Liam’s podcast with Steve Bartlett is out and while I still don’t care about that guy I’ll give him this-- he does great at getting out of the way and letting Liam talk. And boy does Liam talk! Liam says A LOT and let’s all just pause to send him some big hugs before we get into right? And then look to the future- Liam’s routine is to say ‘things have been terrible but it’s fine, it’s fine NOW’, always, even when that is absolutely obviously not true, and today is no different but for once I actually believe some of his hopeful bits too which is so great! I hope things really are shifting for him and I can’t wait to hear this new song of his. But there’s a lot that’s hard to hear too, oh Liam. He said that he and Maya have broken up (so yes, presumably why he just moved again such a short time after they moved into their haunted house), talked about his struggles with his alcoholism (and said he’s been sober for a month right now, go babe!), shared the usual distressing stories about his time in the band and what that was like for him (and how it still impacts him), and he talked about his new song and how it feels different for him than his past solo music. Truly though there is SO MUCH more than I can get into here or then you can get from the UA highlights- I HIGHLY recommend actually watching at least parts of the video, also because the attempt to summarize so much erases all the charm and humor, of which there is much. If you don’t think you want to watch Liam’s interviews, it has to be because you aren’t watching Liam’s interviews, they’re delightful! Plus really if you care about 1D and want information about what it was like for any of them, listen to Liam, he’s the one who’s out there talking about it.
About Maya he said, that yes, he is now single, and “I’ve just been not been very good at relationships,” and “I’m a proper perfectionist… at the start of the relationship you put out this complete false character like I might as well go in in costume, I’m like putting out something that is not there... kind of like encompassing someone else’s life with your crap rather than just doing your thing and laying out your store from day one. That’s my biggest problem is that I feel like I don’t lay out my store... and then I’m annoyed when they don’t like what I like,” and “I think my problem is I struggle to be on my own sometimes... I dive in and out of relationships too quickly. I’ve not spent enough time on my own to relearn about myself.”
He laughs about his tendency to ask his manager things during interviews; “My fans think that Steve is doing something to me, they’re like liberty for Liam because he always looks to Steve, but that’s because I like him. It’s not because he’s harming me as a person. There’s like a hashtag Liberty for Liam because they think I’m some like prison child,” and he also said “my manager’s my best friend,” (and he’s said in the past he is a big support for him) and mentioned stuff they’d talked about recently around his therapeutic awakenings.
He talked about therapy being something you have to want to do and be ready to do rather than being pushed into, like getting sober, and says that this time around with his own therapy work he’s really felt that and thrown himself into it and he talked a lot about his relationship to therapy in connection with band days. “I mean one of our old managers went to therapy from being a manager of One Direction. So if you can imagine how that feels like the rest of us definitely need some.”
“We were young,” he said, “What I found was I didn’t know I was the boss until like a few months ago, I still don’t even feel like I am now, like I’m such a child. And everyone I work with now is older than me and wiser than me and I’m like what the hell am I doing here with these people. When we were 17 I thought the security guard was like in charge of me so I was like Can we leave the room? No? Oh ok then,” and “when we were in the band, the best way to secure us was just lock us in our rooms. And of course what’s in the room? Minibar. So at a certain point, I thought Well I’m gonna have a party for one and that just seemed to carry on throughout many years of my life... You know I spoke to somebody about this in child development as a teen, the one thing you need is freedom to make choices. That we could do anything we wanted it seemed from the outside but we were always locked in a room at night and then it would be car, hotel room, stage, sing, locked. So it’s like they pulled the dust cloth off, let us out for a minute, but then it’s back underneath again,” and “the day the band ended I was like thank the lord for that. And I know a lot of people are going to be mad with me for saying that, but I needed it to stop. It would kill me.” Anyway, he said, because it wouldn’t be Liam without an upbeat coda, “I don’t want any of this to get lost in translation. I’m not 100% moaning about my life... it’s had its ups and its downs, but I would rather talk about it and it’s therapeutic for me.”
And what about that exciting new song? Liam said, “We have a really cool song in the pipeline... one of the first ones I’ve actually written myself- with some other people, I didn’t write it by myself, but it’s the first one I’ve really liked. And I think I got so used used carting around other peoples songs and not embedding myself creatively in what I do because I was so scared to find out who I was,” and “I don’t really know how I would tour again. I really want to” [on discord today he said he would be touring next year] “I always said throughout my solo career I’d let my song book speak to me. And I don’t think my song book spoke to me to get off my ass. I only became a solo artist because I had Strip That Down. I wasn’t gonna do it, I was gonna leave it alone. I was like, I survived it once thank you very much- but I’m back in now. Because the song, I knew it was right. It felt right with that song, I hadn’t had that. This year, the song we have I feel really really great about. So I’d rather let the music do the talking than me come out and force it. We don’t need any more useless music in the world, it needs to mean something,” and he mentioned the new song on the discord a lot too, most notably picking out a long comment that thanked him for making the fan feel supported and safe and for “putting your heart in everything you do” and for his support of the LGBTQ community to respond to with, “I think you will really like the new song.”
A few other random bits, he said that he thinks there should be a system to make therapy available to musicians in the industry, “I think I’m definitely gonna get a dog because I need routine,” and “I recently started jujitsu,” yeah you and everyone else huh, so do him and Louis and Oli go to the same gym or ???, and he acknowledged that as an addict he may have just transferred that to working out “but there’s a lot worse things to be addicted to then looking after yourself” hmm but he does seem to say that he’s doing better around body image stuff; he talks about having put on weight during lockdown and seeing himself in the BAFTAS performance- “I saw myself... and I was like ‘oh my god I’ve completely let myself go in this’. And it was fine...I feel so much more secure in myself now.” Oh and that he’s written a comedic movie script “based around AA” and his experiences there, such as how “I had a really weird AA experience the first time that I went. My first experience was with Russell Brand.” LMAO yes! Cannot wait, bring on auteur Liam please! Anyway as if ALL THAT wasn’t enough he’s also dove into the lead up to his NFT release; he said “I'm almost ready to share my NFTs with you guys... Who wants to see them?” and posted a tiny preview that tells us its (their?) title for the first time- Lonely Bug.
Niall and Anne Marie perform on Jimmy Fallon tonight, and the hype is already a go! I guess it’s prerecorded, as we’re already seeing pictures from it; they’re singing to each other with the cute car from the video in the background. Niall signed on to a letter to Boris Johnson asking for changes to music streaming revenue rules and signed by 232 artists (including all the artists Johnson recently named as his favorites, haha). Zayn signed on to a Billboard petition to the US senate calling for gun safety laws. The bar Zayn got into the fight in front of posted “Zayn's a regular at Amsterdam Billiards and he is a true gentleman. On Thursday night he was confronted by an inebriated passer-by outside on the street and was called a homophobic slur. We support Zayn & condemn homophobia in the strongest terms!” And also PS omg again because it just isn’t going away: Harry’s beauty company is called Pleased As, his name is Harry Edward Styles so yes when listed last name first, as legal documents do, it spells SHE but it is not a “feminist abbreviation” (WHAT? even??) nor the name of the business.
