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cantcompetewhereudontcompare · 1 month ago

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A complete deconstruction: Louis Tomlinson is a terrible songwriter. Part II

In part one, I debunked this assertion that Louis' songwriting was "crucial" for 1D. That post, I know, was probably quite boring and full of statistics, but I think it was important to be able to go to the fun part now.

Now we get to prove that he's not a good songwriter in the slightest.

POINT 1. He can't play instruments

Louis Tomlinson has been in the music industry since 2010. He was in a band when he was a teenager and he auditioned for the X Factor twice before he got in (2008 and 2009).

Despite all of that, and the millions he's racked in and rubbing elbows with incredible musicians, he still cannot play an instrument proficiently.

I stopped paying attention to him when the band broke up, but I've actually been asking around and digging to see if I was wrong about this before sitting down to make this post. Turns out, I'm not.

For instance, he has never played an instrument in one of his albums, and he barely ever does his backing vocals. He doesn't do ANYTHING ELSE either.

These are the personnel credits for his first album. He didn't even play the tambourine in it. In fact, he only did background vocals in 1 song out of 12.

For his second album nobody bothered to transcribe the personnel credit to its Wikipedia page, so I had to manually check song by song on Genius. You can skip this list as it's super long and nobody cares. I'm adding it because I find it super funny that SO many people are involved in his albums and he's, well, not. But his fans will tell you he's the songwriter of the century.

Vocals:

Louis Tomlinson — lead vocals (all tracks)

David Sneddon — backing vocals (12)

George Tizzard — backing vocals (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16)

James Vincent McMorrow — backing vocals (1, 7, 13, 15)

Rick Parkhouse — backing vocals (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16)

Robert Harvey — backing vocals (2)

Stephen Sesso — backing vocals (4)

Theo Hutchcraft — backing vocals (10, 11, 12)

Musicians:

Alex Thomas — drums (10, 11)

Carlo Caduff — drums (8)

Christopher Illingworth — piano (11)

Dan Crean — percussion (3, 4), drums (3, 4)

Fred Ball — percussion (1, 7, 13, 15), keyboards (1, 7, 13, 15)

George Tizzard — piano (2, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16), acoustic guitar (2, 5, 6, 9, 14, 16), keyboards (5, 6, 16)

James Birt — drums (2, 5, 6, 9, 14)

James Vincent McMorrow — guitar (1, 7, 13, 15), drums (1, 7, 13, 15), percussion (1, 7, 13, 15), keyboards (1, 7, 13, 15)

J Moon — bass (1, 13, 15), guitar (1, 13, 15), percussion (1, 13, 15), keyboards (1, 13, 15)

Joe Cross — guitar (10, 11, 12), bass (10, 11, 12)

John Foyle — synths (1, 7, 13, 15), bass (1, 13, 15), guitar (1, 7, 13, 15), drums (1, 7, 13, 15), percussion (1, 7, 13, 15), keyboards (1, 7, 13, 15), piano (15)

Liz Hanks — cello (10)

Mike Crossey — keyboards (3), bass (3, 4)

Nicolas Rebscher — guitar (8), keyboards (8), bass (8)

Paul Walsham — drums (12)

Rick Parkhouse — electric guitar (2, 5, 6, 9, 16), bass (5, 6), bass guitar (16)

Robert Harvey — electric guitar (2)

Stephen Murtagh — bass (9)

Stephen Sesso — acoustic guitar (3, 4), electric guitar (3, 4)

Tobie Tripp — strings (6)

END OF BORING BLOCK OF TEXT

Anyway, this time around he didn't even do backing vocals on 1 track. I'm not saying he should play the cello or the synth, or even bass. I'm not saying he should do every instrument like an absolute prodigy, but the LEAST a MUSICIAN can do if they're this incredible of a songwriter is participate in any capacity aside from lead vocals. At least on one track. One instrument. The fucking tambourine. SOMETHING.

I checked his other singles (the ones that aren't on either of his albums), and aside from (shared) backing vocals on Miss You, he also doesn't have any sort of credit in any of them. He has 34 recorded tracks total (12 in his first album, 16 + 2 bonus tracks in his second one, and 4 standalone singles) and aside from the lead vocals (duh) he only does backing vocals IN TWO. And NOTHING ELSE.

For comparison's sake, in his debut album Niall plays guitar in 9 out of 13 tracks, in his second album he does background vocals in 9 out of 16 tracks, plays guitar in 6 out of 16, and acoustic guitar in two additional ones, and in his third album he does background vocals in 9 out of 10 tracks, and plays harmonica and piano in track 6.

In his debut album, Harry does background vocals on every track, plays guitar on track 4, and the omnichord in tracks 1 and 4. In his second album he does background vocals on all tracks except 11, plays the dulcimer on track 10, and acoustic guitar on track 12. In his third album he does background vocals on all tracks, plays the glockenspiel on track 10, keyboards on track 11, and the tubular bells on track 4.

And Niall and Harry are not exceptional, top notch, creme de la creme songwriters. I'm comparing Louis to them because they were his peers, have the same background, and had the same opportunities to learn their craft for the same amount of time.

I could also compare him to Shawn Mendes, who plays guitar and keyboard in his own albums. Or even to someone like Olivia Rodrigo, who played the piano in her debut album. Billie Eilish played multiple instruments in her latest album. Taylor Swift has become quite lazy, but she used to play multiple instruments in her albums. Adele plays instruments on her albums as well. So does Lady Gaga. Someone like The Weeknd plays multiple instruments in his albums.

Not every popstar plays instruments, but those who don't 1. aren't regarded as great songwriters and/or 2. do other things, such as producing or stacking vocals. Like, Ariana Grande isn't a huge instrumentalist, but she does her own vocal engineering, for instance.

