Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew

Steven Bartlett: I've not really ever spoke about it in depth like this. Nothing prepares you in life for those kind of situations. But I felt like I'd failed at the time. That's the truth. And it's still something that I'm unpacking still, to be honest. Louis, you spoke to your sister, Lottie, about this. Would you like to see it?

Louis Tomlinson: Louis Tomlinson!

Steven Bartlett: I didn't spend my life as a young lad thinking I was going to be a singer. I grew up in a working class town. Seven of us living in a three bed. My mum used to work a lot of nights. She had to play dad as well. So I would have to get my sisters ready for school. People in Doncaster didn't get those opportunities. And then The X Factor came along. I auditioned three times. First time I failed. Second time I failed. I remember thinking, this is utterly crushing. Just sobbing to me mum. But she made me feel like I could do anything. So instead of running away, it was like, I know I deserve it. I know I can. So how do I relearn confidence and go for a third time? When I think about what happened in the preceding five or six years, it is crazy.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, and the toughest thing to deal with is just the lack of normality. Part of growing up in a working class town, I have this guilt for the success and money that I've earned. And then personal work within the band, I really, really struggled with.

Steven Bartlett: But you co-wrote 15 platinum singles.

Louis Tomlinson: I wanted to do more, but mostly for me, I didn't realise the value of family time. The more time I spent at the band, the more time I spent away from home. Two of my sisters who are identical twins, I've never told them this, but I wasn't confident enough to tell them apart. That shows just how little I was at home. And then it ends. What was really strange was being 24 years old, realising that the only way is down from it.

Steven Bartlett: Louis, there's so many things that happened in your life. How does a young man grieve?

Louis Tomlinson: It's not really something I speak loads about, but I'm happy to because I cannot have that defiant me. The floor is yours. Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to all of us and this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. If you enjoy what we do here, please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you: I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you.

Steven Bartlett: Louis, to understand you, what is the earliest context that I need?

Louis Tomlinson: Something that played a massive role for me in my life was the fact that maybe for the first four or five years of my life, it was just me and my mum. My first proper memories are just having really kind of nice and warm and emotional conversations with my mum. I think something that I'm kind of proud of is that I find it easy to be emotional. I like talking about my feelings and I like getting into conversation with other people about that. That was definitely something that she instilled in me from a really young age. Something that still definitely really helps me today, especially navigating through the life like I have. Those kind of things, being able to talk about your emotions and your feelings, are vitally important for the job that I do mentally.

Steven Bartlett: So your father wasn't around. Your biological father left soon after you were born?

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, it's not really something I speak loads about, but I'm happy to. Yeah, he wasn't involved in my life at all. I've met him like three times ever.

Steven Bartlett: So your mother played, I guess, several roles in your life.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, my mum was always really good at that. I think she realised the fact that my dad wasn't going to be around, that she had to play dad as well. She had this kind of mischievous instinct in her and definitely inspired some of that. Part of that was her being her, but part of that was also trying to play that kind of dad role, where you kind of lark about and encourage doing kind of silly things that aren't going to hurt. She was just... I get emotional talking about it. She's the best woman I ever knew, definitely. I feel so vitally lucky to be able to have her as my mentor because everything that I look to in friends and partners, they're the kind of things that she embodied really.

Steven Bartlett: And you had siblings, lots of them.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, lots of them. When I grew up, the bulk of my childhood, there was seven of us living in a three-bed house. I've got a little bit better at it, but one thing I really have struggled with is being on my own. The more I've thought about that as I've got a bit older, it's because I just never had an opportunity to be when I was young. When you live in a house that's three bedroom with seven people living in it, you're literally all living on top of each other. And I loved that. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me, being an older brother. It's one of the definitions of my purpose, I would say. I just like to look after people. Being an older brother is a role I feel like I was always supposed to do. And then even as we move through life and a couple of things got more challenging, that role has become more prevalent. Definitely.

Steven Bartlett: I was fortunate enough to speak to quite a few people that have known you over the years. I heard that was cool.

Louis Tomlinson: That was cool. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: I was just listening to some of the recordings of those conversations. Nizam, your childhood best friend. Cal, who's your photographer and videographer. And Lottie, who's your youngest sister, six years younger. It's interesting that one of the things they all came back to is that you really haven't changed.

Louis Tomlinson: I appreciate that. It gave me goosebumps.

Steven Bartlett: Your best friend from childhood said that's one of the most remarkable things, that you're still made out of the same stuff and you've never turned around and thought you were anything more than you were back then when he knew you.

[Recording of Nizam plays] Nizam: That's one thing I love about him, you know, as a friend. I've never said this to his face, but he's a real guy. He's never turned around to us and never said, "Oh, I'm this big shot now." That ego has never played and he's never been embarrassed of us. He's a real guy.

Louis Tomlinson: It's at least 50% conscious, or at least it started out as that idea. Because I think when you enter a crazy situation, and One Direction being the pinnacle of that idea, there are people around you that used to feel really, really similar and all of a sudden they feel really different. I'm not talking about day-to-day conversation, but stuff that we can relate to, problems that I might have had that I might talk to them about. I think that's quite an alienating feeling. So instead of submitting, I've always resisted that. It's been really important to me. Hearing that and hearing other people say that about me makes me really proud because it's definitely a lifestyle that can sweep you away. But the other side of getting swept away, I don't really like the idea of what that might look like. You need people around you that are going to tell you if you're being a dick. That's vitally important in this job, definitely. When you're surrounded only by success, it breeds a funny kind of narrative. To be respected from people in Doncaster like that means a lot to me, definitely. That's another reason why I wouldn't drive through the streets of Doncaster in a Ferrari.

Steven Bartlett: You went to school in Doncaster, Hayfields?

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, Hayfields, where I did most of my time. And then I failed my A-levels and went somewhere else for a year.

Steven Bartlett: You failed your A-levels?

Louis Tomlinson: I failed my A-levels, yes. That was the first time I'd ever got a real bollocking off my mum. A real, real dressing down. Because she was really, really fair. But there was something that she was kind of strict on with schoolwork. I remember getting in the car and she said, "You fucked your life up." And she never swore. I remember I got goosebumps thinking about it there. I remember thinking, maybe I need to do something with my life.

Steven Bartlett: At 15, 16 years old, you join a drama group. I was watching actually just before you arrived. At 17 years old, you got the lead role in Grease. The foundations were set and you ultimately at 18 years old decide to go and audition.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, that was the third time I auditioned for The X Factor. Every year previous to that, that would have made me 16 when I first auditioned. There are three producer auditions and then you get to see Simon, the main one. The first year, I didn't get through any of them. The second year, I got through the first round. And then for a final time, I said to myself, I'm going to give this one more shot. That was another thing at that age. It's one thing saying you're resilient, and I do think I am, but it's a lot easier to be resilient at that age as well. Definitely.

Steven Bartlett: It's really surprising that someone would go to X Factor once, be rejected, go again, not make it, and then go again without having their self-esteem or confidence knocked to the point where they go, I'm not going to go through that again. Because every time you got to come home, you got to tell your friends and family it didn't work out.

Louis Tomlinson: Well, the first year I can remember it being utterly crushing. I'd not really had real rejection at that point. I hadn't really experienced that kind of thing. The second time I went was even more challenging because I went with what I'll describe as the hottest girl at school at the time.

Steven Bartlett: Right.

Louis Tomlinson: She's also a singer. We got talking months ago. Turns out she wants to audition for The X Factor as well. I'm like, well, let's go together. Thinking this could be a smart little play. She goes before me and I think at this point I was still in the queue and she showed me that she got through to the next round. It was like a gold ticket. I then didn't get through. And because I was with her, I was traveling with her, we then got ushered into a room of say 200 people and every single person in the room had a yes. I remember that being really, really challenging. You're just surrounded by people that are dreaming, they're really excited about what the next stage looks like. That created a bit more fire. It was like, okay, how do I get on the right side of this next year? How do I be in this group of people next year?

Steven Bartlett: Did your mum play a role in you going for that third year?

Louis Tomlinson: I can't remember specifically, but I would say if I would have had any level of doubt, 100%. The musical that you just referenced that I did at school, I didn't want to go to that audition and she literally picked me up and drove me there. I was so thankful that she did. She was often very, very good at that. Pushy parents, that's not good. She was never like that. She always had the right amount of force. Because sometimes you need that as a kid, and especially actually even as adults, in a situation where you're second guessing something, as soon as someone goes, "Go on, you can do it, you're okay." So I think that definitely played a big role in that. Even if I had suggested that I wasn't going to go to this audition throughout the year, she would have been giving me a hundred different reasons to go. Not literally, but just from a confidence point of view, the way that she was talking to me, how she always just put me on this amazing pedestal, she made me feel like I could do anything. Definitely. I think that helps in those kind of situations, going for it for a third time, because my mum's saying I can do it, so maybe I can.

Steven Bartlett: So you do the audition where you're singing "Make You Feel My Love"?

Louis Tomlinson: That was boot camp, so that was the second part of the audition. My first audition was a song called "Hey There Delilah." Did nothing for me sonically. Obviously now I can say this because I've got a bit more experience, but as a young lad you're not thinking about any of these things. It was just, I like that song, I'll sing that song. It was bad. It was really, really bad. To the point where it still makes me deeply uncomfortable listening to or watching that audition. The only thing I'd done like this is the school production of Grease, and that was to about 250 people over two nights. That felt like a mountain of people. Cut to then your live TV audition at the MEN in Manchester and there's 3,000 people in the audience. 3,000 people is a big gig for anyone to play, full stop. If you do 3,000 tickets, you're doing really, really well. So that's the definition of being thrown at the deep end. I think that's part of what they want, but it's not going to yield the best results from everyone. Some people it is. I just remember feeling like a deer in headlights, really shaky, really uncomfortable. I just wanted the ground to swallow me up. I'd never been in a situation where I was quite a confident young lad, so it wasn't very often I'd even been out of my comfort zone like that. I felt like a deer in headlights, definitely.

Steven Bartlett: Am I right in thinking that they probably had the idea to construct a band much sooner than they must have done?

Louis Tomlinson: Knowing Simon, I will have had these conversations with him in the past but can't remember now. But knowing Simon, yeah, I think you know what he's like. He will have had that in his mind for at least the year before. He loves a boy band as well. He's got a track record.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah, they make him a lot of money. So you come third on The X Factor as a band when you're put together, and then you signed at 19 years old to Simon Cowell's Syco Music. It's crazy because when I think about you signing at 19 years old and I think about what happened in the preceding five or six years, it is crazy.

