Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew

31:33So the irony is we get put in this band, but people have no idea we are. Like 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 bootcamp, judges' houses, live shows. And we went filming for judges' houses. And I was already questioning, I wasn't really singing at all. we had not had like any individual thing to sing it was like harmony stuff and i got stung by sea urchin right random story my foot blew up like an elephant and we had to film all this you know what x-factor is like right we had to film all this jeopardy this like how old 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 don't I would be shocked if anyone could even hear me in the mix at that point.

32:34So that was really challenging where, you know, I've already started 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 or i don't know maybe it is my voice there's a lot of there's there's 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 i would love to though i would have loved to but do you know why i wouldn't would never with him simon would probably he would he would simon was always very brilliant at making me feel worthy in the band.

33:28But as you said before, I was often a voice between the band and the label. He was the label. Well, he put me on side and that's a smart move, isn't it? One thing he would always do, Stephen, 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, we like people using our names. Now, imagine that Simon Cowell when 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.

34:02Now, 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 realise 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.

34:48It 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, like, 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 they were right to. and I found out I was the only one that was going to stay with him and that just motivated me more.

35:22So 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. I never 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, 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 um one of the things people don't talk about is the impact that your success has on everyone else back here in Doncaster including including your mum I spoke to your sister Lottie well 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 they had on her all of that that's something like i 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 time scale 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 in 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 as if i was telling like 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 tonight and that that we we definitely had that kind of energy together you know we we 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 and mother situation so I think it really hit my mom 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 don't 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'll 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 if my mom 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 were in the band a long time spent not spending enough time with family.

38:38And 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 realise 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.

39:16How do you reflect on Zayn's decision now? Because were you pissed off at the time that he was breaking things up? I was fuming. Really? I was, again, it's not something we've discussed enough yet, but me and Zayn, 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 Zayn, 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.

39:56Well, sometimes when you've got a lot of guests and stuff, it can be challenging. But we always said we wouldn't be that bad. 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 I kind of like testament of the relationship. So I felt a little bit hard done by. I felt like, like, not like throw these boys under the bus, but let me know. But I 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 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 know he knew i was always very opinionated so how did you find out that evening um 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 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 he wasn't coming now like i had this in me too but like zane was quite prolific for it like this wasn't out of the ordinary like if zane 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 he doesn't 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 hope 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 zane really well and zane 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 it's just there's just a lot going on like that now when you're in a band you can share that wealth it's like it's you know say let's say you're signing an interview you're not enjoying.

42:16You 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?

42:46But 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 didn't, 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've described 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. And 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 anymore I think like anything like that you know like if you're like a 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 and and 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 um always how it should be like that obviously but i think

43:59it 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 never really felt in the band because normally like i said we're arms and arm and arms 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 it just felt the room felt cold that day i can remember that in particular there was it was i'm trying to find the right metaphor for it but it was 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.

44:44There 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. Which, by the way, is just such a cringy word. So it was originally pitched as that. So I was thinking, I remember saying, like, well, if I'm going to try and do some stuff on my own, and at this point I didn't even know what I was going to do, I was like, it'd be good to know how long this break's going to be for.

45:25So let's speculate. A year? Two years? Five years? Ten years? Fifteen years? 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. and 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 his shit. Now we were nice boys, we were never rude or anything like that, but like, so like if Simon, like it 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 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 realize that that would rub us up the wrong way makes sense and then it ends and uh your life goes from absolutely crazy to less crazy 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.

46:41I remember, I spoke about it 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. Obviously I 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.

47:16I 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.

47:50Like, 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. You know. Now, some of the things that maybe I had then that I don't have now, you know, I'm not overly pressed for. Like, I don't know, like a billboard for the album in L.A. 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.

48:32But I think the feeling in general of I have to work really hard to compete at the level I do. Like, that is just a fact. Like, I just got a number one record and the last record in Faith for 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, et cetera. 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 realized 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 and that's why i've always found it quite unrealistic to like not like to not compare the two i i completely agree with that because they 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 this i do a cover stupid of me to call it a cover i I realised how funny that is.

49:34When 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.

