louis being suddenly awarded promo opportunities that he was never given before is not only confirmation of how he was blacklisted in the past, but about how rigged the system is in the first place.
the lemonade launch marked the largest marketing activation that he's ever received--which signals to the rest of industry that he has backing, now. they want to make that money back. they hustled.
he was "hot" with BTY but that song was actually pulled off of radio (something we now know labels do to push up other songs, btw) instead of receiving juice and his promo was literally:
0 UK televised performances
3 US televised performances (TCAs, iHeart, Fallon) *courtesy of bebe's team
2 non televised performances (iHeart, Key103)
11 US/UK promo appearances*
i tracked his 2016-2018 promo, and compared all the boys' for 2017. he was clearly not a priority, and expendable. DFA comlpained about how BTY was treated. his songs weren't sent to radio! BBC is pretending like FITF never existed.
liam did 12 jingle balls in 2017. niall did 8 jingle balls when he had a single song out. he did 7 the following year when he was doing NH1 promo. that's normal: that's how you support an artist. to treat louis' absence in the race as something normal is so ignorant. he himself complained about the industry multiple times. he said his album release was the most important 2018 thing and he got stuck with XF duty. he teased a tour that never happened.
"see, he chose syco!" is a really sick way of saying "he asked for this" when even he admitted that he basically realized it was a mistake in how he was treated. but by then it was too late, and mr happy-families stuck it out like he does. that doesn't mean it didn't happen.
like, is the fact that the jonas brothers are doing a grand old promo tour mean they were never held hostage for radio play??
to think everything was totally fine and dandy because things are finally rolling into gear is severe outcome bias. it is NOT normal that he wasn't invited to do a live lounge for 9 years. it is NOT normal that BBC is pretending like FITF doesn't exist. it is NOT normal that syco's tyler brown didn't know a louis when talking about signing TXF talent but wanted to tie himself to harry which syco had nothing to do with.
louis' situation is not unique, it is not special. i spent years documenting case studies of artists who spoke up about what they experienced.
somehow he is resilient enough that he persevered to this point and managed to get himself some backing from BMG--maybe FITF outperformed what they expected and that's why they decided to juice him up a bit more. who the fuck knows. but the fact that he survived doesn't mean he wasn't being starved.