If he at least played a single instrument live, we could look past this, but he's been in the industry professionally for close to fourteen years and he has never, not once, performed a song while playing an instrument.

He toured the fucking world TWICE as a solo artist and never picked up a guitar for a single song.

The most we've seen of him with instruments is idly stroking a guitar for a couple of seconds twice that I can find (here and here) and then he once, in 2012, played 15 seconds of a song by The Fray on a keyboard.

He has posed with guitars a bunch

And he has footage of himself looking forlornly into the horizon as he "plays" guitar, but that footage is muted while he talks about himself very seriously on top of it.

He also has an entire music video where he acts like he's playing piano on top of someone else playing it (Duck Blackwell), which would be all fine and good if he had actually ever even hinted at being good enough to play an entire song on the piano. Both Taylor Swift and Harry, for instance, have similar music videos (in Cardigan Aaron Dessner is playing piano, in Falling, Kid Harpoon is playing). But we know that Taylor and Harry both can actually play (and have both played piano or keyboard in their own albums as well, just other songs).

It's a Thing that he doesn't play instruments nor does melodies. His often writing team Liam, is on the record saying that he would do melodies while Louis did the lyrics while they were in 1D.

He said it first in 2017 in a fan Q&A:

Fan: When you were in One Direction, you and Louis were a really strong writing team. As you've transitioned into solo stuff, have you felt really strongly about working on music vs lyrics more? Liam: To be honest with you, I've never been much of a lyrics man. I kind of bungle along with the lyrics. I'll be honest with you, sometimes lyrics just feel like homework. So when I'm sitting down to write I'm more of a melodies man. I like to just escape a little bit. There's a lot of pictures of me asleep in the studio, it looks like. But I'm not asleep. That's just where I go to when I'm trying to think about what's gonna come next in the song (...). I'm kind of more of a melodies person, I'd say. Louis was always more for the lyrics

Then he said it again in 2023 in an interview with a Chilean media outlet (note how Louis doesn't even do the lyrics alone haha):

"Whenever I was in the studio with Louis, I'd kind of do the melodies and then Louis would kind of do the lyrics with Jamie (Scott), and I'd kind of zone out whenever there were words on the page."

Louis said it as well in an interview with Radio DeeJay in 2022.

"Personally, for me, it's always been easier to write lyrics than melody and music, but I think it's like, each to their own in that."

He also said this in 2022:

“Sometimes, it’ll depend on who you’re working with, sometimes you kinda lean on whatever their side is. For me, 9 times out of 10, I come into the room with minimum a concept, or a lyric, or a title or something I want to talk about. And again, my strength lies in lyric, I’m trying to get better…So we’ll have a concept, and then probably some, one of the lads I’m working with will pick out a guitar line, we’ll find a melody about that and try and match the title we started with to what were writing.”

I think we can thoroughly confirm that Louis is not proficient with instruments. Add to that that he even confirms himself (two years ago, so 12 years into his career), that he has an easier time writing lyrics than melodies and music and that he's not really that good at writing melodies. There's nothing wrong with it, everyone has their own strengths, but it's the combination of things that makes it sting.

He has never played an instrument in public, he has never played an instrument in one of his albums, he only did background vocals for 2 out of 34 songs, and he AND Liam both say his strength isn't melodies. He's even outright admitting that his co-writers often come up with his melodies.

Songs aren't just lyrics. The melody of a song is just as important (some would argue, more important). If he himself admits that he has issues with melodies and music, then you can't just decide that it doesn't matter and he's "an incredible songwriter" anyway. He's simply not. If you like his music, then what you like are the co-writers he chooses to work with.

POINT 2. He's not that involved in his own songwriting process

I'm not saying that he's not involved at all or that he never writes anything, but he's not the driving force behind it. He's not the main songwriter, the one who commands the room, the one who comes up with everything.

How do we know this? It's pretty simple.

For one, the amount of collaborators he has.

Walls had 34 songwriters in 12 tracks. THIRTY-FOUR. Huge block of text incoming (used for impact):

Sean Douglas

Jamie Harman

Stuart Chrichton

Cole Citrenbaum

James Newman

Stephen Wrabel

Bryn Christopher

Andrew Jackson

Duck Blackwell

Levi Lennox

Julian Bunetta

John Ryan

Amish Patel

Jim Lavigne

Danny Majic

John Mitchell

Justin Franks

Noel Gallagher

Dave Gibson

Jacob Manson

Iain James

Wayne Hector

Steve Robson

Matthew Burns

Jason Reeves

Ali Tamposi

Andrew Watt

Ed Drewett

Yei Gonzalez

Jamie Scott

Johan Carlsson

Joe Janiak

Valentina

Louis, obviously

Of course, not every songwriter was on every track, but you can't possibly have a vision if you're working with this many people for a single project. There was only one sample (Noel Gallagher on Walls), so it's not even a Beyoncé case, where she had many songwriters but it was because she was sampling a bunch of songs.

This many people on a single, very short, project simply means that there wasn't a unified vision and a unified leader. How can you possibly make an album sound cohesive if it was written by two entire soccer teams and their benches?

Faith In The Future was much more concise in terms of its collaborators with fourteen (seventeen if we count producers), which is not a small number, but it's more standard for a pop album. So props to him for narrowing it down, I suppose.

The problem here, and with Walls and all his other singles, is that there are a lot of cooks on every song and Louis doesn't seem to be the primary songwriter in any of them.

I don't want to be hypocritical, so first I'll address that Harry's debut album also had a lot of writers in each song, but there was a caveat there, Harry's first album was written in a retreat in Jamaica. All the songs had the same names because he just gave blanket credit to everyone present.

