I often wonder if Louis dislikes Perfect Now considering he heavily dislikes WMYB.
I was really looking forward to Perfect Now back in 2019 because it was co-written with Johan Carlsson, Wayne Hector, and Jamie Scott— three people who had written for One Direction. In retrospect, you can hear the corniness and attempt for broad appeal. Louis for Apple Music:
I worked on this with Jamie Scott, who was part of the One Direction writing team. Lyrically, it’s kind of an extension of “What Makes You Beautiful,” One Direction’s first single. It was written quite deliberately as an attempt to write a fan favorite song. There is a long history of people coming out of bands and then talking shit about that band. I absolutely fucking love One Direction. I love the music. I love the music that we made, the fans, the culture, and everything behind it. There are songs like ‘Kill My Mind’ and ‘Walls’ where I’m trying something different, but of course, there’s always room for those [1D-like] songs on the album.
This statement seems to present a contradiction to Louis’ current feelings about WMYB, or at least a change of heart since releasing Perfect Now. We can also sense Louis’ defensiveness toward One Direction, his sensitivity to the mainstream criticism about 1D’s bubblegum pop, and his reflexive defiance in including a song of this genre on his debut album, even if his tastes ran the opposite to it.
Maybe Perfect Now made Louis structure Faith In The Future as an antithesis of that sound. Even though he included sparkling pop songs like Headline, he avoided performing them live.
I admit when I first heard Perfect Now, I was disappointed. It was the one dud on Walls the album. My second least favorite was We Made It… and so continues to this day the divergence between Louis’ and my taste.
Louis only performed Perfect Now live a couple of times in 2020. He never again acquiesced to fans’ asking for him to perform the song, and seems to regret even releasing the song (same as That’s The Way Love Goes, co-written with George Tizzard, Rick Parkhouse, and Robert Harvey).