50:12And 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 no one can understand but it's the comparison is how 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 gonna have some kind of sort of even unconscious comparison to to everything thereafter do you what do you do about that do you have to use a different yardstick of measurement do you i try to i try to these are words aren't they do you know i mean that's it being honest 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 intently 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 former bandmates about how they were coping with these yeah yeah all different to be honest that would only happen me and liam um 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 it's more it's more i would struggle to text the other boys as much what i mean just i would love to hang out with him in person like that but i just it 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 leon would always speak on a much more deep level because and i like he definitely he i felt bad saying this because i feel arrogant but i shouldn't i i wanted to look i wanted to look after him definitely liam like that that was that was like a role i feel like i was there to play and like he definitely you know often his uh the way he would like perceive certain parts of his life i would be really inspired by like he was someone who really brave at times which like contrary to sometimes what he 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 like he's cool like that did you worry about him always always yeah could because

53:17because I knew he was a little misunderstood but also you know like interestingly the record when when you're starting out as a solo artist the parallels of people who know themselves made the best records definitely so like 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 will be someone who candidly I could say to him really honestly, like, bro, fucking hell, I miss being in the band.

53:59And we could have a really honest conversation like that. Whereas, 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 on my sleeve. But, you know, there's still 10 % of me that's guarded in the right places.

54:35He'd certainly had 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 you can't 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 at 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 freddy i'm full-time dad and i'm not a singer you know and i'm and any of that world outside does not does not really matter it's not relevant to me as a father which it isn't did i ever tell you about the uh data breach that we had at my previous company yeah i remember hearing about that which which um was a total nightmare so i'm glad that we now use one password What actually is it, Steve?

55:34It's called 1Password, and they're the sponsor of the podcast now. And they have this feature called Enterprise Password Manager, which means that if any of our passwords across the team are compromised or leaked, then it notifies us. And obviously, if that were to be the case, we're at huge risk across the entire team. Through 1Password EPM, you can also store all of your sensitive information. And it's helping us to move closer towards pass keys, which means eventually everybody will be able to log in to pretty much everything without ever having to put a password in. Sounds like a good addition.

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57:05They have no long-term contracts or hidden fees so you can cancel at any time. They also have a 60-day money-back guarantee. My audience can save 50 % on a SimpliSafe home security system at simplisafe.com slash doac. That is simplisafe.com slash doac. There's no safe like a SimpliSafe. I've never found more photographs of a person's life in my life I mean 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, quite 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 uh crowds and these images it's insanity yeah oh yeah this my mom took this picture this was the first picture ever taken of us my mom took this um you look super young yeah yeah that again yeah so I was the oldest 18 then you got the Harry Liam and now they were 16 saying 17 and of course your yeah i love that picture i love that picture it kind of really sums up mine and leon's relationship i love it i love it he will 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, I got a very similar picture to this by my bedside table at home in my bedroom.

58:54About a year after you leave One Direction, your mother passes away from leukaemia. 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 leukaemia, 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 um i'm just terribly sorry i'm just i you know i appreciate you saying you know 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 you know there was definitely as you said the time in look 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 like true like resentment for the world like real resentment just feeling really hard done by you know it's the kind of 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 until 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 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 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.

1:00:36In 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 met with these, when you 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 now it was like the party afterwards and it was like 10pm at this point I'd already had quite a few vodka red balls which was not ideal for the weight of the conversation my mum called me I was stood outside it wouldn't have been out in 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 like 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 of before actually, you know, even embracing the thought.

1:01:49It 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 there 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 felt the only way just to completely escape that moment at that night. What I found really challenging during, even that first conversation with her about it was I still wanted to inspire hope.

1:02:29I still wanted to, like, because she was really hopeful and she was like, so I was trying to have this, like, 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, you know, feel like she'd upset me or, you know, even though obviously it wasn't her choice, but I can remember that idea of really trying to, I would be real with my mum 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, yes. She told me that she had leukemia.

1:03:03My 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 there, right? Meaning that has the most survival rate. And blessed, she has to be like, no, not really. and how long was it from that phone call till her passing i have no idea i could not i want my guess would be 18 months i think it might have been quicker than that um the anniversary of her death i get texts all the time and 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 I just, it's deleted from my brain.