The main producer of that album was Jeff Bhasker, so he got writing credit on every song. Then Tyler Johnson was basically an assistant to Jeff, and he also got credit. Ryan Nasci and Alex Salibian were engineers who were helping with the mixing, and they also got writing credit on every song. With two exceptions, 1. Two Ghosts, which Harry had written when he was in 1D in 2014/2015. 2. Sweet Creature, which he wrote alone with Kid Harpoon. The rest of the 8 tracks on HS1 were written by the same six songwriters. The total number of songwriters + producers for HS1 is 9, including 2 former 1D songwriters who got credit for Two Ghosts.

Another caveat here, is that if you read my last post, you know we can tell the % of songwriting of each collaborator. Harry was the driving force behind every single HS1 song, Jeff, Tyler, and Mitch got minority credit, while Alex and Ryan got a small percentage.

For instance, with Sign of the Times (the lead single and most successful song of that album)

Ryan Nasci + Alex Salibian = 9.5% Mitch Rowland + Tyler Johnson + Jeff Bhasker = 40.51% Harry Styles = 50%

Harry has primary credit on every single song on that album, FYI.

For Fine Line, the team was tighter. There are still 9 names total but the average number of co-writers goes down in half to 3.6 per song, because the core group is smaller (Harry, Tyler, Kid, and Mitch) and the add-ons are just there in one or two tracks. Harry also has primary credit on almost every single song (except Lights Up, where he has 40% credit and Tyler Johnson has 45%).

In some songs, such as She, he has 80% credit and the other 3 split the remaining 20%. This screenshot is old, Kid Harpoon has since signed to GMR so we can no longer split his and Harry's %, but that happened after the release of Fine Line, and luckily I'd saved these.

For his third album, the team is now 7 (with Harry, Kid, and Tyler doing the bulk of the work), and the average songwriters per track is 3.07. Sadly, since Kid signed to GMR I can't get a breakdown of the % anymore.

One day I'll make a post about this because I think it's so telling, in terms of Harry as a musician, but I just wanted to get this out of the way. I HATE hypocrisy, and I'm not going to bash Louis for something if the person I support is doing the same. He's not. And I needed to show that.

So, for his first album, Louis had the 34 songwriters I mentioned above + 5 extra producers. Each song had an average of 4.25 songwriters.

For his second album, Louis had 14 songwriters + 3 extra producers. Each song had an average of 4 songwriters.

The average in and of itself isn't that bad. It's pretty standard for pop musicians. The thing is that the standard pop musician isn't constantly gloating about his songwriting prowess and doesn't have a fanbase that constantly boasts either.

If Louis had primary credit in his songs, even if he had a lot of collaborators, I couldn't really fault him for it. Alas, he does not.

As I said in the other post, Louis' PRO is PRS, which is British. Foreign PROs have to collect through an American one, usually ASCAP or BMI. It seems like Louis collects through BMI. Why? Well, because

In songs where all the other songwriters are with BMI, BMI controls 100%, meaning, also Louis' part. We can't say what % each of them wrote, but we can infer that this means Louis is collecting royalties through BMI.

Anyway, there's nothing really all that interesting about the % of his writing credits. All songs have an equal distribution among all participants, except some notable ones (and I'll get to that in a sec). The fact that everyone gets the same % of credit on every song is... well, telling. It's impossible for every single collaborator to have contributed the same amount to every single song in every single case. That's just not what happens when you have a group of 34 or 14 people writing an album.

Louis made a point, particularly with his second album, of working with artists as opposed to professional songwriters:

“Through my own experience, sometimes, with a ‘professional’ songwriter (...) they write hits for a living, that’s their livelihood. So to ask them to go in the room and want to write an album track, sometimes those are difficult things to ask for. ‘Cos the back of their mind they’re thinking 'but if we shape this like a single, who knows?’ and all of a sudden, again you’re changing the song. Whereas with artists, they completely understand this is a 16 track album, track 11 is as important as track 1.”

What he calls a "professional songwriter" takes this job as a 9 to 5. That person will split % evenly and call it a day, unless there's some very specific reason to get more or less credit. But Louis was writing as a collaborative effort with a group of people who he calls artists. This wasn't a job for them, this was art.

They didn't all contribute the same, so why should they all get the same %?

It does save me time, because 99% of the songs look like this:

If there's one songwriter from ASCAP among 4 songwriters, and he gets 25% and the other three divide the remaining 75%. Pretty straightforward, each get 25%. You're free to look it up yourself.

The notable exceptions are Only The Brave

We know Louis is with BMI, and BMI only controls 5% of the song. So the other two songwriters split 95% of the writing credit (this isn't surprising because it's known that Louis hadn't actually written in this song. Seems like they threw him in a 5% for some reason).

And Just Hold On

Steve Aoki has 25% and the other 75% is divided among four people (we don't know how, though, but it suggests that Louis has slightly less than Steve).

Anyway, I'm bringing this up because I'm trying to be as fair as possible. You can be very charitable and believe that Louis was the driving force behind every song and he just generously gave away equal writing credit for people who didn't do as much as him. But that's simply not true. He got equal credit when he didn't contribute to those songs equally.

You can actually look up what the people involved have said, and if you're honest with yourself, you will conclude that Louis was not the driving force behind his own music.

Louis said this about the process of writing his songs:

“9/10 melody will come first, but before any of that happens we normally talk about a general concept on what we want to get across, what we want it to sound and feel like. Then it kind of just happens naturally, really.”

So they come up with a concept, then go to the melody, then the song comes up from that. Cool.

Now, remember that quote I posted above? About how he has a hard time coming up with melodies and how he leans on whoever he's writing with?

