Global music superstar Louis Tomlinson today releases another taste from his upcoming third album - 'Palaces'.
'Palaces' is a punchy and anthemic slice of guitar led pop about going back to your hometown, that was written and recorded in the UK.
"I'm lost in the time, I don't care for the world outside, you can stay through the night in the palaces of my mind."
Listen here: louist.lnk.to/PalacesPR
Louis's third album 'How Did I Get Here?' will be released on 23rd January 2026 and is available for pre-order now at https://louist.lnk.to/HowDidIGetHere
For his third album Louis has pushed himself as a lyricist, songwriter, and performer, holding nothing back on these tracks. As a writer, he’s diving deeper into who he is than ever before. This time around, Louis assembled a handful of initial ideas in the English countryside before decamping to Santa Teresa in Costa Rica for three weeks in early 2025. He dove into writing and recording alongside primary collaborator and co-producer Nico Rebscher [Aurora, Alice Merton]. The atmosphere of his surroundings underscored the ensuing body of work.
First single 'Lemonade' has already been streamed over 14 million times and playlisted by Radio 1, Radio 2 and Capital in the UK. Louis recently performed on Radio 1's Live Lounge singing both 'Lemonade' and a cover of Hozier’s 'Too Sweet', and has been confirmed to headline Capital's Jingle Bell Ball in December. In October Louis was the cover of Rolling Stone UK Magazine. Louis will also be releasing an 'Amazon Music Presents' session of 'Palaces' that will drop today at 7pm.
Louis also recently announced a huge 'How Did We Get Here?' 2026 world arena tour that will visit Europe and North America starting March 2026. Tickets are on sale now.
Daisy help me please. Is Simon Johns PR related to/ under Sony? Like Columbia is a sub company I mean…
I am asking because the other day he tweeted Bigger Than Me promo and I am still trying to process WHY.. I had thought with walls era ending and BMG coming in to the picture, Louis’ former team is now done. Including Simon J.
Now I am wondering if the stuff around this single and Louis right now is another illusion (like how Harry was shown as “free” with HS1 dropping).
Is BMG the managing company or just a distributor for FITF?? (Because I feel like their method of promo is more the type of a distributor than a management company). You know what I mean?
I have many thoughts following up.. I’ll keep them for after your reply 😅
Hi dear,
Simon Jones PR is a PR company - they have been the publicity company Louis has used for years. I believe they also did 1D PR back in the day, and they worked with many Syco artists.
That is a separate thing from a record label. Columbia is a record label under Sony Music. Harry has PR companies he works with for his own PR.
All artists also have in-label PR, so Louis benefits from BMG PR, and has Simon Jones for things outside label-related activities.
I don't know why Louis still works with SJ PR, it could be due to an ongoing contract or perhaps his team likes working with that firm, since they've worked with them for several years.
BMG is a record label. That's separate from a management company. Louis' management company is still the same, Seven 7 Management and Three Six Zero Group. They're what makes up Louis' team.
BMG is a record label, and they have a deal with Louis for production, distribution, licensing and marketing. His music is published under his own record label, 78 Productions, so he owns the rights to it, and BMG has exclusive distribution rights to his music, same deal Harry has (his record label is Erskine Records).
So, 3 separate things:
Record label
Management company
PR firm
For more info about all this business side of things check out my record labels tag. And tags under posts in that tag.
Louis Tomlinson returns with a brand new song, 'Walls,' released today Friday, January 17th. Louis says:
Louis Tomlinson returns with a brand new song, 'Walls,' released today Friday, January 17th.
Louis says: "It’s about coming home having been on tour, soon after the band had split. I found some of my girlfriend’s clothes in the cupboard and it hit me what I’d done. I love the indie sound of the song and its circular nature – it opens and closes with the same lyric.”
That lyric – ‘Nothing wakes you up like waking up alone’ – shows Louis’ progression as a songwriter ready to reveal his vulnerable side. ‘The day you walked away was the day I became the man that I am now,’ is another.
"I pretend not to be romantic, but I am," says Louis.
"It really hit home when I was in the studio to hear the strings being recorded. There must have been 25 musicians in there, all for my song. It was a proper tear-jerking moment already and I’ve never felt a shiver like it."