1:03:51She 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 your 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 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 like a couple of days before which I still can't believe he even you know had the strength to do but my mum was just so proud of him and especially him starting his solo career.

1:04:43Even 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 had happened to her, affect my career and my life as a person. I would do it again for her. That's, 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, I didn't, it's not something I look back on and go, I'm really proud.

1:05:29I am proud that I did that, but that you almost say those kinds of things when you want to do something, right? I'm really proud that I did that. That wasn't, it felt like it was taken out of my hands. I didn't want her to have that gill, but it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. Like, obviously, like, I just, 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 there 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 it was, where I was so young.

1:06:15I 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 times where my job will weigh me down, even like today, you know, not today, but I mean in this current head. and it's just worth it helps me remember it helps me put things into perspective that you know just because a radio station isn't playing my single you know that that hurts 0.000001 % in the same as something like that so I think because I was so challenged emotionally and I I I survived the experience it's given me a weird kind of confidence to be honest it's 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're 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 me mom um so I think there's there was definitely stuff that I've had to learn like being like on my own 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 in the planet and she'd actually made me feel stupid for even questioning the fact that I could 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 how does how does a young man grieve the loss of his mother at such a young age everyone obviously everyone everyone's grief is completely individual so then i found out more recently purpose was mine now this is again not a luxury that everyone has in a situation like i I found myself in.

1:08:21I 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 dad and granddad. There was too much to do for my 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 they get out of bed because I had that there was stuff that needed to be done and at that time my sisters was so so so young and I was so terrified of what kind of effect that would have on them you know growing up 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 would call 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 like i'm still i'm still feeling it like you you could you could 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 so i don't carry myself like that i'm not someone who's like down the dumps like that but it's still there you know it's what will never go away what are the symptoms of it still being there it there is like this air of i suppose air of unpredictable this feeling of and that's sometimes where my 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 but and because for 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 it seems like the the breeding ground of worry and anxiety.

1:10:41I actually wrote that down earlier because when we were speaking earlier, you said I wasn't a worrier back then when you're talking about your childhood. 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? it's like yeah 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 or near identical and feeling and and and that was something that always kind of stuck with me really because not always but like a lot of like stuff that feels really good can be quite intimidating beforehand you know that there's an anxiety that comes with doing something that is out of the ordinary, I suppose.

1:11:39I can distinctly remember, not so much now, but on the first tour, like 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? Like, 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.

1:12:28And the tragedy is deepened by the fact that she's 18 years old at the time. Again, an unthinkable, 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 that was kind of what I was speaking up before that moment of stubbing your toe and that kind of aggravating you that was just like that idea accentuated um I just couldn't believe I couldn't 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 um people that you lose parents young and obviously struggled to deal with, but at the time, I felt angry at life, and I felt angry mostly on behalf of my family.

1:13:19Now, 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 it 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 of my life the so I'm sat in my house in London and everything was like fine um 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 and in 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 because 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 me being like okay like i'm cool i'm fine i just i think i didn't i just not only did i was i in denial at that moment like 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 in the house with and uh obviously then they then they start crying and obviously then I think your brain starts catching up with you

1:15:52and 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 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

1:16:16I 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 this 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 or 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 kind 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 and and i i can only imagine how hard that was and he knew how hard it was for me and how i just lost my mom and and there are no words right you just i'm sure you're just scrambling your brain trying to find the words and there isn't any um 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 protect her right to lose my sister in the manner that we did even though I knew that it wasn't fair on myself.

1:18:01Like 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 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.

1:18:32I felt like I'd failed at the time. That's the truth. I know now that I didn't, and if she was here now, she would say that you didn't. But yeah, it doesn't change the feeling. And that's, again, you know, that's always been the role I played in the family. And all I was trying to do after my mum was just put me and my sisters and my grandparents in a bubble. I just thought, let's just, nothing's going to get to us, you know. So that, that, you know, 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.