Louis Tomlinson: It's only now outside of being in One Direction that I actually have a little bit of a concept of what happened and the craziness of it, because nobody has any context to it before it happens. We definitely felt like things were going really, really well, but there will have been part of us, especially in that first year, of just assuming this is what success looks like. A successful artist does these things. The first moment that I remember distinctly that I realised that maybe this was bigger than the average thing, we got booked on a support gig with a Disney band called Big Time Rush. Before that tour show, our senior manager, the kind of guy you only see six gigs a year, and it just happens to be Vegas and LA and all the best places in the world, he sat us down. It was a dressing down. He said, "Look, this is what you need to expect from a gig like this. Expect people to only know the singles. And even if they know the singles, that's a real win. They're not going to know the words to the album tracks. It's going to be a very, very different show to what you expected." So we were all ready to go out fighting because we'd not really had that at that point. We'd had most things that we'd done, we felt really confident doing. So we were kind of going on the back foot. And then I remember when we walked out on stage, I think we opened with something that wasn't a single, and people were just locked in, massively locked in. It was really, really loud in there. I think that was a moment where I had this kind of side to me when I was younger. I was so excited to tell Richard, our manager at the time, post-gig about how it actually went. Did you see it then? Because that was obviously not how it played out. I remember feeling pretty smug about that. But I think once I got to bed that evening, I was thinking, I wasn't an overly deep thinker at that point, but I was still thinking occasionally on a deep level. I'm looking at this music manager and I'm thinking, this guy's uber experienced. He's been in this situation countless times. If he was to predict it wrong, maybe he did. I'm like, well maybe something is happening.

Steven Bartlett: How do you take care of yourself amongst that? One of the things I've learned from doing this podcast is so much about the brain, about dopamine, about sleep and circadian rhythms. When I fit that into the context of what your life was like at an age where these neuroscientists tell me the male brain is still growing, still forming itself, you're putting this tremendous external pressure on it, shocking it every night. I remember when I interviewed Liam, your former bandmate, he told me that he remembers walking out on stage in Dubai, it was like a hundred thousand people there, and then thrown into a taxi, taken back to the hotel room and locked in there. He said to me, "It was stage, car, hotel, locked. Stage, car, hotel, locked."

Louis Tomlinson: I would say that the way that we both handled it, me and Liam, was quite different. I think that's often why I had a good relationship with Zayn from early on, because neither of us are kind of rule abiding. Not in a way that's utterly disruptive, it's just we have our own ideas. That at least alleviated a little bit of the pressure, knowing that deep down if I wanted to just go and do something, I would genuinely just go and do it. Whereas I think Liam and the other boys, to a degree, there was an element of a little bit of fear. Also, Liam had worked so hard from the age of 14 to get there. Liam's journey was a lot different to mine. I just felt like a happy-go-lucky guy who won the lottery. Whereas Liam was very, very precise and deliberate, and he'd got there for all his hard work. So I think we also came from a slightly different point of view. Another benefit that I had during that time, and I still have, is I'm not a dweller. I'm an overthinker for sure, but I wouldn't say I'm a dweller. I wouldn't use this phrase in me very often, but there was definitely an element of ignorance is bliss during that whole time.

Steven Bartlett: I find it so fascinating that you talk about this idea of you having the minerals or the personality where you would push back against the system a little bit. When I spoke to your former cameraman and videographer, he said that you were the one in the group that stood up against the label. You'd be the one to turn around to the record label and say, "We need a day off." It's interesting because one of the things I learned from doing this podcast is this idea of learned helplessness and control and autonomy. Basically, people who feel like they have control have much better physiological health outcomes. They have less stress, they're more insulated, better psychological states, less anxiety, less depression, because they feel like they're in control of the situation. There's this crazy study I was reading about when I was running my last book about rats where they learn that they can't do anything about the situation and they basically give up, become submissive, stop trying. I think about this in the context of humans as well. From what your videographer told me, you were clearly not that. You were clearly someone that would push against Simon Cowell's record label as a young man.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah. That's something I've had a few conversations with my friends about. I'm not certain why that was inspired by, because it's brave, right? To stare someone who at the time, at least in pop, was one of the most successful people in the music industry and say, "No, you've got it wrong." Here's me, an 18 year old with no experience, telling you you've got it wrong. I think what gave me confidence in those ideas is that even if it wasn't a collective voice, even if it was just my voice delivering the message, it was always with collective intention. It would always be for the good of all of us making those decisions. Now on my own, I know they're not quite as easy. There's a lot of different things at play. But it kind of comes from that big brother role again. I was the oldest in the band. It was kind of my role in the band to do that. I realised that by far I was the most opinionated in the band, definitely. So I think I wanted to use that for good and not just chatting shit about someone on Twitter or something. Another important distinction about One Direction is, this is not disrespectful to Ed, I appreciate I was in a boy band, I know that. But if there would be one genre of music that I would think might be the most naff, it's boy band, if you could call that a genre. Going into One Direction when I was 18, growing up in the north of England, it's like real, it's kind of snobby musically. There's real music and then there's boy bands. Having that kind of feeling going into it, that was why it was easy to push against some of these old school ideas, because they were the ideas that I didn't like. The reasons I didn't like these bands is because they all looked the same and because they all felt very PR pressed. It was always a really interesting project for me to try and look at One Direction and think, well, how could we make this a little cooler? I remember the real turning point in One Direction was when we put up the pre-order for our first single, "What Makes You Beautiful?" I can't remember the number, how much we sold that week, but we broke some record with the pre-order. We got told this and we'd not released any music at this point. I remember thinking, that's fascinating, because they don't know what it's going to sound like yet. But they're invested. That felt like power early on. It also felt like we could rewrite the rule book because people were invested in us as much, if not more than the music. I think that's fair to say.

Steven Bartlett: Was there a part in the evolution and the journey of One Direction where you had that moment where you go, "There's elements of my life that I love that I no longer have access to because of this success"?

Louis Tomlinson: I would say that it's more gradual than that. You start to lose some of your own independence to a degree. Also the age I was, I was 18 when I first joined the band. I always say that the year of my life before auditioning for The X Factor, at least up to those 18 years, was the best year of my life. You've got independence at that point. I was driving, you could go out. It was so fascinating socially. There's always something to do. So to leave that behind was quite gutting actually. That took me a second to get used to it first. I always felt incredibly grateful and really excited every time I was doing something with One Direction, but any kind of time for reflection, I was really, really missing home. Me and Zayn would, when we were younger, have countless conversations of, "Should we just pack it in? Should we just call it a day?" Why? Because you feel alienated. You are living this lifestyle. There's a million different reasons. The fame thing's really difficult. Mostly for me, it was about being alienated. None of my life experience was now so relevant to some of my friends. I think also, and this is part of growing up in a working class town, I have this guilt for the success and money that I've earned as well. I think that's kind of part of the same thing. It's kind of like two different things. The fame thing I'll never be okay with. Of course every artist says this, but if I could just do the music, that would be amazing. I suppose I could on a lower level, but I wouldn't get the same rush that I do. It's almost everything else that comes with that.

Steven Bartlett: It's interesting when someone says they felt isolated, which is something I've heard a lot from people who've had great public success with a big fan base. Because we think of isolation as not being around people. But I guess isolation in the context you described is more about connecting to people, relatability.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, but it's also like the metaphor would be, what's that really famous crossing in Japan? If you took a drone shot and you pulled right out from that and you would just become a little dot amongst the noise, sometimes that's kind of how it feels. Because it's not the real world. Even in the way that people perceive you, it's not the real world. The first moment that One Direction got the first big pay packet was a merchandise deal that we got, and we always did really good merch.

Steven Bartlett: How old were you?

Louis Tomlinson: 19. That was the first kind of moment where I felt really, really excited. So I rang my mum straight away and told her about it like I always would, and she was really excited for me, and obviously she's just proud, that's it. And then I remembered the feeling of, but who else do I tell now? Because do I call up Nizam?

Louis Tomlinson: and tell him, well, he'll be into that and he'll be really proud of me. But bear in mind, he's just seen me on the X Factor. And this is another thing I realize about people is they think if you're successful, then everything is just, you know, successful and that's how it goes. So I think, you know, if I call, if I didn't call Nizam, but if I had called him, he probably would have been really nice, but in his head would have shrugged his shoulders like, well, obviously, you know, things are going really well for you. So I think there's definitely a lack of like understanding there, rightly so. There's also a guilt, you know, especially at that age. People like life's really, really expensive at that age. People are like up to their eyes in student loans.

It was only about two years ago that I put all the plaques up on my wall at home and my awards, like the Brit Awards and stuff that I got in the past from the band. They still annoy me even now in my lounge because if I'm in having a conversation with someone, I don't even really want... I don't want to be that guy that won those awards. We can be and we can conversate like that, but truthfully, if Nizam came over to my house for a chat and a coffee, I would hate that the conversation might end up then gravitating to me or my success. It's much more about just what those relationships and conversations look like in the real world. That's what I'm craving, is that real normality. All I want is to just be on an even playing field with everyone in any kind of conversation. I think that was the toughest thing to deal with, is just the lack of normality in every sense of the word.

Steven Bartlett: How does things like alcohol play into this? Because you're living a crazy, crazy life where your dopamine and your brain is being tested in all different ways. I remember Liam saying to me, this is really when he started to have a problem with alcohol in the early years of the band. And I'll never forget it, him talking to me about the mini bar in the room. One of the things I didn't realize is, okay, you've just been out on stage in front of 100,000 people, then you're back in a hotel room with a mini bar.

Louis Tomlinson: I feel the pull from alcohol, and I definitely drank quite a bit when I was in the band. But I think an important distinction, post-show, would be I'd smoke my weed and go back to my tour bus. I'd go and smoke my weed and Zayn would smoke with me too. I hope he doesn't mind me saying that, I'm sure he won't. And that was great. People do things for different reasons, and that was my choice. The reason why that kind of suited my brain at that time was I've just had all this noise in my head. I've just had this crazy experience on stage, and that's the noise that you kind of need to quiet down sometimes. So what we would do is we'd get back on the tour bus, we'd play Call of Duty zombies, we'd smoke our weed, and that's all we'd think about and that's all we'd do. And then we'd get into cliché stoner chats of deep conversation, probably UFOs, all that kind of shit. As daft as that might look and feel, it's our normality. It's creating the normality on tour. It's a version of what our friends were doing back home as well. But also, it was such a lovely way to debrief from those moments, away from the manicness. You've just got this really subdued, nice environment. The juxtaposition actually felt quite nice.