“Sometimes, it’ll depend on who you’re working with, sometimes you kinda lean on whatever their side is. For me, 9 times out of 10, I come into the room with minimum a concept, or a lyric, or a title or something I want to talk about. And again, my strength lies in lyric, I’m trying to get better…So we’ll have a concept, and then probably some, one of the lads I'm working with will pick out a guitar line, we’ll find a melody about that and try and match the title we started with to what were writing.”

He gives them an abstract concept and whoever he's writing with comes up with the melody, and then they go from there. That's not an equally collaborative effort. "Whoever he's working with" is doing the bulk of the work while all he does is say "yes" and "no" and give vague concepts and ideas.

Let me be clear, this isn't bad. Most pop artists work this way. It's FINE. But those artists aren't considered proficient songwriters and are usually belittled for their small contributions, while Louis is out there talking himself up as a songwriter and his fans eat it up and attack his peers.

If you can't write music, or play instruments, if you don't come up with the melodies, and you get help to come up with the lyrics, how exactly are you "a great songwriter"?

The answer is that you're not.

But let's actually see what Louis has to say about his songwriting process. I looked up quotes to see if he has any insight that would point to him being more involved, having some technical (if base leve) knowledge, being knowledgeable about processes or any sort of musical element and I found absolutely nothing. I could be missing it — as I said, I stopped paying attention to him years ago. But I do think I'm a pretty good researcher, and still found nothing.

But since I'm very charitable, I decided to use two long-form sources where he specifically talks about his second album.

The following is a track by track breakdown of his second album he did on Twitter. It's basically just his tweets for every song. If you're already familiar with this you can skip it. I'll discus it in an abridged way anyway.

The Greatest: "[It] was written in London with [co-writers]. It was always written as a tour opener, but also made sense to start the album off with a bang."

Written All Over Your Face: "Love the guitar line that comes in towards the end. Rob Harvey working his magic."

Bigger Than Me: "[It] was really important for me making the record. It gave me the confidence early on in the process. Ambition [sic] chorus vocally but suits a big show and us singing it together."

Lucky Again: "This song started of [sic] with this like hypnotic guitar riff Jay Moon came up with and we built the song around that. Feels like a good driving song."

Face The Music: "Me and Dave Gibson wrote [it] together in LA. One of my favourites on the album! Love that opening lyric. Did so many great sessions with Dave!!"

Chicago: "[It] was written in LA with Dave. Love the lyric and the concept."

All This Time: "I've always loved [it]. Just feel like a feel good tune from the off. James had a great vision for this song."

Out Of My System: "[It] was such a moment in the studio. I was with Nico and Dave was on zoom. I wanted to write something that had a bit of danger to it and had the title. Nico straight away played the riff and we were off."

Headline: "I think [it] was the last song for the album. Red triangle lads smashed the production and the academic for writing it. Made some subtle changes but loved the song as is."

Saturdays: "It felt emotional writing recording and performing this song. There’s something about it. Love the trainers lyric as well! Joe cross absolutely smashed the production, love the way the song grows.

Silver Tongues: "Had such a great few days written with Dave Sneddon, Theo Hutchcraft and Joe Cross. [It] is defo one of my favourite on the album. Love everything about this song!"

She Is Beauty We Are World Class: "Written in the same few days as the last two songs. Dave turned up with this picture on his phone of the title ‘She is beauty we are world class’ it was taken in the toilet mirror of a train. Felt like a weird place for such a poetic sentiment"

Common People: "[It] is about Doncaster having a place on my album. Such a big part of who I am. Love the simplicity of the song and the lyric.

Holding On To Heartache: "[This] is a song I’ve always loved. I’m glad I found a place for it on the deluxe. The middle 8 takes it to another gear as well! That’s going to be a fucker to sing night after night haha!"

That's The Way Love Goes: "Also one of my favourites. Always loved dry your eyes by the streets and wanted to write a similar concept. Again love the strings at the end!"

Overall, he had one sort of technical comment to make, about Holding on To Heartache. "Middle 8" is when a song switches up/adds new elements. He's saying that the song had a switch-up and it took it to the next level.

The rest of "songwriting notes" are:

I wrote [song] with [name of collaborator]

We wrote [song] while [activity] in [place]

[Collaborator] had a great idea and we built on that.

I love [part or sound of the song]!

The only commentary on what he wanted from sound is about That's The Way Love Goes. He liked a song by a band and he wanted to recreate it. Of course, he doesn't say what he liked about that song or that band and what he wanted to recreate. Is it the drums? The ambiance? The backing vocals? The reverb? Does he even know?

He never talks about coming up with ideas himself — it's always one of his collaborators coming up with something and then building up on that.

He also never mentions specific instruments or sounds that he likes. Reading these, I definitely he believe he was there when the songs were written. I believe he told his collaborators, in very vague terms, what he wanted the songs to sound like, and I believe he told them what he wanted the songs to be about. But so far, I have no reason to believe he had any of the knowledge necessary or took any of the necessary steps to achieve those sounds.

Of course, this could be just off the cuff commentary and not serious, so I can't take this as the only contributions and opinions he has on his album, can I?

Give me credit for how charitable I am... Let's give him one more chance. This time, going by his track by track video. He's going to discuss every single song and the album as a whole in detail. It's a one-on-one interview posted directly on his YouTube channel.

He starts off discussing how different his sound is from his last album and worrying about alienating fans, but he doesn't describe what's different or why. Why would it alienate fans? I don't understand why he's so vague. It just sounds like he has no idea what he's talking about.

About The Greatest:

"I think straight away, from the off, Fred Ball did a really — goes way beyond my musical comprehension — but really really clever kind of opener, really slaps you round the face."