1:19:22it just kind of undermined all those ideas it made it made a lot more challenging for me to say them and and feel them and believe them but the same with my sisters like you know so it just made everything obviously infinitely more different difficult um the only thing i'm thankful is that me mom wasn't around to see that because that would have been horrible for her but you know i actually learned this from um being around funny enough being around liam um 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.

1:20:02And in hindsight, someone that's not been in those situations thinks, well, you just go over there and you sit with them and have dinner and then you fix it. But actually the reality of helping someone who's struggling is they often do things in private and secretly. You referenced you knew that Felicity was struggling with something. 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 obviously mom passing definitely amplified any of those things. But I think with Felicity, she was one of these people that she was uber intelligent from a young age, really, really, really intelligent, which is ironic because I'd say we're a relatively smart family, but she was like in her own league.

1:20:46Really, 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 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 way because it felt I'd say Felicity looked the most like my mum as well like visually 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 just say how much I look like my mum and as a young lad that's not really what you want to hear but I'm really proud there yeah yeah you can see how much I love her there bless

1:21:53But 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 of how when I talk about it is because I cannot have that define me.

1:22:43I can't. It's not fair to my family. It's not fair to Felicity. It's not fair to my mom. 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 a 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 that's something that i can't escape and i that that 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 the with anyone hearing these stories of course you're gonna 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.

1:24:12So I remember going on to BBC Breakfast News, and it's one of those things, it's fucking early morning slot. Like, not even the presenters 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 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. You know, that's one thing. But I actually had a journalist at the time who asked me directly about those things.

1:24:47And I'd known that we'd said don't. Now, it's very different to be like sometimes on that list we might have don't speak about One Direction. Like 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 I 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 was like, I never fucking work with the BBC again, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he came back at me, this journalist. He said, well, if you write a song about grief, expect to be asked about it.

1:25:24And 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 I think, 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 hurting. 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.

1:26:05Okay, right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So we met at Soccer Aid. Okay. Right. I had no idea. 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.

1:26:39So you're certainly not someone that carries yourself with any particular identity. really that's that that one could could discern other than just being a normal guy and the the other thing that that connects us is it was liam and i think it would have been liam's birthday a couple of days ago yeah his birthday was three days off mine so he's the 29th of august i believe mine's the 26th and we both um i knew him a little bit you knew him an awful lot and he he passed away while on holiday in Argentina. 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.

1:27:20Through 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 that's, you feel, you reciprocate that feeling with him, right? you were like the especially thereafter the band you know definitely thereafter i'd say um in the first couple of years me and liam used to speak about this we we kind of bought 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 along the lines of, we've got a photo shoot at nine o 'clock in the morning tomorrow.

1:28:10We 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, like when, 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 sang at like west brom stadium before like any of us had done anything um i when i put my post up about him and by the way it's so utterly challenging that like that there are just too many words and too many memories you could it could just be infinite the the post you know you gotta you i really wanted i really wanted him to be remembered the way that he should be remembered but this you know i could just go on and talk all day about how amazing he was but i think we all looked up to him if we if we're i don't think i would have been brave enough to say at that age when I was in the band.

1:29:29I think I would have had too much pride. But we all looked up to him massively for like the reasons that I just stated, you know, he was vastly experienced before any of us had done anything. 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 Zay in the back, like either smoking a joint or doing something stupid, Liam would always, always have his eye on the ball, which ironically created more space for, you know, when you've got someone who's willing to pick up the pieces and you've got young lads, young lads don't reflect and go, oh, I can see he's picking up a lot of the pieces.

1:30:15I'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 like a very young age, like he was called that the sensible one in the band, which I also don't think will have done him loads of favours mentally either. He was wildly misunderstood.

1:30:52Big 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 how 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 there was that interview he did in la and things like that yeah you if you 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 in a remotely um rude way or derogatory way he he had a bit of puppy dog energy about him you know like 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 my fucking ass yeah it's just just such a just really want it 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 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 he definitely had a very different journey to all of us where were you when you you found out in the car on in la and i just dropped i'm pretty sure again my memory isn't good at these moments of time but i think i think i just dropped freddie off at school with my son and we were just about to pull back up home yeah and yeah i think that's how it went down it was actually it was actually i found out through niall they told me and then i yeah i assume i think he said now i'll say something like along the lines of have you seen the news and i knew as soon as he said that um i kind of knew what it might meant what he might have meant um i had a same the feeling to that i had a felicity you know and i think anyone has this when they're around someone who's struggling um

1:33:22my 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. It 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 but like even the fact that you two are friends and i didn't know about that until you mentioned it so great or maybe he mentioned it loosely um he would have loved that he would have loved that he would you would have been someone definitely definitely that he would have felt really like proud to know you know and like because because you come from also a very credible space and that's something that was always 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.