Steven Bartlett: If you could go back to the day that you signed a contract with Syco, what is the advice that 33-year-old Louis would give 18, 19-year-old Louis?

Louis Tomlinson: That is a really, really big question. I think I would just say to be confident in the earlier years, because the older I get, the more I realize most people in their earlier years of doing said thing are, to a degree, faking it. And I think for a long time I was just thinking, well, I didn't spend my life as a young lad thinking I was going to be a singer, so I'm playing catch-up. And listen, there's another thing: I'm more than comfortable enough to say I'm not the best singer in the world. I'm okay with that. But there was definitely a time where those things were challenging as a young lad. I think I would just cut myself a bit of slack as a young lad, because it's been a lot of my defiance and decision-making that's got me to where I've got, and that should give me confidence. So I think as a young lad, I really did just feel like a deer in the headlights, and I didn't really have any kind of context for what was going on. And when I'm talking about these things, I'm not talking about, "No, we're not going to do this Disney performance because I don't think it looks good for One Direction." I'm talking about more introspective, personal worth within the band, all those kind of things. I really, really struggled with that as a young lad, big time. So I would say I would give myself a bit more credit there.

Steven Bartlett: You really struggled with that?

Louis Tomlinson: I found it really tough. As I said before, I was the kid who won the lottery. I sang my first audition for The X Factor. I didn't feel like I did a good job. I was really surprised that I got the three yeses. Now that was maybe four months before the first audition aired. So I've told everyone at this point, obviously. I'm in a band, I'm on The X Factor, and I have told anyone that will listen, like everyone. And actually, me and Niall got no TV time on our audition. So the irony is we get put in this band, but people have no idea who we are. There's no context for the viewers to actually see this and actually really care. I felt like I was playing catch-up from that moment in.

I remember it was a really typical X Factor thing. We went filming for the judges' houses, which is the stage after auditions, then bootcamp, judges' houses, live shows. And we went filming for judges' houses and I was already questioning. I wasn't really singing at all. We had not had any individual thing to sing, it was like harmony stuff. And I got stung by a sea urchin, random story. My foot blew up like an elephant. And we had to film all this jeopardy, this "how will the boys audition without Louis?" It was awful because there was no credibility to that statement. The boys could have auditioned straight away. At that point I was doing a lower harmony and I would be shocked if anyone could even hear me in the mix. So that was really challenging. I'm already starting to feel those things, and then you get something like that that's quite literal, and they're trying to sell this jeopardy. I remember thinking, I just wanted to do more, I just didn't know how to do that. Again, there's no context. I thought I was a good singer before I went in The X Factor. Then I get through the audition, they put me through, I'm like, okay, well I must be alright then. They don't show the TV audition. You're like, oh, maybe that's like a personality thing, or I don't know, maybe it's my voice. There's a lot of unanswered questions.

Steven Bartlett: Did you ever ask those questions? Did you ever ask him why you were in that band?

Louis Tomlinson: I would love to though. I would have loved to. But do you know why I wouldn't? Never with him. Simon would probably... Simon was always very brilliant at making me feel worthy in the band. But as you said before, I was often a voice between the band and the label. He was the label. Well, you put me on side, and that's a smart move, isn't it? One thing he would always do, Steven, is he would always say my name. Now, when you're a 19-year-old lad and Simon Cowell says, "Do you know what the thing is about that idea, Louis?" You are empowered. We like people using our names. Now imagine that Simon Cowell, you're 19 years old. There is a spell that comes with that, and there's a power that comes with that. And I think for a long time, I kind of fell for all those kind of ideas. I think Simon is an interesting person. He is a brilliant businessman. I learned a lot from him. I still deeply respect him. And I was in awe of him as a young lad. I loved to be around him. I loved to listen to him make decisions and all of that. And I thought he was definitely brilliant at that time. He just built me up on a pedestal to the point where I thought that it would actually have a real world meaning, not just a "thanks darling" kind of vibe.

Steven Bartlett: When did you realise that it didn't?

Louis Tomlinson: When I joined Syco on my own. So this is after the band. The band split up and now I didn't have my pick of record labels. It was never like that. But even if I had, I could have had 10 offers on the table. Let's just assume they're all the same money. I would have picked Simon always because, again, a little bit like the north of England, loyalty is a really important currency. It really is in these kind of working class places. It's really, really vital. And for me, it always meant a lot to me. So I thought, well, I'd heard that some of the other boys were thinking about going to other labels, which they were right to. And I found out I was the only one that was going to stay with Simon. And that just motivated me more. So all the other boys went and joined different record labels. Some of them not even within labels that were in Sony, which Syco was part of. I never thought, "Oh, wow, this is amazing for me, actually, that all the boys have done that. Look how good this makes me look to Simon. I look really loyal." And some of it was deliberate, but mostly that's just how I am as a person. I would rather just keep the happy family kind of vibe. That suits me.

Steven Bartlett: One of the things people don't talk about is the impact that your success has on everyone else back in Doncaster, including your mum. I spoke to your sister, Lottie, when my team did, and I was listening to the recordings. And she said that it was especially hard for your mum because you leave home suddenly at 18 years old. And from everything you've described, you're more than just a kid. You are, in some respects, a partner in raising the family. And best mates as well, man.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, definitely.

Steven Bartlett: Did she ever speak to you about the impact it had on her?

Louis Tomlinson: That's something that I remember really clearly. And she used to do the university analogy. She used to say, "I knew you were going to leave home at some point, but I had at least a timescale to that. I could work towards in my head, okay, in three months time he's going to leave for uni and that's that." One Direction never happened like that. It all ran away with itself. I think we felt like we all blinked and before we knew it, I was no longer living at home. So my mum had no time to even grieve the idea. And just for context, I mentioned this in a film and documentary and it kind of sums up me and my mum's relationship perfectly. The first person I told when I lost my virginity was my mum. I was telling her like I was telling one of my lad mates. I wasn't telling her for any other reason other than to show off and be like, "Guess what happened to me?" And we definitely had that kind of energy together. I always saw her more as a best friend than anything else. And especially because I was her first, she had me when she was 19. We spent the first few years together without a male role model. So it was a little deeper than your average son and mother situation. So I think it really hit my mum like a ton of bricks. If I had my time again, I would have been more present and aware of those kind of ideas.

And actually, here's a story. I've never told Daisy and Phoebe this. Daisy and Phoebe are two of my sisters who are identical twins. They're about four or five years younger than Lottie, so they're about 21. Now, I could always tell them apart perfectly, but they look utterly identical, especially when they were really young. And I can remember the more time I spent in the band, the more time I spent away from home, I wasn't confident enough to use their name to them. It would always be like, "Oh, babe," or something, that way I wouldn't have to mention the name because I wasn't certain who was who. These are two sisters that I spent my life with and grew up with. But I think that shows just how little I was at home. And my mum would come out to see me, which was great, but the kids were at school and stuff like that. So there was a long time out of those five years in the band spent not spending enough time with family. I would say that was 85% the job and the situation and One Direction and stuff, and 15% me too. I could definitely have done more. But when you live a life like we did in One Direction, free time is so competitive. And when you're young, you're not smart enough to realise the value of this family time.

Steven Bartlett: And you were on an absolute rocket ship up until you're sort of 23, 24 years old when the band announces that it's breaking apart. So in March that year, Zayn says he wants to leave to have a normal 22-year-old's life, which shocked the world. How do you reflect on Zayn's decision now? Because were you pissed off at the time that he was breaking things up?

Louis Tomlinson: I was fuming, really. It's not something we've discussed enough yet. But me and Zayn, it comes back to loyalty for me. I just selfishly wished he'd had a conversation with me first. Because me and Zayn, I'd like to think that he would say this too, I think he would. There were times where we were like... This is a good way of describing it. On the last tour that Zayn did, we always said we would never be the type of band that would have all their own individual dressing rooms. Sometimes when you've got a lot of guests and stuff, it can be challenging, but we always said we wouldn't be that band. And on the last tour Zayn did, Harry had his own dressing room, Liam did, Niall did, and me and Zayn shared. So I think that's a testament to the relationship. So I felt a little bit hard done by. I felt like, not like throw these boys under the bus, but let me know. I just thought that we had a relationship where he could have had that conversation with me. In reflection, and he hasn't told me this, we'll see when I chat to him about it, but I think if he told me, I would have tried to tell him to stay. And I think that's probably one of the reasons why he didn't, because he knew I was always very opinionated.

Steven Bartlett: So how did you find out?

Louis Tomlinson: That evening, the night before we found out, everything was normal. We were in the hotel room. We were somewhere, I don't know where, somewhere in the world, maybe where weed isn't legal, but we were having a joint. And everything was normal. And then I think he maybe left at like 11. He was cool, wasn't in a bad mood or anything like that. "Good night, lad." And then next morning I woke up, we had a shoot with Coca-Cola for some sponsor thing. And we found out that he wasn't coming. Now, I had this in me too, but Zayn was quite prolific for it. This wasn't out of the ordinary. I always rated him for it. If he didn't want to do something, he literally wouldn't do it. You name the thing, it doesn't matter. If it's not right for him, then he won't do it. So I think, well, that's probably why he left the band. And that's what I admire about him. Because if I was in his same situation, I would have probably put six plasters on it just to hope that we can stay playing happy families.

I want to know if he regrets it. Not in the way that his own personal success has been incredibly successful and he's done really, really well like that. But he must miss it. He must do. Because I know Zayn really well, and Zayn has a bit of the kind of energy I do in such a way that sometimes this whole job can just be a little bit fussy. It's just a bit fussy in general. There's just a lot going on. Now, when you're in a band, you can share that wealth. It's like, let's say you're sat in an interview you're not enjoying. You just kind of shut up a little bit and let someone else pick up the pieces and they'll do that role. We could share the things that we didn't like to do as much. There must definitely be times that he misses the comfort of that, for sure. But it's kind of like the elephant in the room, to be honest. I've met up with him a couple of times recently, but it's not often something we'll discourse. But there'll be a time for that, for sure. I would like to have those conversations with him. But it crushed me, man. It absolutely crushed me. I was devastated because it felt like, "Oh, is this the beginning of the end of the band?" But then also I'm like, this is my best mate in the band at the time. So I'd lost a friend and someone in the band.

Steven Bartlett: It's funny, I've heard you say that you weren't prepared for the success of One Direction, but you also weren't prepared for the end of One Direction.