'Walls' is taken from Louis' highly anticipated debut solo album also entitled "Walls," released January 31st 2020.
Lyrically, he’s rightly proud of all twelve tracks on the album, most rooted in real life, but in particular those that dig deep on subjects ranging from relationships and family to the folly of youth and days of self-doubt. Live, he’s most looking forward to performing the songs that reflect the indie-rock he grew up on and still adores today.
"I feel like this is the start of my career, with so much to look forward to and all the plans in place," says Louis.
"Honestly, I’ve been through every emotion possible in the past few years and come out the other side stronger and more confident than I’ve ever been. I know I’ve made an album that my fans will like, one that sounds like me and has its own identity. There were times I wasn’t sure if this was what I should be doing. Now I can’t imagine doing anything else."
2019 was the year that Louis found his feet as a solo artist. He followed his award-winning return in March with Two of Us, which took the tragic loss of his mother as a touchstone and connected with fans around the world, with a run of acclaimed singles - the raucous Kill My Mind, the reflective We Made It, and the soaring pop perfection of Don’t Let It Break Your Heart.
2020 is the year that Louis goes live with a 50 date World Tour, his first as a solo artist, with many dates already sold out, including all the UK shows. From early March until late July, he’ll be on tour near nightly, crossing countries and continents.
Earlier this year Louis headlined the Coca-Cola music festival in Madrid to an audience of 25,000 people, and recently performed to 65,000 fans at Premios Telehit in the Foro Sol stadium in Mexico City. He also picked up the Best Song Award at the 2019 Teen Choice Awards for his recent single Two Of Us, which has so far hit almost 60 million streams on Spotify, with YouTube views at 23 million.
In 2018 Louis won an iHeart Award for 'Best Solo Breakout', and an EMA Award for 'Best UK & Ireland Act' in 2017. He was ranked No. 5 on Billboard’s emerging artists of 2018 and has over 60 million combined followers on social media.
As a member of One Direction Louis has sold over 100 million records. Overall Louis’ solo music has garnered over a BILLION streams.
As most of you know, Louis and Niall are both clients of SJPR. In this post, I’d like to examine the disparities between their experiences with SJPR, mostly with regards to the SJPR official site and twitter. @theyrereallyawful made a great couple of posts that inspired me to look deeper into this arena of thought. Check em out if you haven’t already.
Before you read this, please check out my earlier post in this tag for a recap of Niall and Louis’ actual SJPR promo. That post discusses the way their promo was actually carried out. There’s a conclusion section at the very bottom for a TL;DR if you need it.
In this post, I want to point out the obvious disparities between SJPR’s treatment of Niall and their treatment of Louis. I think most would agree that Niall has the best promo out of all the guys, and Louis has the worst. That’s not necessarily saying that SJPR is the one that’s doing Niall’s positive promoting, but they’re also not actively going against Niall either.
I’m going to be repeating/enforcing a lot of what we already know in this post - it just clarifies that the incompetence that SJPR displays with Louis is willful ignorance at best, and sabotage at worst. SJPR is fully capable of treating their clients the way they should be treated... they just don’t do that with Louis.
I want to clarify quickly that I absolutely adore Niall and am so happy that at least one of the guys is getting the type of promo they all deserve. If I sound angry when I talk about his SJPR promo, it’s because I’m frustrated that Louis doesn’t receive that same kind of treatment.
Also want to make a disclaimer by quoting from my previous post about this stuff:
I get that this isn’t the most earth-shattering information, but I think it speaks volumes if you listen.
Think about it: if SJPR isn’t even willing to put effort into news articles about arguably their biggest client, then how much effort are they going to put into the actual PR SJPR provides?
Disclaimers aside --
Let’s start out with the most basic part of the SJPR official site: their artist profiles.
Section I: SJPR Profiles
It’s impossible to be biased there, right? A profile is a profile, isn’t it?
Here’s Niall’s:
As you can hopefully kind of see (sorry for the zoomed out screenshot), his profile is fairly nice. It’s decently long, contains all of his SM links, and discusses his accomplishments. It even has a quote from Rolling Stone!
Now let’s look at Louis’ profile.
It’s noticeably much shorter - no SM links are included, and there’s only a single line about BTY’s success.
Okay, so that’s not great - but surely things even out later, right?