1:34:55We 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 a bit 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 university and just people watched for two months, you would see some stuff, you know, that people that were struggling with some things and whatever.

1:35:31Or, you know, complete walking contradictions. You'd see someone in the first year who says that they swear by this brand and they'll never wear this brand. And the 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 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. it you lose you lose a friend there but you also in some respects it marks it's grieving the band again is it not is it not you know what i mean it's it definitely brought up feelings like that um look there's there's there's now only three other people on the planet that can deeply understand my professional journey like you 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 say sake of argument 25 years time it's like a fucking oasis thing they offer us an arm and a leg and they'll like come back and do this many shows

1:36:52I don't know yeah I think it just it just completely put a a pin in all of that and the irony is there was no one campaigning for Wanderation 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 like really successful singles and they stream really well and he'd like feel really good about that but at that time nothing was really working for me and in my job so I was really proud of him and I'd message him and stuff but and then not the same weight but kind of role reversed a little bit and Liam was struggling a little bit more professionally and I just started just started to understand the picture a little bit more started doing more touring and stuff like that and like for example when my I made a documentary in a film about like my life after One Direction and Liam came to the premiere now i'll just say this because i was going to mince me words but none of the other boys would have done that fact boys out 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 i don't know truthfully and the point being that lee i meet 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.

1:38:36And it's something that I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to do. 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. And I think just the fact that he turned up on that day and was there for me, and I just did the role reverse in my head and imagined that. I just imagined how challenging that could be.

1:39:11And 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, it's just horrible place at times. He put up, and luckily I know someone with a screenshot because he deleted 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 was like the sweetest nicest fucking shit and then about two days later he deleted it because the fans were just cating 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 post but that being an example of him just really putting himself second and really trying to save the world how proud he was of me.

1:40:00And the end goal was more ridicule. And so it happened right when he was an Argentinist. He was there watching Niall perform and there was lots of similar narrative around his appearance there. 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 a surface level, that's someone who wants attention.

1:40:37If 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 can be misunderstood is because he didn't really operate with a filter. you know so he would just feel something say it and there you go is there anything else that you you've been meaning to say it's a great provocative question that no no there is there is um well we should we should we should talk we should talk about freddie for a second my little boy yeah which is again something that happened to me um 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've become a new parent some of those will be different for me because i've always been uber excited about it even from like being a young young lad but also truthfully i felt utterly confident i just i just i felt i felt like i was going to be a good dad i really really wanted to to do that and to play that role um 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 that's what makes me feel deeply proud i mean that's what i i did ask lottie and a few others about 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.

1:42:24So that's... He's great, man. I tell you what, I'm at this age, 33, a few grey hairs on me 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 only things 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 kinds of things. Cause 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.

1:43:05But the, I think where, 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 1000 % no chance. Like that is just not happening. I don't get enough time with him as it is. Always balancing my time between tour and going to see Freddie in the UK. So like it's just a flat now every single time. And after like the second or third time that had happened, I just played on my mind.

1:43:42I put him to bed that night and I was reliving it and I was thinking he's gonna think I'm a dick like I thought I was like because I you know it's really important that you know I push kindness on him and and 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 before when I'm not at work like I would be more than happy to like nobody to ever recognize 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'm i could go out of 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.

1:44:41And I'm thinking of all fucking days of me going to pick him up, they're 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 plightly 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 um 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 he performed out yeah that was amazing man it was so amazing i did something at 24 years old that has had a profound impact on my life.

1:45:32I 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.