Louis Tomlinson: Oh no.

Steven Bartlett: And you've described it as hitting you like a ton of bricks.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, it was awful. It wasn't until after the event that I realized that I actually computed all these feelings, but it was like I was straight grieving for it. That was grieving the band. I'm someone who unfortunately has a little bit of experience in grief, and albeit it felt different, but it was a version of the same thing. It was something that I really wanted that I couldn't have anymore. I think like anything like that, I'm a glass half full kind of guy, so I felt the wheel start to turn in motion like that, but you're looking the other way. You're like, "No, it's fine. It's not going to play out like that. It's never going to come to that." And then we had a meeting one day and it did.

Steven Bartlett: What happens in that meeting? What's said? Is it Simon saying something? Is it the boys? Is it representatives?

Louis Tomlinson: It was us boys, which was great. Always how it should be. But I think it almost might as well have been representatives. What's really fascinating is those real serious moments. We wouldn't have a lot of them in One Direction. We were just kind of going with the flow and really happy for each other and stuff like that. But I think those kind of moments where you have to be selfish, it was an atmosphere that I never really felt in the band. Normally, like I said, we're arms and arms. It's all this camaraderie. And then all of a sudden you get someone thinking more independently and more for themselves, which, by the way, they have every right to do, of course. But it just felt, the room felt cold that day. I can remember that in particular. I'm trying to find the right metaphor for it. It was something where these are all the same faces that I've seen every single day, but I'd never quite felt an energy like that in the room. There was this emptiness. And I think probably because we all knew collectively where it was going, and that's probably some friction between those ideas.

The thing that really bothered me was, and this again is naive, so naive at the time, but I was adamant on having some kind of indication of... because it was originally said as, what's that fucking word we've used a million times? Hiatus. Yeah. Which, by the way, is just such a cringey word. So it was originally pitched as that. So I was thinking, I remember saying, "Well, if I'm going to try and do some stuff on my own," and at this point I didn't even know what I was going to do, I was like, "It'd be good to know how long this break's going to be for. So let's speculate. A year? Two years? Five years? Ten years? Fifteen years?" I never really got an answer to that question, which I understand now. Because truthfully, I don't think the people or person involved was brave enough to answer that question deep down. I think they probably knew the reality, and that's why it was tough.

Steven Bartlett: And does Simon try and persuade you back into the band?

Louis Tomlinson: Let me say that by this point, and I'd say Simon was aware of this but maybe not quite so aware, because we're a band, after about two years of One Direction, nobody, absolutely nobody could tell us shit. Now, we were nice boys. We were never rude or anything like that. But if Simon had... we just didn't have that. He wasn't... he might have had that relationship prior, back in the 90s when all that stuff was kind of prevalent. But I think we'd always had our own kind of confidence like that. So he was never involved in those kind of decision makings. In fact, he was smart enough to realise that that would rub us up the wrong way.

Steven Bartlett: Makes sense.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah. And then it ends, and your life goes from absolutely crazy to less crazy. It's something that I'm still unpacking, to be honest, and still trying to work out all of those kind of things. I remember something I spoke about before. Julian Bunetta, who is a producer who worked on a lot of the One Direction stuff, we had a great relationship with him, really cool guy. We had this crazy night, it was like some kind of Billboard Awards in Vegas. Julian pulled me aside and he said, and it was really funny because he's not really like this heavy, but it's a real heavy statement. He'd obviously had a few vodka red bulls or something. And he was like, "Where do we go from here?" Now, by the way, the "we" upset me a little bit. It's like, I understand that and we are all in this together, but that question is a hell of a lot deeper for me than it is you. I understand, I get it. But at the same time, he probably ended up carrying on doing what he did. And I still don't really know the answer to that question. And maybe I don't think you can.

I think a lot of people's, not everyone's, but most people's natural trajectory of, let's just call it success, I could make a pedantic argument for it not being specifically that, but they have a kind of lineal journey. The older they get, the more successful that they get. What was really strange was being 24 years old and realizing that the only way is down from it. There is no alternative reality where I at least keep up or supersede. No way. There was no chance of that. And it was very obvious to anyone around it. And it still is something that is challenging, definitely. Because you've had a look behind the curtain. You know now some of the things that maybe I had then that I don't have now. I'm not overly pressed for a billboard for the album in LA or here in New York. I don't get those kind of opportunities anymore. Do I lose any sleep over it? No, not really. But I think the feeling in general of, I have to work really hard to compete at the level I do, that is just a fact. I just got a number one record on the last record, Faith in the Future. Never in a million years when I started my solo career did I ever think that I would be getting a number one record. It's a testament to my fans, testament to the record, the producers, etc. But I've always had to work on my own anyway. I've always felt like I've had to work really, really hard just to kind of keep my head above water. Now, the reality of that statement is, and I realise that as I say it out loud, my version of head above water is very different to a lot of people. Because from 18 to 24, that whole landscape looked very, very different. And that's why I've always found it quite unrealistic to not compare the two. I completely agree with that because you cannot compare them, the two being One Direction and my own solo career. But it's something that you can't ignore.

I do a cover, stupid of me to call it a cover, I realised how funny that is. When I do a One Direction song, I call it a cover, which is really ironic. But I do "Night Changes" on my tour show. And I can remember this one show in particular, I think it was like a 5,000 capacity room. And I think maybe we'd done like 1,200 tickets, which is okay, that's alright. But when you're singing "Night Changes" at a gig like that, when you can vividly and visually remember singing "Night Changes" at Wembley Stadium, and you're literally singing "look how fast the night changes" and you're looking out to this sparse room, it's like a brutal kind of poetry. And that's the point about it being unrealistic. I could be the most glass half full guy in the world, but life is going to constantly challenge me like that, definitely. Because that was the pinnacle.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah. I mean, it's very human. The example in the scenario you're talking about is one no one can understand, but it's the comparison. That's how we work. It's how we understand the value of things. And as you say, going to the top of Mount Everest at 24 means that you're always gonna have some kind of unconscious comparison to everything thereafter. What do you do about that? Do you have to use a different yardstick of measurement?

Louis Tomlinson: I try to. These are words, aren't they? That's it, being honest. Some days I live by it, some days I don't. I wrote something on my social media probably four or five years ago now, it was on Instagram I think, about my interpretation of the word success. Because I'd spent a long time only knowing it through the lens of One Direction. And I think that's a constant battle. It's a constant conversation with myself internally that I can measure my own success in a different way. It doesn't have to be a numbers game. In terms of fulfilment, for example, this latest record that I've just written, I feel really, really good about it. There's been an element of me kind of swimming against the tide a little bit to this point. That feeling of fulfilment, that's legit.

Steven Bartlett: Did you have conversations with your former bandmates about how they were coping with these?

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, yeah.

Steven Bartlett: Is it all different?

Louis Tomlinson: To be honest, that would only happen, me and Liam, between the other boys. Not that it's not emotional, because it is and it's definitely deeper than surface level, but it's more... I would struggle to text the other boys as much. I would love to hang out with them in person, but there's an element of it feeling like it's all just a bit small talk. Which is lovely and it's nice to catch up like that. But me and Liam would always speak on a much more deep level. And I felt bad saying this because I feel arrogant, but I shouldn't. I wanted to look after him, definitely. That was a role I felt I was there to play. And he definitely, often the way he would perceive certain parts of his life, I would be really inspired by. He was someone who was really brave at times, which contrary to sometimes what he put out, but really, really brave. He would ask anyone anything with a smile. He had a really good way about him like that. I would say he was the closest to being my brother. Love him deeply, could spend hours and hours and hours with him, but there was an element of always checking in and just making sure that he's cool.

Steven Bartlett: Did you worry about him?

Steven Bartlett: Always, always, yeah. Because I knew he was a little misunderstood, but also, you know, like, interestingly, the record, when you're starting out as a solo artist, the parallels of people who know themselves made the best records, definitely. So like if you're still unpacking all that information of who you are as a person, as an adult, which we all were post One Direction, it's near impossible to point and go, this is who I want to be as an artist. Because essentially it's just a metaphor for who you are as a person, at least the best stuff is.

Louis Tomlinson: Liam will be someone who candidly, I could say to him really honestly, like, bro, fucking hell, I miss being in the band. And we could like have a really honest conversation like that. Whereas if I'd said that to any of the other boys, I'd be worried that they might think, oh, things aren't going well in his solo life, you know. Whereas Liam, I never had to worry about those things. It was like brothers like that.

Steven Bartlett: He wore his heart on his sleeve, didn't he?

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, definitely. And I just, it's really fresh. It's a really, really cool way of living because we all say, even like I would like to say I wear my heart on my sleeve. But there's still 10% of me that's guarded in the right places. He'd certainly had his way of being.

Steven Bartlett: I do wonder if that made him slightly more susceptible to the pressures. Because sometimes, if you can put on a second face...

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's helped me in this job, and there's no truer time that that kind of shows itself, it's me as a parent. There is a real distinction. This is me, there is me at work and there is me not at work. So either being a parent or being a friend or a partner or whatever, that's always helped me to have that kind of distinction. When I'm dad to Freddie, I'm full-time dad and I'm not a singer. And any of that world outside does not really matter, it's not relevant to me as a father, which it isn't.

Steven Bartlett: Did I ever tell you about the data breach that we had at my previous company?

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, I remember hearing about that.

Steven Bartlett: Which was a total nightmare. So I'm glad that we now use 1Password.

Louis Tomlinson: What actually is it, Steve?

Steven Bartlett: It's called 1Password, and they're the sponsor of the podcast now. And they have this feature called Enterprise Password Manager, which means that if any of our passwords across the team are compromised or leaked, then it notifies us. And obviously, if that were to be the case, we're at huge risk across the entire team. Through 1Password EPM, you can also store all of your sensitive information. And it's helping us to move closer towards pass keys, which means eventually everybody will be able to log in to pretty much everything without ever having to put a password in.

Louis Tomlinson: Sounds like a good addition.

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[They look through photos]

Steven Bartlett: I've never found more photographs of a person's life in my life. Cute, nice little denim jacket. What do you think when you see that photo?

Louis Tomlinson: It reminds me of a nice time, this one. I remember that vividly. We did like a full photo shoot in my living room. Quite the pose with the hands in the pockets. It's much more nonchalant than I will actually be feeling.

Steven Bartlett: I mean, these ones are all the band photos. I mean, it's just fucking unbelievable. Like looking at some of the crowds on these images is insanity.