That's all the songwriting commentary we get about this song. His collaborator did something he didn't really understand but it was sick. He's not starting off very promising...

About Written All Over Your Face:

“That’s a song where straight away I can picture Rob Harvey, he’s a brilliant lyricist but also brilliant with melody as well. He sang out that melody and from the off, once we had that lead part — I don’t want to say the song wrote itself, but it kind of really set the tone for the kind of style that we wanted to do.”

Someone else came up with the melody and the song "wrote itself". Well, he didn't want to say that it wrote itself, but he also didn't say what it did do, so I'm going to believe that it did write itself. It certainly doesn't sound like Louis wrote it.

About Bigger Than Me: Nothing. He just talks about what the song is about. No insight on its composition.

About Lucky Again: He repeats what he said on Twitter about the hypnotic melody someone else came up with setting the tone for the song. It's completely normal for an artist to bounce ideas off collaborators, but it's slightly worrying that every single time it's someone else's idea that he builds on. Are none of this ideas his own?

He then talks about post-production of the album, and I said to myself, "Oh, he's finally gonna give us some insight!" Nope.

He just said that it was hard because he was on tour, and he'd say yes to something and then he'd regret it, but being on tour affected the way he made decisions because he was being influenced by the shows.

And this actually grinds my fucking gears. What did he say yes to and why did he regret it? What part of the shows influenced the songs and how?

This man has now been a part of releasing SEVEN profesional studio albums. And he can't name a single specific production note he gave?

"I wanted this instrument here because of this reason." Or "because of the live shows, I realized I preferred a crescendo of the melody." Or even "I asked the background vocals to be this way because of this reason." LITERALLY ANYTHING. He can't articulate a single music-related thought. It's actually impressive (derogatory).

He expands on how he thinks he writes better in the UK (?????) and when he starts his writing sessions midday instead of early in the morning (????????) because he doesn't want it to feel like work (IT IS WORK!). None of this is technical songwriting stuff. Next he's gonna describe his BREAKFAST on songwriting days. HOW IS THIS RELEVANT TO A TRACK BY TRACK ANALYSIS??

These anecdotal details are great when surrounded with technical commentary. They're shallow and ridiculous when surrounded by literal empty space.

He waxes poetic about how cool the people he worked with are (which is great!) but he doesn't really get technical about why he likes working with them other than "attention to detail" and "really fucking cool." At this point it feels like he's writing an essay and he's trying to run the words.

He mentions being inspired by Arctic Monkeys... again.

And The Snuts (one of his openers on tour). He mentions nothing specific about the sound of either of these bands, because that'd probably kill him on the spot. The only specificity we get is that he grew up close to Sheffield, where AM are from. In case you forgot he's a Northern Lad From The North.

"And it wasn’t until I heard that DMA’s record and how Stuart Price had produced it and of course they’re using some of these modern, trendy, radio, whatever word you wanna use to describe it sounds. They do it in a really authentic way, it’s not in there just because it’s trendy, it’s in there because it serves the song."

"Modern, trendy, radio, whatever word you wanna use to describe it." I don't wanna use any words, Louis, you're the one nit!! Describe it?? have NO IDEA what he's even saying here. This was in 2022, what was dancey, modern, trendy, and radio in 2022? As it Was?? WHAT IS HE TALKING ABOUT??

I actually went and played some DMA's to try to understand what he's saying. Their most streamed song is a chill-out version of Believe (the Cher song), the only dancey, trendy, modern thing about that song is the inspiration. it's literally chillout pop. The second most streamed song sounds like old Coldplay + bossa n stone. There is nothing modern, dancey (does he mean EDM?) or trendy about any of this. I'm losing my mind. This man is musically illiterate.

About Face The Music:

"I am not the most sophisticated musical listener, I kinda like songs like this that have got that wall of sound that will give you that energy. Again, it’s easy to kind of imagine in the live context."

This is actually hilarious, because Louis is so musically illiterate, that he just used a real concept (Wall of Sound) to describe something that doesn't apply in the slightest. "Wall of Sound" is a concept by Phil Spector (who, incidentally, is a convinced murderer). It consists on duplicating or triplicating a certain sound and making it build up on itself to the point where the sounds are indistinguishable from each other. For instance, you play the piano, then you replicate that on a keyboard, then you replicate that on a synth, and you mix them together in such a way that you can't tell each instrument from the other, you just hear the result.

The most famous example of a Wall of Sound song is God Only Knows by the Beach Boys. It can be applied to any genre and sound, but because of the nature of how you mix it, it tends to have an almost orchestral sound and it works well in very grandiose songs that sound kind of ethereal. Another song that uses Wall Of Sound is Halo by Beyoncé or Set Fire To The Rain by Adele.

Face The Music does NOT do this in the slightest. You can very clearly hear each individual instrument (derogatory). Louis is using the very real and tangible musical concept of Wall Of Sound to describe this because the song is loud. He probably heard of the concept in passing and took the meaning of it in its face, a literal wall of sound, as in, loud (and this song isn't even that loud — he's a pussy).

This is why I say this man isn't a great songwriter. He's been in the industry for FOURTEEN YEARS. Can you imagine being a professional songwriter and going to the studio with someone who can't articulate a singular musical thought? And he's worth millions while you're struggling to pay rent?

He used this expression wrongly twice so far, btw. (After the interviewer says it's a festival song) "Yeah, yeah definitely but you still kind of got that sing along chorus but dressed up with enough of that wall of sound behind it."

About Chicago:

"Sometimes what I find challenging, is I can see the picture or I can hear the song or I can see the concerts in my head and sometimes it’s quite hard to articulate that cause you’ve got such a clear vision in your head and you just want someone else to be able to read your mind, go ‘Yeah that’s what Im talking about!"