1:46:00They are the platform that I use to make all the posts across my LinkedIn and across my Instagram. It's a couple of clicks and you don't need to be an expert. And that is why I love using it because I'm not an expert in graphic design. It's accessible to use for all of us, even if we don't have the technical prowess to design great things. So if you want to start compounding both your reach and your knowledge, like I did at 24 years old, then head to adobe.ly slash steven and get started with adobe express that's adobe.ly slash steven 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 33 you're now in love as well your girlfriend is not out 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 yeah sounds like him that's funny um and you went Instagram official yeah yeah new territory for me all that yeah I'm learning on the job how does that all weave in to the music and how is the music different this time around like what are you thinking going into the studio you know all of this all those things are so relevant they are like you know personal life and and and how happy you are and fulfilled and content all those things of course playing to 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 mom 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 you 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 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 it 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 shit 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 um it also 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 like right now I wasn't feeling so in love the record probably would have a slightly different feel to it just because it you know i things like that are in everything that i we do i would say and what is success for you this time around like what is we talked about the comparison and this and that and all these other yardsticks we can use and i'll tell you what success is success for me is actually successfully computing what the new idea of success is.

1:50:03So 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, but the point being that there are a million different tools in place to pull you to the other side. It genuinely shouldn't matter where my album charts. Let's just say the UK, for example, where my album charts in the UK.

1:50:44It 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 changed and then that then then you're basically just playing the same game you were before where are you in your journey of happiness like if you to plot plot your plot your life on a timeline of like you know i like that because i've never really thought about that like thought about it like this and it makes me feel good it feels like i'm on the home straight okay nice beautiful like i feel like truthfully like obviously not what i would have told like my sisters like back in the day or my family or anything like that but like it was more of a concept um 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 you know logically that makes sense in my head but will i ever get that i don't know um 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.

1:52:14It'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 maybe. 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 you talked about the music and how confident you are and how you're feeling about it um and the response underneath that that post was just insane absolutely insane the energy is is there and um people are extremely excited you have an incredible fan base yeah honestly i i couldn't i can never talk about this enough um and anyone listening to this now that doesn't know me or my fans would just think that this is just another artist speaking another cliche about his fans i'm telling you this is what i call 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 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 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 like the tomlinson i don't know what's it there must be though that i think they know they call themselves the louis the louis okay so i'm a louis so there we go there we go just rolls up that song yeah we we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last question the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for the question left for you it's been a paragraph but i'm going to give it my best shot if you are truly prioritizing 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 prioritized the most important thing no no i haven't i haven't but i would i would i would that's really tough one to answer that requires some true, true honesty.

1:55:24Those, the things that really, really matter. For a start, I spent a lot of my, a lot of my later teen years and early adult life in One Direction. So I didn't, I didn't, 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? 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 realize, 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.

1:56:09But also, you know, I've always been a family guy. But I mean, actually deeply 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 young person. But the truth is the ball hasn't really dropped yet. You don't realise how important all those little 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.

1:56:40Whereas 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 perfectly said it perfectly and it really held the mirror up to me to be honest because i think you know you said you you haven't perfectly prioritized the most important things but you're certainly prioritizing the most than more than most people you know because i hear about how much time you how much effort you put into making sure you spend time with freddie and your sister described you as always being family centric um and that's a really really beautiful thing louis thank you so much i can't be 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 has developed and um all that lived experience has poured into a beautifully uplifting wonderful sound um so thank you so much for the honor 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 man i appreciate that now i really enjoyed it man i really it flew by though we've been talking for some time yeah it's good man thank you so much make sure you keep what i'm about to say to yourself i'm inviting 10 000 of you to come even deeper into the diary of a ceo welcome to my inner circle this is a brand new private community that i'm launching to the world we have so many incredible things that happen that you are never shown we have the briefs that are on my ipad when i'm recording the conversation we have clips we've never released.

1:58:08We have behind the scenes conversations with the guests and also the episodes that we've never ever released and so much more. In the circle, you'll have direct access to me. You can tell us what you want this show to be, who you want us to interview and the types of conversations you would love us to have. But remember for now, we're only inviting the first 10 ,000 people that join before it closes. So if you want to join our private closed community, head to the link in the description below or go to doaccircle.com. I will speak to you then.

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