Louis Tomlinson: Oh yeah. This, my mum took this picture. This was the first picture ever taken of us. My mum took this.

Steven Bartlett: You look super young.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah. That again. Yeah. So I was the oldest, 18. Then you've got Harry, Liam and Niall. They were 16, saying 17. And of course you're...

Steven Bartlett: I love that picture.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, I love that picture. It kind of really sums up mine and Liam's relationship. I love it. I love it. He would have been telling me a joke that I didn't think was hilarious at the time, so I'll be giving him that kind of face and then probably about an hour later I would have laughed to myself about it.

Steven Bartlett: And I have these beautiful pictures of your beautiful mother.

Louis Tomlinson: Oh, yeah, they're lovely.

Steven Bartlett: I love this one.

Louis Tomlinson: I love this one. This is cute. Yeah, I got a very similar picture to this by my bedside table at home in my bedroom.

Steven Bartlett: About a year after you leave One Direction, your mother passes away from leukaemia. Thinking about the timing of all these events, thinking about the shock of being thrown into a very different life, one without the boy band around you, and then your mother getting leukaemia, which people don't know is the 12th most common form of cancer. She passes away at age 42. The timing of all these things is quite unthinkable to me. Because there's so much transition in your life. I'm just terribly sorry. I'm just, you know.

Louis Tomlinson: Oh, I appreciate you saying that, right?

Steven Bartlett: I don't really have anything else to say other than just understanding what she meant to you and the role she had in your life. I'm terribly sorry, you know.

Louis Tomlinson: There was definitely, as you said, the timing. Obviously, there's no good time for anything like this. But I think the timing, that's what created a bit of, it didn't last too long. I want to say maybe six months, but of like true resentment for the world, like real resentment. Just feeling really hard done by. You know, one thing I remember about grief when you're in the midst of it, you could stub your toe right, and something like that is utterly unjust now. Something that you might have done until none of this ever happened, you stub your toe, it be annoying but you just get over it. Little things like that I really, really struggled with when I was grieving. So it's things that should work a certain way that don't. There's a zip on my jacket that won't quite go all the way up. Real, micro, non-important little things. But I think because of the weight of the stuff that had happened, there was just a moment in my life, as I said, for about six months where it just felt like I couldn't win. In fact, I could only lose. So that's where even just stubbing your toe, you'd be like, oh, another fucking thing. Now, it sounds stupid to say, but once you met with that kind of mindset of feeling hard done by, the smallest things definitely can amplify that.

Steven Bartlett: When did you hear that she was sick?

Louis Tomlinson: I got friendly with a footballer called Jamie Vardy, and he'd invited me to his wedding. So I was at the wedding, and it was like the party afterwards, and it was like 10pm. At this point, I'd already had quite a few vodka red bulls, which was not ideal for the weight of the conversation. My mum called me. I was stood outside. It wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for my mum to call me, so I wasn't worried or anything like that. She called me like most days, if not every day. And then she told me. And you know what it's like with anything like this in life, when you hear something that carries any kind of weight, the first 10 thoughts are either it can't be true, maybe she's got it wrong, maybe the doctors have got it wrong, just all these stages of denial before actually embracing the thought. It wasn't really like me, I didn't even feel like it was like a cry for help at the time. But that night I got absolutely battered. I got really, really drunk. There'll be nights where I'll have a little bit too much to drink, more from not knowing my limit. But in this kind of situation, it's not something I've ever really used drink for, to be honest, but I just felt like the only way, just to completely escape that moment at that night. What I found really challenging during even that first conversation with her about it was I still wanted to inspire hope. I still wanted to, because she was really hopeful. So I was trying to have this genuine worry that any son would, but I also was trying to shield a bit of my mum from that. I didn't want her to feel like she'd upset me, even though obviously it wasn't her choice. I can remember that idea of really trying to be real with my mum about how I was feeling, but there were times when I wouldn't be because I wouldn't want her to feel guilty.

Steven Bartlett: So she told you over the phone that she'd had a diagnosis?

Louis Tomlinson: Yes, yeah. She told me that she had leukaemia. My first answer was, I don't know where this came from, again this is just like the definition of denial. My first answer, word for word, was, "Oh, that's the good one to get though, right?" Meaning that has the most survival rate. And bless her, she has to be like, "No, not really."

Steven Bartlett: And how long was it from that phone call till her passing?

Louis Tomlinson: I have no idea. I could not, I want my guess would be 18 months. I think it might have been quicker than that. The anniversary of her death, I get texts all the time on whatever the anniversary is, and someone will say "thinking of you today," and it's only at that point that I know that that's the day, because I just, it's deleted from my brain.

Steven Bartlett: She passes. Because you don't have your biological father around, you're very much at that point, in some respects, the father of lots of siblings because you're the big brother. You went out on stage three days after her death for an X Factor performance. From what I understand from Lottie, she very much pushed you to do that before she passed away and told you that you needed to do that performance.

Louis Tomlinson: I'll never forget the X Factor final performance that I did with Steve Aoki when my mum had only passed away like a couple of days before, which I still can't believe I even had the strength to do. But my mum was just so proud of him, and especially him starting his solo career. Even in her final days, she was like, "If I don't make it, I still want you to do this performance." And when she did pass, we were like, there's no way, no one would have expected him to do it. But he wanted to do it for her. And I knew exactly what that was. I knew why she was telling me. She was telling me because she would have hated something that had happened to her affect my career and my life as a person. I would do it again for her. I don't think I'll ever have a more challenging time in my life than those three and a half minutes on stage. I did it only for her. It's not something I look back on and go, I'm really proud. I am proud that I did that, but you almost say those kinds of things when you want to do something, right? I'm really proud that I did that. That wasn't, it felt like it was taken out of my hands. I didn't want her to have that guilt, but it was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. It was horrible. And also the song alluded to, the song was called "Just Hold On." It's weird how empowering those moments are. I can sit here now and comfortably say that the chances of my life being as dark as it was in those three minutes alone, I would be desperately unlucky to ever be in a situation like that again. Where I was so young, in a situation where, as you said, all the timing was, and then I felt like I'd been encouraged to go on stage, but it wasn't really something that I wanted to do. It puts everything into perspective. So nothing's going to get as hard as that. So I think there's times where my job will weigh me down, even like today, not today, but I'm in this current head. And it helps me remember and helps me put things into perspective that just because a radio station isn't playing my single, that hurts 0.0000001% in the same way as something like that. So I think because I was so challenged emotionally and I survived the experience, it's given me a weird kind of confidence, to be honest. Just knowing that life probably won't get that dark again.

Steven Bartlett: You sometimes don't realise that the role that your parents were playing until they're not around, that they're almost a sort of tectonic plate underneath everything. Was that a realisation at that point?

Louis Tomlinson: Big time. There was this true dependency on my mum that I did not realise until I'd lost my mum. So I think there was definitely stuff that I've had to learn, like being on my own. And often she would inspire confidence. I'd say, I'm worried about this, I don't want to go to this audition or I don't want to do this or I'm worried about this song. And she always made me feel like I could do anything on the planet. And she'd actually made me feel stupid for even questioning the fact that I couldn't do anything. So I think there's moments like that where you've almost had to relearn confidence.

Steven Bartlett: And how does a young man grieve the loss of his mother at such a young age?

Louis Tomlinson: Everyone's grief is completely individual. Something I found out more recently, purpose was mine. Now, this is again not a luxury that everyone has in a situation like I found myself in. I grieved and I had moments where I was deeply, deeply upset, but these were fleeting moments because there was too much to do for my sisters. There was too much to do for my nan and granddad. There was too much to do for my family. It gave me something to do. It gave me a true purpose. It gave me a reason in the darkest days to get out of bed and confidently get out of bed. Because there was stuff that needed to be done. And at that time, my sisters were so, so, so young. And I was so terrified of what kind of effect that would have on them growing up. And luckily, they impress me every day. They're amazing, amazing women. My role felt like the strong one in that situation. Someone who's willing to give someone, Daisy would call me and she'd be really upset and by the end of the call, she can just see the glimpse of a glass half full. That was my job. The grief became less relevant because of the need to look after everyone else.

Steven Bartlett: Sometimes you might get asked, what advice would you give to people with grief? It's just an impossible question to answer just because I'm still feeling it. The interesting thing about that is you could spend two weeks with me and you never knew me and you never knew my life story, never in a million years would you think so. I don't carry myself like that. I'm not someone who's down in the dumps like that. But it's still there. It will never go away.

Steven Bartlett: What are the symptoms of it still being there?

Louis Tomlinson: There is this air of, I suppose, air of unpredictable, this feeling of, and that's sometimes where my positivity comes from too, like things could change tomorrow. So I suppose that is, and that kind of jeopardy and that kind of idea, that's how I would interpret it. And because for any grief that I've experienced, it has been relatively quick. I haven't really had a lot of time to compute these kind of ideas.

Steven Bartlett: Does that create a certain anxiety with life and a certain worry for life that, if the foundations are uncertain and bad news can arrive at any moment, that seems like the breeding ground of worry and anxiety?

Louis Tomlinson: I actually wrote that down earlier because when we were speaking earlier, you said, I wasn't a worrier back then when you're talking about your childhood.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah, I didn't used to be a worrier.

Louis Tomlinson: Now, I'm sure most people can say that, right? Your worry levels, or at least for most people, you have less worry when you're younger. You haven't quite understood all your emotions yet, really.

Steven Bartlett: Do you have anxiety? Do you struggle with it?

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, experience all the time.

Steven Bartlett: Is it something that kind of controls me?

Louis Tomlinson: No. You know, I'm sure you've heard about this, my vocal coach always used to say to me that the feeling of being anxious and excited are near identical. And that was something that always kind of stuck with me, really. Because not always, but a lot of stuff that feels really good can be quite intimidating beforehand. That is an anxiety that comes with doing something that is out of the ordinary, I suppose. I can distinctly remember, not so much now, but on the first tour, I would literally before going out on stage, as futile and as ridiculous as it is, I'd think to myself, how do I run away from this? How could I literally run out the door and not do the gig? So maybe that would be a version of anxiety, but it didn't stop me getting up there and doing it. I suppose maybe that's the difference.

