever get that?
I don't know.
I now feel worthy for the success that i've earned, and for a long time i just i didn't know if i'd ever get there and i would say this record this, this album, is the album that i was always, that i always deserve to make.
It's just i had to be brave enough to say yes, i'm an artist yes, i'm a recording artist and i'm a touring artist and i'm a songwriter and all these things that sometimes just felt a little bit cringe to say out loud weirdly, and i think part of the imposter syndrome may be, But the picture that was forever quite blurry looks a little bit more sharp now.
And I mean, the fans are waiting.
Yeah.
I mean, I saw the tweet you did the other day where you talked about the music and how confident you are and how you're feeling about it.
And the response underneath that post was just insane.
Yeah.
Absolutely insane.
The energy is there and people are extremely excited.
You have an incredible fan base.
Yeah, honestly, I can never talk about this enough.
And anyone listening to this now that doesn't know me or my fans will just think that this is just another artist speaking another cliche about his fans.
I'm telling you, this is what I call it.
It's a codependency.
Like I, they do so much for me.
And I do, you know, hopefully stuff for them when I do the gigs and stuff.
But like when I feel the energy on stage, this is not a let me show you all what I can do.
This is a look what we've done together, you know, and I really, really feel that.
The size of the venues that I'll be playing on this next tour.
These are things I never considered for myself and only made possible from the fan base being there like really, really loyal, but also like real patient.
Real patient for me to just kind of, you know, work all these things out on the fly while they keep buying the record.
The other thing that really surprised me that a lot of people didn't know about is that you are also a pretty prolific entrepreneur in your own right, and you've you've founded a music festival called the away from home festival, which was which originally in london but has expanded internationally around spain italy, mexico and um.
You got your clothing brand as well 28 i saw 28 tattooed on your arm there, i believe which is a streetwear brand um, and that's done tremendously well the, the brand has sold four sold out drops worldwide and hosted some incredible events.
Well, i'm very excited.
I'm very, very excited about your um, your album very, very excited by i'm.
I'm, i guess um, do you have a name for your fan base?
Yet everyone seems to have a name for their fans.
You know what that's so funny?
Because they're like the tomlinson, i don't know what's it.
There must be though, that.
Oh, I think no, they call themselves the Louis.
The Louis, okay.
So I'm a Louis.
There we go, there we go.
It just rolls up the tongue.
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.
And the question left for you, it's been a paragraph, but I'm going to give it my best shot.
If you are truly prioritising the most important things in your life brackets, eg family, and we only have limited time and effort to give.
If you are a high achiever and performer, have you prioritised the most important thing?
No, no, I haven't.
I haven't.
But I would...
That's a really tough one to answer.
It requires some true, true honesty.
The things that really, really matter.
I wasn't really in the headspace for the ball to have dropped for how important certain things are.
When you're younger, you're super literal, right?
Like, if I drink this alcohol and get really drunk and I feel good, then that's good, right?
Then you get a bit older and you realise, well, maybe it's not so good.
So, like, any of those kind of things...
I suppose now I understand how important you know looking out for yourself is and mental health, but also, you know, I've always been a family guy, but I mean actually deeply and cherishing those moments as well.
So i definitely could have done that more as a young lad.
But i think that's probably the case of a lot of young people, that they probably reflect and think well, i should have done that more as a as a young person, but the truth is the ball hasn't really dropped yet.
You don't realize how important those, all those little intricacies, intricacies are, because also, when you're young, everything's so new so you just like the allure is so much sexier on the other side oh look, there's a new thing here, new thing here, new thing here, Whereas I think it takes a bit of age and experience to look at those things and go oh, actually maybe I haven't been spending my time correctly.
Yeah.
I mean, you said it perfectly.
And it really held the mirror up to me, to be honest, because I think you know you said you haven't perfectly prioritised the most important things, but you're certainly prioritising more than most people.
You know, because I hear about how much effort you put into making sure you spend time with Freddie, and your sister described you as always being family centric.
And that's a really, really beautiful thing.
Louis, thank you so much.
I can't be more excited to listen to the album.
With all the context that we've described and also the understanding of where you've arrived at in your life now and how your perspective has developed, and all that lived experience has poured into a beautifully uplifting, wonderful sound.
So thank you so much for the honour and the privilege of being able to have this conversation with you.
And just for being a really, on and off camera, just a really, really sound guy.
Oh, nice one, man.
I appreciate that.
No, I really enjoyed it, man.
It flew by, though.
We've been talking for some time.
Yeah, it's good, man.
Thank you so much.
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