You know what you could do to help you with this Louis? Study music theory. Read a book. Watch a documentary. Listen to literally any music. He can't articulate it because he knows nothing about music and can't play any instruments. I believe wholeheartedly that he has a vision for his albums. It's not that hard to conceptualize a sound in your head, if you're able to hear and have lived in this world for a couple of decades. But it's very, very hard to translate that into words if you don't know the first thing about music theory.

Other than this, he just discusses being vulnerable in his lyrics in Chicago. Cool, not really technically about songwriting, but whatever.

About All This Time:

"I think Fred did a brilliant job on this. And again this is something where I know what I like, but in terms of a production, it wasn’t as if I had loads of notes to give on this. It’s a little bit more me taking a risk, doing something slightly dancier."

I hadn't listened to this man's album, and good lord I wish I hadn't taken research for this so seriously. This has got to be one of the worst songs I've ever heard. But I was curious as to what he meant with "dancier." And I mean, I guessssss??? I don't think this song has any idea what it's supposed to be.

Notice how he said he didn't have any notes to give? He just let the man do his thing? He shouldn't have. Perhaps notes would have killed it and ended its misery.

About Out Of My System:

"That was a song, again, where we started out with a guitar riff. I went into, I want to say, definitely Arctic Monkeys, maybe Teddy Picker, maybe Dancing Shoes, and I was listening to it on the way to that writing session. I went in and I said to the lads, Nico and Dave ‘I want to write something as punk as I can get away with’ and that’s when Nico straight away came up with that really kind of punchy riff. And that riff kind of sums up the song, really, that kind of danger and that kind of energy."

I don't even know where to start.

Once again, he doesn't come up with a melody, he doesn't come up with a song. He goes to the studio, tells other (more talented) people "I want a song that sounds like this", the other (more talented) people come up with a riff, and that's how he builds the song. THIS IS YOUR GREAT SONGWRITER??? He's using his co-writers as ChatGPT in human form are you fucking kidding me?

The AUDACITY to compare Teddy Picker or Dancing Shoes to whatever it is he's trying to do actually offends me. Teddy Picker and Dancing Shoes are two technically flawless songs that sound tight and fresh 20 years later.

If you've never listened to Teddy Picker, I implore you to press play here.

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Now go and listen to Out Of My System. Don't get me wrong, OOM isn't nearly as criminally offensive as All This Time. The musicians playing it (not Louis) are competent enough and it doesn't sound bad. It also doesn't sound good. It's a 6/10 song. It sounds dated, like a 2000s Christian rock band doing a Limp Bizkit but if the lead singer had to leave and they let the son of the pastor take over for shits and giggles.

He's also SO BASIC. I love myself some Arctic Monkeys, but does he not know any other bands? If at least he picked songs that weren't incredibly cliché I could overlook his fascination with the most obvious choice he could reach for over and over. But no, he chooses a huge single and a cult classic. If anything, I think Out Of My System is more similar to Perhaps Vampires Is A Bit Strong But... (still kind of insulting to a quality song, but more appropriate). But I doubt Louis has ever listened to any song of theirs below 100M streams on Spotify. I already covered that this whole indie rock thing is all a front and he's a Top40 poppy boy at heart here.

About this song, he actually does give a morsel of technical commentary, saying he recorded the vocals right after a show to get a rougher edge. I mean, I don't think he needed to wait until after a show to get a rougher edge to his vocals. They're rough 24/7, but anyway. The one insight on something technical and it's about the one thing he obviously knows about, since the lead vocals are his one and only job in his albums.

Then he talks about touring, and about one of the million indie garage rock bands with multiple white boys that all sound the same that he has in his "festival." And then about his "festival." Then for some reason he gets on to talk about his bucket list and skydiving. And I'm here wondering WHEN IS HE GONNA START TALKING ABOUT SONGWRITING?

About Headline:

"Um, yeah this was the last song that we got on this record and I’m not gonna lie, it was like 85% finished when I heard it. Well, it was finished, um and there was just a few things across the lyric that were good, that were great but they just didn’t feel true to me so we kind of remolded it, reshaped it so it felt kind of relevant to this record."

So the song was done when he got it and he just touched a couple of lyrics. Color me surprised. His voice sounds like nails in a chalkboard on it. Worse than I've ever heard it. I can't believe he put this out to the world.

He says it kinda sounds like Blossom when they do their 80s sound. I mean, he's not completely off. I would say that the song sounds like a The 1975 or Bleachers reject if Matty Healy/Jack Antonoff had swallowed several sheets of sandpaper. I guess I'll give him props for knowing another indie English rock band aside from Arctic Monkeys and the ones that do his "festival"?

About Saturdays:

He talks endlessly about lyrics and Doncaster and........

Anyway, then he says this:

"Again goes way above my musical comprehension when he mentioned at the time I’m like I don’t really know what you’re on about there but Joe, did Joe Cross do something brilliant with Saturdays and there is little to no bottom end until the drums come in which is about halfway through the song now, once you hear it and listen back you kind of miss it you’re like where is it and then when the drums hit in every single time it just feels like a slap around the face and that was one of those moments for me where just thankful to being for being around these brilliant musicians because that’s not a trick I could pull out your sleeve."

He thinks having the drums come in mid-song is revolutionary. BEYOND HIS MUSICAL COMPREHENSION. Bless his heart. The fact that he admits that this is something that he could never come up with himself simply blows my mind. He was 30 years old when he did this, btw. He sounds like a child who's setting foot in the studio for the first time ever.