Steven Bartlett: A couple years after the passing of your mother, you lose your younger sister Felicity. The circumstances of her death are deeply, deeply tragic. When I was speaking to several people in your life around you, they talked about how you had done so much since the passing of your mother to support your sisters, how you'd really taken on the role as being the quote-unquote head of the family. And the tragedy is deepened by the fact that she's 18 years old at the time. Again, an unthinkable tragedy for one person to go through in their life, but for you to go through two of these things in succession is, I mean I don't have the words.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, that was kind of what I was speaking up before, that moment of stubbing your toe and that kind of aggravating you, that was just like that idea accentuated. I just couldn't believe how deeply unlucky we've been as a family. Now, maybe it's not overly uncommon, people that lose parents young and obviously struggle to deal with, but at the time I felt angry at life and I felt angry mostly on behalf of my family. Now it wouldn't be, like obviously I would know that I was included in this idea, but I wouldn't be thinking, what have I done to deserve this? It was more, Daisy and Phoebe are so young. They've already had so much, and Lottie as well, already had so much to deal with. Why this and why now? It just felt incredibly, incredibly unfair. That's something that's interesting about grief is just how different each thing feels. Because that definitely hit me in a different way and it was completely sudden and immediate. Again, one of the most challenging moments of my life. So I'm sat in my house in London and everything was fine. I was a little bit worried, I'd been worried about Felicity for the months prior as I was worried about all my sisters. And I was just sat in my front room smoking a joint, not thinking about anything really. And then the doorbell rang at like one in the morning or something, or maybe like midnight. And I had this feeling come over me straight away. And I'm not really this kind of guy where I'm, on another day I might have been worried that the police were coming to grab my weed, but it wasn't like that. I just had this thing come over me straight away and I knew it was bad. And I knew that when someone rings your door at that time, it's rarely good news. And I saw, and then I opened the gates. I've got these gates and I opened the gates and I saw the police car and the policeman. And then they told me that she passed away. And I literally was like, okay, right. I can't tell you why, because it was just, it was only me and my best friend and my ex-girlfriend at the time. So it wasn't like a pride thing of me being like, okay, I'm cool, I'm fine. I just, I think I didn't, I just, not only did I was in denial at that moment, I just refused to even compute it. It was just like, okay, cool. And then I remember shutting the door and then I told the people I owned the house with and obviously then they start crying and obviously then I think your brain starts catching up with you. And something that was really, really tough for me at this moment in time, and this is a stupid thing to say because I know that he was more than willing to be there for me, but my best friend who I was living with at the time, he was here today, I remember him saying, "I'm just so sorry," and he was crying his eyes out. I was just like, "I'm just so sorry, I'm so sorry." I felt guilty that he felt like that, which is stupid. And so I'd said before about how this is me and my family are some of the characters in the story, but often what's not spoke about in the name of grief is people like my best friend and the role that they have to play. Now, these are not trained therapists. These are not people who've had any kind of reference of this kind of pain. And all you're doing as a best friend there is actually demanding or just praying, hoping that they give you something in return that will not change the reality but just be there for you. And nothing prepares you in life for those kind of situations. That's something that I will forever, forever, ever be in debt to him for. Because this is an unfathomable, it's a really impossible situation for me and my family to have found ourselves in, but there are other people at play too. And I can only imagine how hard that was. And he knew how hard it was for me and how I just lost my mum. And there are no words. You're just scrambling your brain trying to find the words and there isn't any. Also, bear in mind everything that I've said before this. If I was to dumb my role down to like one thing in life, I'd maybe say to look after people. Well, in the context of my sisters, to protect them. To lose my sister in the manner that we did, even though I knew that it wasn't fair on myself, I felt utterly guilty. I felt powerless and I felt like I'd let my sister down and like I'd let my mum down, really. My mum said to me in the last couple of weeks of her life, she was like, "You better promise me you look after your sisters." And I'm like, "Yeah, of course, you know I will." And she was like, "But specifically Felicity, you know, she's fragile." I felt like I'd failed at the time. That's the truth. I know now that I didn't, and if she was here now, she would say that you didn't. But yeah, it doesn't change the feeling. And that's, again, that's always been the role I played in the family. And all I was trying to do after my mum was just put me and my sisters and my grandparents in a bubble. I just thought, let's just, nothing's going to get to us. So that, you know, sounds like a really arrogant thing to say. I mean this more metaphorically, but it truly undermined me. It undermined all the hope that I'd had, all these kind of ideas that I was instilling post a life without our mum. It just kind of undermined all those ideas. It made it a lot more challenging for me to say them and feel them and believe them. But the same with my sisters, so it just made everything obviously infinitely more difficult. The only thing I'm thankful for is that my mum wasn't around to see that, because that would have been horrible for her. But I actually learned this from being around, funny enough, being around Liam. When someone is struggling with their own demons, per se, unless you've been around someone who's really struggling, you probably don't understand how helpless it often feels. And in hindsight, someone that's not been in those situations thinks, well, you just go over there and you sit with them and have dinner and then you fix it, you just stay. But actually the reality of helping someone who's struggling is they often do things in private and secretly.

Steven Bartlett: You referenced you knew that Felicity was struggling with something. Was that the passing of your mother that she was struggling with or was it life generally?

Louis Tomlinson: I think it was a bit of both. I think obviously mum passing definitely amplified any of those things. But I think with Felicity, she was one of these people that she was uber intelligent from a young age. Really, really, really intelligent, which is ironic because I'd say we're a relatively smart family, but she was like in her own league. Really, really intelligent woman. And I think that brought its own social frustration for her.

Steven Bartlett: Definitely.

Louis Tomlinson: You know, you hear these people that are intelligent from a young age. She would always have felt like she was on the outside looking in, but only because of her intellect, really. And, you know, that's tough for kids when they're younger. Definitely, it's not something I can personally relate to. But I can imagine how that would be really alienating and tough. Felicity was probably the most like my mum. So that then that also carried its own weight because it felt—I'd say Felicity looked the most like my mum as well, like visually.

Steven Bartlett: I mean, she's—yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy, you look like each other, to be honest.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, we do. I used to get that when I was younger, people always used to say how much I look like my mum. And as a young lad, that's not really what you want to hear. But I'm really proud now, yeah.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah, yeah. You can see how much you love her there. Bless.

Louis Tomlinson: But you see, I've alluded to some of this stuff in the past, never really spoke about it in depth like this. And part of the reason for that is—and this is the correct forum and it makes sense—but part of the reason for that is I can't think of anything worse than being... what's the word? When if someone like this was talking to me about this and I had not experienced that, I'd feel really sorry for them naturally. I don't like that. I don't like those feelings. I don't like those ideas. I appreciate that it's weighty and people should of course feel sorry, but I think the reason that I'm always quite selective of how and when I talk about it is because I cannot have that define me. I can't. It's not fair to my family, it's not fair to Felicity, it's not fair to my mum. I can't.

And you know, the problem is if we walked out of here and we just happened to get papped, right, in the article the Daily Mail print every single time, they will write about this stuff. Every single time. It could be me and you going to get a coffee and then they do that thing where it's like a 20% new article and then they just fluff out the rest of the 80% with basically the narrative that they want to push. But that's something that I can't escape, and I find that really frustrating because I'm not someone who is a glass half empty kind of guy. I don't want those kind of feelings and emotions. I empathize and understand with anyone hearing these stories, of course you're going to maybe feel bad for me. But I think my biggest worry in these kind of things is to not be defined by it.

An example of that would be when I released a song called "Two of Us," which was a song that was written essentially about my mum's passing. And I didn't realise by releasing that song how, A, it would open the floodgates to have many people put a lot of their trauma on me as well, which is okay. But also creating this thing where anyone just feels like they could ask anything then. So I remember going on to BBC Breakfast News. It's one of those things, it's a fucking early morning slot. Not even the presenters want to be there. Never mind me at that time. I'm not good with early mornings. Anyway, so I'm going on to talk about "Two of Us," the single. Now, we distinctly said, you know what it's like, these are the things that are okay to mention and do not mention these things. If I was going to go on and talk about what the song was about, then fair enough, that's one thing. But I actually had a journalist at the time who asked me directly about those things and I'd known that we'd said don't. Now, it's very different to be—like sometimes on that list we might have "don't speak about One Direction." Like, this is not what I've got a problem with. But when someone's had their own grief and you're still then going to ask those kind of questions, I think I found that really, really troubling.

And I think what was interesting was I left the interview, and I used to be good at this when I was a bit younger, and I obviously talked to Twitter. I was like, "I never fucking work with the BBC again," blah, blah, blah. And then he came back at me, this journalist. He said, "Well, if you write a song about grief, expect to be asked about it." And my instinctive reaction was, there's somebody who hasn't experienced grief. They couldn't possibly have, because if they had, they wouldn't make such a horrible, horrible comment that just lacks all kind of empathy. So I think it's those kind of moments where I've been quite guarded with this kind of information. Just because I think a lot of people, if I never spoke about it, I don't carry myself as someone that looks like they're really hurting. At least I hope I don't. I don't think I do.

Steven Bartlett: Do you know what? It sounds like a crazy thing for me to say, but I had no idea. Okay? Right. Yeah. Okay, okay, yeah. So we met at Soccer Aid. Okay, right. I had—I like that. That makes me feel good, actually. You know, it's just me being honest. I had no idea. I'm not someone that reads newspapers. I don't stay close to tabloid stuff. I had known Liam, but Liam hadn't spoken to me about these things. I'd met you, we'd hung out for a couple of days at Soccer Aid. I had no idea. Yeah, okay. And it was only in researching your story and your background and understanding where you've come from and really what inspires a lot of the music and different things like that that I started to understand these things. So you're certainly not someone that carries yourself with any particular identity that one could discern other than just being a normal guy.

And the other thing that connects us was Liam. And I think it would have been Liam's birthday a couple of days ago. His birthday was three days off mine. So he's the 29th of August, I believe. Mine's the 26th. And we both knew him a little bit. You knew him an awful lot. And he passed away while on holiday in Argentina. I mean, yeah, I just couldn't believe it. And you, to him, because he had told me, he talked about you all the time. Through the pandemic, I know you were doing things together, doing sort of these live shows and stuff, and he would talk about you as if you were his best friend in the band all the time. And I guess that's, you feel, you reciprocate that feeling with him, right?

Louis Tomlinson: You were like the—especially thereafter the band. Definitely thereafter, I'd say. In the first couple of years, me and Liam used to speak about this. We kind of butted heads a little bit. Like I said before, Liam had been working really, really hard since the age of 14 to get to where he was in One Direction. My journey wasn't like that. So there was definitely, if I wanted to do something and I might be going out late at night and then Liam might say something along the lines of, "We've got a photo shoot at nine o'clock in the morning tomorrow." We never saw eye to eye on those kind of things because I'm just like, well, I've got this amazing opportunity, so I'm still going to go out and party or whatever. But I think Liam, he came from a very, very sensible point of view, but mostly because he had given so much more time and energy to it by that point. Like, as I said, when it was my third audition, but really, they weren't too taxing, the moments of the rejection. I just got on with it and got through it and it was fine. The only time X Factor was relevant to me was the times when I was auditioning those days. Whereas Liam, it became his life from 14 right up until 16. He'd sang at West Brom Stadium before any of us had done anything.