Section II: First Single
Now, let’s look at the first solo singles - for the sake of this post, I’ll refer to BTY as Louis’ “first” single, since it was the first one he released under the new official SJPR agreement.
Starting with This Town: as you will have seen in the other post I made, Niall officially signed with SJPR again on the day of This Town’s release.
SJ tweeted about the single the day that it was released. He continued to tweet about the track (and about Niall stuff in general) for the duration of late 2016.
A nice article about This Town was also posted on the official SJPR site on the day of the release.
The article was on time, contained all of Niall’s SM links, and was informative. That should be standard, shouldn’t it?
Moving on to BTY.
Louis was listed as a client on SJPR’s site on January 7, 2017. Radio silence from SJPR. He didn’t tweet about him at all - the only thing he did, days later, was reply to a SYCO tweet about him with a fucking emoji.
Fast forward a few months to June, when Louis officially announced BTY.
SJPR didn’t post about it on the site until almost a full week after it was announced.
In comparison to Niall’s first single article, Louis gets one that’s late, is shorter, and has no SM links provided.
Section III: Second Singles and Beyond
For Slow Hands, SJPR is again on the ball.
The article is on time, lengthy, and has all of Niall’s SM included.
Louis, as usual, is not so lucky.
The article is at least on time for once, but I strongly suspect that’s only because of the then-upcoming XF performance. It’s short - bare minimum - and contains no SM links.
For Niall’s album release, SJPR posts this:
A really nicely done roundup article, all about their client’s success. It again features Niall’s SM links at the bottom.
On Twitter, SJ is all over the Niall album release season - tweeting countdowns, posting about interviews, etc.
For JLY, the official site managed this:
Bare minimum information, no SM links, no additional article when the video dropped.
And on Twitter? Image_Not_Found.jpeg, because he didn’t post a single thing about the track. I have my own reasons for why I think they were so hush-hush about that song in particular, and I’m sure many of you think the same way.
Section IV: Crisis Management
One of SJPR’s listed services is crisis management. We’ve only ever really seen it one time for Niall - namely because you’re not supposed to be able to see it.
And yet, you ask, where was SJPR’s crisis management when Louis’ arrest stuff was happening?
No image available indeed. SJPR allowed - and continues to allow - hundreds (if not thousands) of negative articles about the arrest to circulate. That sure doesn’t seem like crisis management to me.
Section V: Comparison
Just for comparison’s sake, here’s a quick bit about SJ’s other acts. His current priority appears to be ol’ PrettyMuch. His Twitter is full of their promo, and the most recent news article is about them.
As you can see, their SM links are provided.
In the past, SJPR went hard for an artist called Raye. During Niall’s album release, his tweets were split 50:50 between Raye and Niall. Bit odd, considering she wasn’t doing much at the time, and Niall was just about to release his first major solo project.
Here’s her profile on the official site:
It’s like a fuckin’ book, right? 10 times longer than Louis or Niall’s profiles.
And here’s one of their recent news articles, about client Tom Fletcher. I can’t even fit all of it in one screenshot - I had to zoom way out to get most of it in the frame.
It’s very long and involved, and SM links are of course provided.
Conclusion:
If you checked out the beginning part of my other post about SJPR, you’ll probably have a little deja vu. Back before hiatus, 1D was treated sort of like Louis is being treated now - they got very little official SJPR attention, and their UK press ran wild under his management. I don’t know that they were being actively sabotaged, but it was very bare minimum involvement.
Niall clearly receives more SJPR attention than Louis. His SM links are always provided, his articles are always on time, and SJ tweets about him regularly
SJ’s crisis management appears to be nonfunctional when it comes to Louis, though he was able to get Niall out of a potentially sticky situation at one point
While SJPR treats Niall better than Louis, they treat their other clients even better than the both of them. PM, Raye, Tom Fletcher - they all have more involvement. If you read my other post, compare this to how SJPR treated 1D versus how they treated Ant & Dec or All Saints.
Overall: SJPR is capable of treating their clients professionally and respectfully. They prove, again and again, that they simply don’t do that when it comes to Louis. Not even on their official site, where it would perhaps be easiest to make things equal for all of their clients. They go above and beyond for non-Louis clients, but they leave him in the dirt over and over.
