First of all, the intention he mentions “to be able to tour and have these amazing live moments”.
It’s funny that what Louis is saying is at times so contrary to what we see play out in reality. If he loves performing, then where are the accompanying performances of Bigger Than Me live that’ll help him sell tour tickets because people realize he can sing? Which is unfortunately a very persistent 1D leftover myth he has working against him, that he didn’t get solos because he had a ‘weak’ voice, or that he’s always pitchy (which isn’t true, he’s definitely had pitch issues but only later in 1D when he was struggling with insecurities and a lack of confidence)
Also, it’s a gross misconception that just because your first tour was successful, you’ll carry that same amount of ticket sales with you to the next tour and album. Besides, a lot of the people who went to see him, saw him an exorbitant amount of times. That’s not sustainable. If you want to be able to continue touring, you need to also keep growing your audience, so it doesn’t matter if you lose some fans here and there, because you’ll get new ones. You can’t pluck from a bald chicken as we say, but if they keep on catering to just one small group, that’ll fall apart at one point. (And to be fair, catering to at this point seems like an exaggeration as well).
The fact that people just explain to him that it’s a ‘mystery’ why radio stations don’t uphold their promises of playing his record if he comes by, instead of him questioning why his team can’t actually ensure that happens. It keeps happening because clearly his team is also just letting stations get away with it. Yes, radio stations and the way in which programming and playlisting works is fucked up, but there is definitely a system to it. So play that system. I find it kind of odd that somehow he’s just accepted this is how it works, but he still does it and has not found different radio pluggers.
He also mentions an element of mystery to conversations with the record label or press opportunities. I find it odd, to a certain extent, that someone who’s been in this industry since 2010 would actually state this. If you want people to honor their word, get it in writing. Get better PR people, get better A&R people who will go to bat for you. That’s not on the mystery of a legitimately fucked up industry that will of course find every loophole in existence to fuck you over, it’s because you don’t have capable people around you that’ll not accept anything less than the best for you.
It’s also funny that he thinks a tour is a black and white representation of whether or not he’s done a good job. Because so is selling an album or getting consistent streams, it means people are listening to your music and enjoying it enough to invest in owning it or streaming it over and over again. Numbers are also ‘black and white’. But they’re also not in the same sense that a concert isn’t. Because people can’t enjoy it, if they don’t know it. If they’ve never been introduced to it in the first place. If you want people to go to your tour so they can have a good night (potentially), they’ll have to be aware of your music. It’s a conditional reward where a premise first needs to be fulfilled. But if he’s relying on fans who love him and actively invest so much in him and his music to come to his shows, then how does that give an accurate representation of whether or not they’ve had a good night? He could not sing a single song and just sit on stage smiling, and some fans might still say it was the best night of their life.
Clearly he agrees with Zach that he does like the opportunities they offer to hang with fans, because that’s the part he can control. (I’m just skipping over the fact how Zach so easily goes, oh yeah of course it leads to nowhere, when for many artists it does lead somewhere so what’s the difference??? But we don’t talk about Bruno I guess). Here I’d parry with three alternatives as well:
1. Just organise hangouts without the intermediary of a radio if it’s exhausting and it doesn’t lead anywhere, because actually that puts you in way more control. Pull a Taylor Swift or even Demi Lovato and have houseparties across the country with fans that you want to invite at a place where you want to meet them, under your conditions. Because also, it’s really not a good thing that he keeps on meeting the same people? It’s a red flag, on multiple fronts.
2. More variation in the radio stations. Who gives a shit if third tier station C is going to play your song 1 time at midnight? It’s not going to actually help you at all. If the point was to meet fans and potentially get radio play, then at least do it in big cities with big radio stations where airplay would mean something. Not fricking Scranton that we all probably only know from the Office.
3. Veer away from pop station and actually commit to alternative or rock/punk stations. Ever since Miss You in 2018 actually various stations have stated they’d be happy to have Louis, and one of them Idobi even reached out to his team but just never heard anything. If they truly believe that his songs don’t fit pop radio, then why are they organising teeny tiny exhausting pop radio tours for him?
Also I just take issue with this ongoing argument of what is and isn’t a “good single” according to Louis. What constitutes a good single is not based on the music or the melody or the BPM or whatever, it’s how you sell it and how you get it in front of people’s eyes and ears. In fact, to a certain extent it’s almost insulting considering the fact that fans got Defenceless on radio and he explicitly states he felt like he didn’t have good radio songs on his first record. Plus, We Made It also got played a little bit on US radio and he did do a radio tour for that song too, so it’s also just not true. On top of that, it begs the question how important he finds radio. There’s this juxtaposition between him acknowledging that if he considers a song right for radio, he’ll go out and try to get it on radio, so he sees the value of radio play - but then also, it’s alright when they don’t play his music because it just happens and he doesn’t really make music for radio anyways (whatever that may mean, once again).
It’s also funny because Zach does later on keep on emphasising that he’s building relationships with these radio stations, but frankly, it goes to show that it’s not helped in receiving sustained radio play. Plus, it’s a bit US centric - with radio it’s easier in the sense that you can pre-record interviews that can air later and yet…. No call-in interviews anywhere.
Obviously it’s nice that Louis says he wants to meet fans where they’re at, and I believe he truly believes that. I just don’t think he’s actually always doing it.
His fans are online - where is he online at the moment? They want to talk to him and be seen by him with regards to his new single and his album - not an album by the Snuts who will outperform and outsell him because they do get commercial support from radio and other stakeholders. He’s just syphoning off his own fans and funneling them through to other artists.
His fans are also in a bunch of other countries, and yet when asked where Away From Home should go next year (or the year after) he mentions the US as a possible location. Just after he’s discussed that it’s nice for fans to feel seen that don’t live in big cities like New York or LA. Well - there are a bunch of fans who don’t feel seen because they don’t even live in the US at all.
Next controversial statements I feel are made when they discuss alternative v pop, and Louis elaborates on how he interprets these things. His label told him Bigger Than Me was perhaps a bit too alternative, which to me suggests that it was Louis who thought it’s a pop record. I find this ambiguity interesting, because it means that part of him wants to have a pop single, but also he doesn’t because he likes the alternative label and says it’s who he is. Of course, I realise that they aren’t mutually exclusive, but he is the one who is presenting it as such. And part of me then thinks that maybe he doesn’t even mind that the song doesn’t get played on pop radio because to his mind it may confirm that it’s therefore not ‘safe’, which is how he sees ‘pop’. And it’s interesting that he admits he needed to hear Zach say that pop is just an amalgamation of all various formats, and that he knows he’s right even though he instinctively thinks differently.
Which is also funny since it’s also him separating the past from the present, and putting 1D in the pop corner, the safe corner - but he never mentions the band in this section. That’s smart, because he doesn’t need to disparage or feel any less proud about the music he made with 1D that way, but he can still be cognizant of the fact that it’s limiting his opportunities now. Which, again, he seems to accept as a fait accompli and it… just isn’t. Or at least, it didn’t need to be.
Plus, the ongoing presumption that alternative songs don’t get played on pop radio formats is just so wrong and objectively not true, that it drives me mad.
None of this is to say that Louis is lazy or doesn’t want success or whatever, I think he’s just trying to navigate his previous experiences, to not set himself up for disappointment or failure, and hoping for a half full glass as always. I don’t think that he’s got a good, accurate read on how the fandom behaves, though, in terms of consumer behavior (and neither does his label/team).
Alright this was my analysis from like minute 20 up to minute 43. And now I’m off to bed! Let me know if there are other sections you want my thoughts on.
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