When I put my post up about him—and by the way, it's so utterly challenging that there are just too many words and too many memories, it could just be infinite, the post. I really wanted him to be remembered the way that he should be remembered. But I could just go on and talk all day about how amazing he was. I think we all looked up to him. If we're being honest, I don't think I would have been brave enough to say that at that age when I was in the band. I think I would have had too much pride. But we all looked up to him massively for the reasons that I just stated. He was vastly experienced before any of us had done anything. He was also like the safest pair of hands in every sense of the word. Vocally, interview, music video, whatever it would be. He'd be working and doing it. He would always be the safest pair of hands where you maybe have me and Zayn in the back, smoking a joint or doing something stupid. Liam would always, always have his eye on the ball, which ironically created more space for the—you know, when you've got someone who's willing to pick up the pieces and you've got young lads, young lads don't reflect and go, "Oh, I can see he's picking up a lot of the pieces, I'm going to do a bit more for it." No, you just see that my role in the band might have been to be disruptive and have conversations with record labels or management or whoever. And that was for me to be disruptive and go against the grain. Liam's role was the opposite, but equally, if not more important, to just keep everything going, and be that safe pair of hands of keeping everything in check.

That's why from a very young age, he was called the sensible one of the band, which I also don't think will have done him loads of favours mentally either. He was wildly misunderstood.

Steven Bartlett: Big time, big time, man, big time.

Louis Tomlinson: And oftentimes people maliciously misunderstood him, which was hard. It's hard. I don't know if I have the right words for this, but if you knew Liam, and then you went on the internet and saw the way that he was described when you know certain moments in press and there was that interview he did in LA and things like that, you would only feel awful that he was so poorly misunderstood because he was often painted as being arrogant or whatever. But the reality of Liam is the opposite of whatever the word arrogant is.

Steven Bartlett: Pure is the word, really.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, really nice way of describing him. And I don't mean this in a remotely rude way, but he had a bit of puppy dog energy about him. He's just like—when you say pure there, that's what it makes me feel like. He's just the kind of guy that you might get a bit of banter wrong and it comes across a bit cutting and you see him go, "Oh," and you go, "Oh my fucking—" He's just such a—just really wanted to be liked. Now we all do, obviously, that's in all of us. But I think for Liam, it was vitally important. But also he missed out on some of the social life because from 14 to 16 he was actually working at that point. He was still at school and stuff, but his brain and his dreams and probably every night that he went to sleep, he was thinking about how is he going to achieve what it is that he wants to achieve. So he definitely had a very different magnitude to all of us.

Steven Bartlett: Where were you when you found out?

Louis Tomlinson: In the car in LA. I just dropped—I'm pretty sure, again my memory isn't good at these moments in time, but I think I just dropped Freddie off at school, my son, and we were just about to pull back up home. Yeah, and I think that's how it went down. It was actually—I found out through Niall. He told me and then I—yeah, I think he said, "Niall said something like, 'Have you seen the news?'" And I knew as soon as he said that, I kind of knew what it might have meant. What it might have meant. I had a feeling that I had to—to be honest, I think anyone has this when they're around someone who's struggling. My 150% wasn't nearly enough. And that's where—you know, it's my own arrogance, thinking that I could have helped, really, because it was so much deeper than what I could have done for him. He was definitely struggling at that time in his life.

And a lot of people said this, and it really resonated with me: just if he could just see for just five minutes, just live in your head or my head and see how we perceive him, he would be so shocked. He would be like—honestly, even the fact that you two were friends and I didn't know about that until you mentioned it at Soccer Aid, or maybe he mentioned it loosely, he would have loved that. He would have loved that. You would have been someone definitely that he would have felt really proud to know. Because you come from also a very credible space and that's something that was always really important to Liam. Business, very, very important to Liam. So the fact that you saw him, that would have meant the world to him, definitely.

He was very, very misunderstood. But I think also the fact that he was misunderstood is because he was—like I said before about all of our solo endeavors, when most bands or artists start out they do a development stage for six months, 12 months, 18 months, two years. We had to do this development in the public eye post being in One Direction. Liam was still working so much out. So the fact that he might have been a bit misunderstood, you can't—there's some things that people definitely can be judged for, but in terms of him occasionally coming across like that, you can't even judge people on looking because they just see what they see. But in reality, that's just someone navigating. Almost in the way that if you went down to university and just people watched for two months, you would see some stuff. People that were struggling with some things, or complete walking contradictions. You'd see someone in the first year who says that they swear by this brand and they'll never wear this brand, and the next year they'll be wearing said brand. When we're at that age, we're all still just working it out. There's so much room to be misunderstood because you don't know yet. And I think that was a tough thing for all of us: working out who am I outside of Liam in One Direction, Louis in One Direction? Who am I and what does that look like? And that question's intimidating. Really, really intimidating.

Steven Bartlett: You lose a friend there, but you also in some respects—it's grieving the band again, is it not? Is it not? You know what I mean?

Louis Tomlinson: It definitely brought up feelings like that. Look, there's now only three other people on the planet that can deeply understand my professional journey. You never say never, but I just can't ever imagine. I'm not sure it would be right to him. Say, for the sake of argument, 25 years time, it's like a fucking Oasis thing, they offer us an arm and a leg and they'll come back and do this many shows. I don't know. I think it just completely put a pin in all of that. And the irony is there was no one campaigning for One Direction to get back together more than Liam. And I would say I came in a close second, actually, definitely.

Another important thing to mention about Liam which I thought was incredible. There was a time where I felt like me and Liam were professionally losing together. We were struggling to be solo artists and find true success and we were kind of struggling together. And then Liam had little moments where he had really successful singles and they streamed really well and he'd feel really good about that. But at that time, nothing was really working for me in my job. So I was really proud of him and I'd message him and stuff. And then not to the same weight, but kind of role reversed a little bit, and Liam was struggling a little bit more professionally and I just started to understand the picture a little bit more, started doing more touring and stuff like that. And for example, when I made a documentary, a film about my life after One Direction, Liam came to the premiere. Now, I'll just say this because I was going to mince my words, but none of the other boys would have done that. Fact. Would I have even done that? I'd like to sit here now and say yeah I think I would, but I don't know truthfully. And the point being that, me empathising how I was a couple of years prior to that, Liam was sat in a cinema watching a film about how I'd been successful in the last 12 months when he was struggling with his own things. And it's something that I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to do. I'm not sure the other boys would have. And basically all that is to sum that up is just utterly putting himself second. There's no way that that wouldn't have had a certain kind of weight on him. Because as you said, we're all human and we naturally compare. So there might be things that were happening there that he was wanting for. And I think just the fact that he turned up on that day and was there for me—I just did the role reverse in my head and imagined that. I just imagined how challenging that could be, and it's just a real testament to Liam. And he couldn't have been more happy.

And that's another great example of where the fucking internet is just a horrible place at times. He put up—and luckily I know someone will have screenshotted it because he deleted it in the end—but he put up this beautiful post after my premiere for this documentary. Like an essay, a fucking essay. Stuff that he's never said to me before. It was like the sweetest, nicest fucking shit. And then about two days later he deleted it because the fans were just caking him for it. Just saying that he was bandwagon, kind of like—you know what it's like? It's a very small percentage of people, but they make a lot of noise, and sometimes it'll push you to a point of even deleting a post. But that being an example of him just really putting himself second and really trying to say to the world how proud he was of me, and the end goal was more ridicule.

And so it happened right when he was in Argentina. He was there watching Niall perform, and there was lots of similar narrative around his appearance there. And all I would say in any regard like that, not just Liam, in any person like that, after you judge—because sometimes it's human nature to judge—after you judge, just give those things just a little bit more thought. So take the tour thing, for example. He's at the tour show and people were making comments of how much he was loving the attention. On the surface level, that's someone who wants attention. If you just look a little bit deeper, that's someone who's just been in the biggest band in the world and wants those situations again, who hasn't had those live situations again and craves for them. The reason also Liam can be misunderstood is because he didn't really operate with a filter. He would just feel something, say it, and there you go.

Steven Bartlett: Is there anything else that you've been meaning to say?

Louis Tomlinson: That's a great provocative question. That is what he says, right?

Steven Bartlett: No, no, there is. There is.

Louis Tomlinson: Well, we should talk about Freddie for a second. My little boy.

Steven Bartlett: From other head, yeah.

Louis Tomlinson: Which is again something that happened to me. I was young, I was 24 when I had Freddie. Now, what a lot of people—the emotions that a lot of people go through when they've become a new parent, some of those will be different for me because I've always been uber excited about it, even from being a young, young lad. But also, truthfully, I felt utterly confident. I just felt like I was going to be a good dad. I really, really wanted to do that and to play that role. And he's just—honestly, he is just the sweetest kid, man. He's just so kind. That's what—honestly, I could well up thinking about it now. That's what makes me feel deeply proud.

Steven Bartlett: I did ask Lottie and a few others about him, and the quote that I got back is: "Louis is the most amazing dad. His little boy is the nicest, sweetest, most polite boy ever, and that's obviously because of how Louis has brought him up. I try to take a lot of advice and be more like him with my parenting." And that came from Lottie. And I have multiple accounts of just how wonderful of a young man Freddie's growing up to be. So that's a—he's great, man.

Louis Tomlinson: I tell you what, I'm at this age, 33, a few grey hairs on my head, starting to be a bit more aware of my age, feeling a little bit older. There's nothing that makes you feel better than when I go pick him up from school. I am a young dad for that age group. I'm still a young dad. So yeah, it's good for my ego as well. The only things that can sometimes be challenging with Freddie is it took—it was like the elephant in the room for ages, me talking about my life and specifically the fame, specifically those kind of things. Because I think to a kid, they just see it in the pure sense of a singer. You know, there's someone who sings and that's that. But I think where it became inevitable that I'd have to have conversations with him, it'd be like say we're out at Target in America and someone stops me for a photo. Now, I'd like to say I'm pretty good with photos. I'll do them eight times out of 10. Whenever I'm with Freddie, there is a 100% no chance. Like that is just not happening. I don't get enough time with him as it is, always balancing my time between tour and going to see Freddie in the UK. So it's just a flat no every single time.