He's gonna lose his mind when he finally hears In The Air Tonight for the first time.

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He then adds:

"I have a very, what’s the word? I’m not, you know in terms of when I speak about music there is no musical education there it’s all on feel so I rely on people like Joe to bring that incredible musicality to the production."

Really? I never could've guessed... Maybe you should tell your fans, as they have somehow convinced themselves you're the best songwriter to have graced this earth.

About Silver Tongues:

"Sonically I think it’s really clever because the first time people hear it you kind of get into a false sense of security where it comes in with the piano and it feels really emotional. It feels like you’re gonna go into a ballad and then straight away the production kicks in so that’s something again in the live show I think that’ll be a moment."

He's endlessly fascinated by the most basic musical concepts. It's kind of sad. Starting a song slow and upping the tempo is not "really clever," Louis. It's been done a million times. You literally "wrote" End Of The Day in 2015. Were you asleep the entire time? Huh??

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About She Is Beauty We Are World Class:

He repeats the story he told on Twitter. Then adds this:

"That was that was an interesting moment I think this is where we said, “let’s really try and go all in on the dance-ier sound of things” because I kind of allude to it on like All This Time but like it’s not quite as like trancey as this is. Almost has that kind of DMA’s lift with it with the instrumental that comes in on the post chorus."

I haven't listened to a ton of DMA's music, but the few tracks I did listen sounded nothing like this. It cracks me up that he doesn't have the lingo to describe music genres. We saw it painfully when he kept describing hip hop, rap, and trap as "urban" back in the day, but the fact that he keeps describing electronic music/EDM as "dancey" and "trancey" is super funny. Like, EDM does have the word "dance" in its name, but nobody calls it "dancey", Louis. You sound like an old man.

About Common People:

"I'm from Doncaster, and me friends, and me family, and Doncaster, and I'm just a lad from Doncaster."

About Angels Fly:

The technical commentary is limited to "it has a big chorus." Moving on.

About Holding On To Heartache:

"It's a bit more pop. I think fans will like it." is the extent of his analysis. He's actually incapable of uttering a single technical sentence. It's incredible.

About Lucky Again:

He gives lots of credit to one of his collaborators (Vincent McMorrow), which is nice of him. Once again he cannot articulate what's so good about good ol' Vince. He's just "an absolute genius" and "constantly challenging different ideas." What those ideas are, we won't find out.

He then starts to talk about a concept, loses train of thought mid-sentence, and he says (and I quote) "We’ll just scrap that. I can’t remember what it was… fucking some line." Why wasn't this edited out? I truly cannot even begin to understand.

About That's The Way love Goes:

"Me mates, and Doncaster, and me mates..."

He then again talks about having a Wall Of Sound, and at this point I'm getting extreme second-hand embarrassment because I can totally picture him describing loud songs like that in front of very well educated musicians, who in turn would have to contain their laughter and do their very best not to correct him.

And that's the end of it. I think I've given him enough opportunities to talk about songwriting. He doesn't know the first thing about it.

When I say I want him to talk about technical stuff or about the process. I mean stuff like this:

"'Fine Line' I wrote during a gap in the tour. It was January 2018 and I was at my friend Tom's house, who I work with, and we just started strumming this thing, and we started layering these vocals, and it turned into this 6-minute thing. (...) I wanted it to turn into something else at the end, I wanted like a big crescendo ending. While we were in Bath, Sammy [his engineer] started playing this little thing on the piano, and I tweaked it a little bit, and I was like 'That has to go at the end of Fine Line.'"

Harry for NPR in 2019

I don't need him to discuss this sort of thing as if he was a Juilliard professor. But just... some idea of the technical aspects of it. Like layering the vocals, wanting a crescendo. And HE did it, HE tweaked it, HE got the idea of adding it to Fine Line. It's a collaborative effort, for sure, but he's an integral part of it, because at the end of the day it's HIS song.

"That's just a voice note of my ex-girlfriend talking. I was playing guita and she took a phone call — and she was actually speaking in the key of the song."

Harry for Rolling Stone in 2019

Super simple and short, but it explains an artistic decision (adding Camille's voice at the end of Cherry), and why he made it, and how HE made it, how it was his idea and his decision, and why, musically, sonically, he chose to do it.

"It's a weird one. It started simple, but I wanted to have this big epic outro thing. And it just took shape as this thing where I thought, 'That's just like the music I want to make.' I love strings, I love horns, I love harmonies —so why don't we just put all of that in there."

Harry for Rolling Stone in 2019

More about Fine Line. Concise information about what he wants in music instead of "oh I have it in my head but I can't put it into words."

Harry: One of the songs on my record, She, we got James Gadson who played on all the early Bill Withers stuff. He's like 81. And he came and played on the record. We were like, putting down like a demo drum-thing, and we were like, "Oh, we love the sound of these drums." And they [the engineers] were like, "Oh, he's still alive." So we just got him to come play! Zane: Can I ask you what you got out of that session? When you actually got to experience a player who was inspiring the sound you were searching for, and you got to actually witness the player... Was it the feel...? Cause we can try to recapture all we want, but only one person can play like Gadson, right? Only one. Harry: Yeah. I think it's one of those things that, like. I mean, with all instruments, but with drums, and with live drums, you just can't get the feel from a machine. You can have it so it so it makes your chest drawl, but there's like a groove and a feel and a swing, that someone who's that seasoned, who has just played on anything and everything and is such a master...

Harry for Selects Beats 1, March 2020

DO YOU UNDERSTAND? A songwriter involved in his own music knows at least surface level technical stuff and can off the cuff talk about them in conversation, because he lives them. He's there as they happen. He makes the decisions and he understands what's going on. Even if they aren't a proficient drum player, they still have some level of understanding.