For finishing this post, you get another happy Louis! Yay! As I said in my last post - I’m really just doing this for my own thought process and out of my own genuine interest/curiosity, so i’ll be surprised if anyone gets to the end, hahaha
If you’re angry - like many of us are - then I encourage you to (respectfully & kindly) tweet the link to LTHQOfficial.com to SJPR and co. It can’t hurt to show them that we have a successful fansite, and it makes me happy to know that his notifs are flooded with fans who promote his client far more effectively than he does.
I just saw the official press release for Liam Payne's US pop radio number one saying he has "the biggest-selling solo single from a current member of One Direction." Which fascinates me that they choose to contextualise his achievement by comparing it against his 1D bandmates (excluding Zayn, because Zayn is on another level in terms of song sales). I've never seen Capitol or Niall's PR rep compare Niall's success against his 1D bandmates, and I can't imagine them putting out a press release doing that. Their press release for Niall's US radio number one instead focused on the critical and commercial success of his two songs to date and his achievements as part of One Direction, while looking forward to his latest single, upcoming album and world tour, and quoting how surprised and humbled Niall was by the success of Slow Hands.
I believe Niall when he says he’s not competitive with his 1D bandmates, only with himself, and i think that is reflected in the publicity strategy of his PR team. It seems almost inevitable though that comparisons will be made, and it’s interesting to see where those comparisons are being made through official PR channels.
Headline Wembley Arena Show Announced For April 2022 New Postponed World Tour Dates Confirmed For Spring 2022 Louis Tomlinson today an
Louis Tomlinson today announces that he is partnering with BMG to release his second album globally.
Recording is already underway for the record, and Louis joins a roster at BMG that includes KSI, Craig David, Richard Ashcroft, The Prodigy and Kylie Minogue.
Louis says: "I’m very excited to start the next part of my journey with BMG.”
Jamie Nelson VP A&R at BMG UK says: "We are delighted to welcome Louis to BMG. He is already busy working on new music, and we are excited to join him on the next phase of his extraordinary career."
Louis also announces today the first wave of new 2022 dates for his postponed World Tour in UK, Europe, USA and Australia, including a brand new date at London's Wembley Arena. This show replaces Louis's two sold out London shows at The Roundhouse, and tickets will be transferred to the new venue.
Louis's first show at Wembley Arena will take place on April 22nd 2022, and extra tickets for the gig go on sale on Friday 14th May at 9am BST.
After postponing his 2020 world tour due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Louis will now finally get back on the road with his first solo tour, which is already completely sold out. The new dates are listed below. Further international rescheduled dates will be announced at a later date.
Last year, Louis released his million selling smash debut solo album 'Walls' which hit Top 3 in the UK and Top 10 in the USA. A lyrically personal album that proved he had found his feet as a solo artist, the album produced a clutch of acclaimed singles including the emotive first release Two of Us, the raucous Kill My Mind, the reflective We Made It.
In 2019 Louis headlined the Coca-Cola music festival in Madrid to an audience of 25,000 people, and performed to 65,000 fans at Premios Telehit in the Foro Sol stadium in Mexico City. Louis picked up the Best Song Award at the 2019 Teen Choice Awards for 'Two Of Us', which has so far hit over 100 million streams on Spotify alone.
In 2018 Louis won an iHeart Award for 'Best Solo Breakout', and an EMA Award for 'Best UK & Ireland Act' in 2017. He was ranked No.5 on Billboard’s emerging artists of 2018 and has over 60 million combined followers on social media. Last year he won 'Artist Of The Summer' in Philly radio station 96.5 TDY's annual awards.
In December 2020, Louis hosted one of the biggest live stream concert events of 2020, selling over 160,000 tickets to fans in over 100 countries and raising funds for several important charities. As a member of One Direction, Louis has sold over 100 million records. Overall Louis’ solo music has garnered over a BILLION streams.
With how poorly bbg has been handled from the beginning I just know the end is going to be a fucking mess as well 😭 like it was always going to be messy especially considering how long it has been dragged out but the team is terrible and I just know it’s going to be a shit show 🫠
I mean last time l looked only two people worked full time at 7 management (including Matt) so it’s no surprise they’re in over their heads…
And that PR agency has been nothing but shit, and babygate is the thing why I believe louis stuck with Simon Jones PR