And after the second or third time that had happened, it played on my mind. I put him to bed that night and I was reliving it and I was thinking, he's gonna think I'm a dick. I know I was. Because it's really important that I pushed kindness on him and respect and seeing the good in people and all of that. And all of a sudden I was doing this thing that was really contrary to what I was kind of trying to teach. So I did have to have a conversation with him about it. But again, you're trying to explain algebra. As I said before, when I'm not at work, I would be more than happy to—like, nobody to ever recognize me when I'm not at work. When I'm at work, I'll need it for the promo, give me a bit of that. But when I'm not at work, I could go out of my way to just never have any of that. Hood up, no one knows. So when I'm picking up Freddie from school, I am certainly not some guy used to be in this band and this singer. Not at all. I am there like everyone else, as a father or as a mother.

Last day of term, go to pick him up. I go into his class and I could just hear what sounded like karaoke. And I'm thinking, of all fucking days for me to go pick him up, they're doing karaoke today. And she had absolutely no problem asking me in front of everyone if I wanted to come to the front and do one of the songs. Now, I'm there as a parent. And what's really tough is in front of Freddie and all his friends, I have to politely decline. Now, I don't really like how that's going to make Freddie feel. Those kind of situations are really, really tough. Now, some people may well just grab the mic and take the stage, but I—those are moments like that that I think he's not going to truly understand until he gets a little bit older. He's been to a couple of gigs and that definitely added some context to it all.

Steven Bartlett: He came and saw you in California, didn't he?

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: When he performed out.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, that was amazing, man. It was so amazing.

[AD BREAK]

Steven Bartlett: I guess we should talk about the music.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah.

Steven Bartlett: Which I'm very excited to talk about. So you've been working on this album. And I think what's the important context we've had is I'm curious to know how much everything we've talked about today and the season of life that you've arrived at at 33—you're now in love as well. Your girlfriend is set up there. From all the people I spoke to, you're very smitten. I think your friend from back home described you as being whipped.

Louis Tomlinson: Was that Nizam?

Steven Bartlett: Yeah, yeah. Sounds like him.

Louis Tomlinson: That's funny.

Steven Bartlett: And you went Instagram official?

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, yeah. I saw that post. New territory for me, all that. Yeah, I'm learning on the job.

Steven Bartlett: How does that all weave into the music and how is the music different this time around? Like, what are you thinking going into the studio?

Louis Tomlinson: All of those things are so relevant. They are—personal life and how happy you are and fulfilled and content. All those things, of course, play into the record, definitely. I think because of a lot of the conversation we've just had, there's been a certain kind of weight to the music before now. Like I said, I wrote that song about my mum called "Two of Us." And there's just a certain—I could imagine listening to my first record, I'd be pretty exhausted after listening to it emotionally. It's like, fucking hell, just put in a couple of nice, happy, fun songs. But it wasn't true to me at that time. So I think now I feel in a comfortable place to be positive and happy and confident. One thing I was thinking about with this record is my intention is just to maybe feel good. And that's a really cliche and obvious thing to say, but I'm not sure some of my other music did that. It made you feel—it was honest, it was painful at times, but you didn't feel that good. So I think now I've got this almost like a new sense of life, a new sense of happiness and purpose and fulfillment. All those things.

But also, it's something—the older I get, the more hippie I can get on these kind of ideas. If I use an analogy, on the last two records I had a very small palette of paint of the colors I was choosing from, and a lot of them were kind of darker colors. Whereas on this record, it feels like the palette is a lot deeper. There is a lot more to say, but there's a lot more color on there as well.

Steven Bartlett: That must feel good to make that record.

Louis Tomlinson: That makes me feel really good because you can't fake shit like that. Or at least I can't, anyway.

Steven Bartlett: And how much does love come into all of this?

Louis Tomlinson: As I said, I'm deeply, deeply romantic person. It's also easy to be romantic when you are creative. Those two things are tight. But I think for me, I really struggle to write in a fictional sense. I really, really struggle. So for me, I have to have been living it. I have to have it be literal. It has to be real to me. So if I wasn't feeling so good right now, if I wasn't feeling so in love, the record probably would have a slightly different feel to it. Just because things like that are in everything that we do, I would say.

Steven Bartlett: And what is success for you this time around?

Steven Bartlett: Like, we talked about the comparison and this and that and all these other yardsticks we can use. I'll tell you what success is. Success for me is actually successfully computing what the new idea of success is. So I know what my old idea is, but true success for me, and I'm not there yet, is getting to the point where I don't just say this is my new version of success. I mean it implicitly. And what's really difficult is the music industry is an industry that is A, a numbers game, and B, competitive. Now, you can pretend to have this different version of success and you can get there in the end. But the point being that there are a million different tools in place to pull you to the other side.

Louis Tomlinson: Yeah, it genuinely shouldn't matter where my album charts, let's just say in the UK for example, where my album charts in the UK. It shouldn't really matter that much to me, but it does. I've not quite got there yet. And I think the irony is, I just started to get there on the last record, and the last record obviously—high class problem, I get that—went to number one. And then I'm like, obviously I want it again now. So I started to have the answer for what the new thing of success looks like, until I succeeded. I superseded my own idea of success and then I'm like, oh well then the barriers just changed. And then you're basically just playing the same game you were before.

Steven Bartlett: Where are you in your journey of happiness? Like, if you had to plot your life on a timeline of happiness.

Louis Tomlinson: I like that because I've never really thought about that, thought about it like this. It makes me feel good. It feels like I'm on the home straight.

Steven Bartlett: Okay, nice.

Louis Tomlinson: Beautiful. I feel like, truthfully, obviously not what I would have told my sisters back in the day or my family or anything like that, but it was more of a concept. The idea of me getting over this and being truly happy for a long time, it was like a concept as opposed to any kind of form of reality. It was like, oh well, I'm sure logically that makes sense in my head, but will I ever get that? I don't know. I now feel worthy for the success that I've earned. And for a long time, I just didn't know if I'd ever get there. I would say this record, this album, is the album that I always deserved to make. It's just I had to be brave enough to say, yes, I'm an artist, yes, I'm a recording artist, and I'm a touring artist, and I'm a songwriter, and all these things that sometimes just felt a little bit cringe to say out loud, weirdly. I think part of the imposter syndrome maybe. But the picture that was forever quite blurry looks a little bit more sharp now.

Steven Bartlett: And I mean, the fans are waiting. I mean, I saw the tweet you did the other day where you talked about the music and how confident you are and how you're feeling about it. And the response underneath that post was just insane. Absolutely insane. The energy is there, and people are extremely excited. You have an incredible fan base.

Louis Tomlinson: Honestly, I couldn't—I can never talk about this enough. Anyone listening to this now that doesn't know me or my fans would just think that this is just another artist speaking another cliche about his fans. I'm telling you, this is what I call a codependency. They do so much for me, and I do, hopefully, stuff for them when I do the gigs and stuff. But when I feel the energy on stage, this is not a "let me show you all what I can do." This is a "look what we've done together." And I really, really feel that. The size of the venues that I'll be playing on this next tour, these are things I never considered for myself and only made possible from the fan base being really, really loyal, but also really patient. Really patient for me to just kind of work all these things out on the fly while they keep buying the record.

Steven Bartlett: The other thing that really surprised me that a lot of people didn't know about is that you are also a pretty prolific entrepreneur in your own right. You've founded a music festival called the Away From Home Festival, which was originally in London but has expanded internationally around Spain, Italy, Mexico. You've got your clothing brand as well, 28. I saw 28 tattooed on your arm there, I believe, which is a streetwear brand. And that's done tremendously well. The brand has sold four sold out drops worldwide and hosted some incredible events.

Louis Tomlinson: Well, I'm very excited. I'm very, very excited about your album. Very, very excited.

Steven Bartlett: I guess, do you have a name for your fan base yet? Everyone seems to have a name for their fans.

Louis Tomlinson: You know what, that's so funny because they're like, the Tomlinson... I don't know what it is. There must be though. I think they know. They call themselves the Louis.

Steven Bartlett: The Louis. Okay, so I'm a Louis. So there we go. It just rolls off the tongue.

[Discussion continues]

Steven Bartlett: We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you, it's been a paragraph, but I'm going to give it my best shot. "If you are truly prioritizing the most important things in your life"—brackets, e.g. family—"and we only have limited time and effort to give, if you are a high achiever and performer, have you prioritized the most important thing?"

Louis Tomlinson: No. No, I haven't. I haven't. But I would—that's a really tough one to answer. It requires some true, true honesty. Those things that really, really matter. For a start, I spent a lot of my later teen years and early adult life in One Direction. So I wasn't really in the headspace for the ball to have dropped for how important certain things are. When you're younger, you're super literal, right? Like, if I drink this alcohol and get really drunk and I feel good, then that's good, right? Then you get a bit older and you realize, oh, maybe it's not so good. So any of those kind of things. I suppose now I understand how important looking out for yourself is and mental health, but also I've always been a family guy, but I mean actually deeply cherishing those moments as well. So I definitely could have done that more as a young lad. But I think that's probably the case of a lot of young people, that they probably reflect and think, well, I should have done that more as a young person. But the truth is, the ball hasn't really dropped yet. You don't realize how important all those little intricacies are. Because also when you're young, everything's so new. So you just, the allure is so much sexier on the other side. Oh, look, there's a new thing here, new thing here, new thing here. Whereas I think it takes a bit of age and experience to look at those things and go, oh, actually, maybe I haven't been spending my time correctly.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah. I mean, you said it perfectly. And it really held the mirror up to me, to be honest, because I think you said you haven't perfectly prioritized the most important things, but you're certainly prioritizing them more than most people. Because I hear about how much effort you put into making sure you spend time with Freddie, and your sister described you as always being family-centric. And that's a really, really beautiful thing. Louis, thank you so much. I can't be more excited to listen to the album with all the context that we've described, and also the understanding of where you've arrived at in your life now, and how your perspective has developed, and all that lived experience has poured into a beautifully uplifting, wonderful sound. So thank you so much for the honor and the privilege of being able to have this conversation with you. And just for being a really, on and off camera, just a really, really sound guy.

Louis Tomlinson: Oh, nice one, man. I appreciate that. No, I really enjoyed it, man. It flew by, though. We've been talking for some time.

Steven Bartlett: Yeah, it's good, man. Thank you so much.

[End of interview]

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