Same interview, talking about doing his own backing vocals:

"I do all the harmonies. I can go pretty high full voice, and then there's like a falsetto bit, and then if I'm doing really high harmonies, you wanna get like that Queen-y thing. I have like a squeal thing that's pretty up there, which you don't wanna do too often, but... I have a funny video of me recording some harmonies from the record. I'll send it to you. It's definitely squeal-y. I usually stack my own harmonies. I can't remember when I started doing it, but I try to get a crowd sound, so I just do each harmony in a different accent. And you end up with someone Scottish in there, like a French guy. And you go like London, Northerner, couple of Americans, and you end up with like an amazing crowd."

I'm using Harry as an example because he's an artist I pay a lot of attention to who has the same background and has been in the indistry for the same amount of time as Louis. They share the same resources to learn and educate themselves, perfect their own profession.

I don't think Harry is necessarily a prodigy, but he's an actual songwriter who's involved every step of the way.

And this is what I wanted to close with.

"I think that the first cut that changed it for me was the Steve Aoki song with Louis Tomlinson. I just wrote that with this amazing writer Eric Ross (...). We just wrote a bunch of stuff together, and we wrote that, and one day a couple of years after it was written I got a text, and it was like, 'Hey, Louis Tomlinson is cutting this.' And as a One Direction stan I lost my shit."

Sasha Sloan, co-writer of Just Hold On.

"Louis Tomlinson’s track ‘Silver Tounges’, from album ‘Faith In the Future’ recorded @80hertz | Engineered by @gj_atkins, recording to a Studer A80 1” tape machine (courtesy of @studio_magnetique) | Produced & written by @joejrcross"

Caption by the studio where Silver Tongues was recorded

"I was in with Andrew Jackson and Duck Blackwell, two of my collaborators, Louis wasn't there, my manager had a meeting with his management and they said 'Louis is looking for songs', the brief was like Oasis and I was like 'I don't think he should do Oasis so let's give him a pop ballad." Bryn explained that the trio didn't know much about Louis but were aware of Johannah's death and decided to channel that into the song. "It was a little bit weird, we don't know him, we don't know what he went through," he said before adding: "But we did it and we're bringing our own elements, we've all lost people so we were putting our own words into them. "We sent it to his team and he was like 'Oh my God, I've been waiting to write this song but I couldn't,' I heard that he'd been encouraged to 'write a song about my mum but I couldn't' he'd heard bits and was like 'This is it. This is what I was feeling. This is all that I wanted to do'. And so then he went, came in and wrote a bit more like the middle eight and yeah, then he released it."

Bryn Christopher, co-writer of Two Of us

James Vincent McMorrow via instagram (he has archived all posts prior to the end of 2023, so this is gone now)

I'll be fair and include this quote by Theo Hutchcraft:

"I absolutely love these lads and being part of [Louis Tomlinson's] masterplan and creative vision has been a total joy. He deserves it all."

It does absolutely nothing to convince me that this "masterplan" and "creative vision" was anything other than him giving out vague notes that he couldn't otherwise describe.

This is what Harry's collaborators have to say about him:

"The other thing that happened with me not being there at first was that Harry got to lead the room. He didn’t have to sit there and constantly feel like he’s got to defer to me. Harry was the boss. And they all just bonded so hard and it just became the dream scenario, and everyone contributed in such a fantastic way. (...) I wanted it to be something that Harry really felt was his baby, making his creative mark. With me, if it comes from the artist, that��s the best thing. If it’s real, people are going to know it’s real. (...) I’m hopeful that we’re gonna do many more albums—this is just the beginning. But I thought it was really important to set the tone of, “We’re gonna do exactly what’s in your heart, Harry.” (...) And what a luxury to have Mitch and Ryan, where they could come up with an idea and it could just be tracked and sound like a record instantly. And that’s how “Sign of the Times” happened. Harry was playing it on the piano and we fleshed it out a little bit. Then he jumped on the mic, I played piano and we cut that whole record in three hours."

Jeff Bhasker, producer of HS1

"He had asked for a specific guitar, which I loved. He knew my music well enough to request a specific sound from a specific instrument. I got there and he said, 'Let's eat.' We ordered food, we sat, we talked, we laughed. (...) And then we went in and spent the day recording. When I watched Harry track his vocals, it was a singing lesson in its own way."

Ben Harper, who played guitar on Boyfriends.

"One of my favorite parts of the session was after the session, because as I was loading out all my gear Harry invited me to stick around because he wanted to finish the song right then and there. To get to watch Harry in his process was eye-opening, and I learned a lot. He orchestrated the vocal harmonies like a classical composer, spot on, note for note. He just stacked them perfectly in pitch, one better than the next, and it was really eye-opening to see somebody step on the mic and have the parts orchestrated in his head. I’ve never seen anything like it. actually."

More of Ben Harper

“Day one, we’re writing a song, and [Harry] came up with this piano part. And then I was like, ‘Oh, that could be faster. And you could do this chord, and we could do this.’ ” That evolved into “Late Night Talking,”

Kid Harpoon, producer of Fine Line and Harry's House

We recorded the song at Rob Stringer’s house in England. We moved all the furniture out and put a drum kit in the TV room. “As It Was” was done in that setup. Harry came in with a riff idea, and we ran with it. It’s a funny one because it happened so quickly that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to recreate that magic again — it was just so good. Lyrically, what I love about Harry on this whole album, is that he has a lot to say but he can tease meaning. What’s going on in his life is intertwined in that song, and in that line, “Harry, you’re no good alone.” I love the way he built the lyrics across his whole record, so when I think about “As It Was” I think about the whole album, to be honest.