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cliperry · 25 days ago

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The famous five

From America to Australia, One Direction have gone global. Camilla Long gets to grips with the world’s biggest boyband

Camilla Long September 30 2012, The Sunday Times Style (x)

The plan was that Juergen Teller would take the pictures, and when he wasn’t taking the pictures, I would interview One Direction — the pretty one, the tattooed one, the other one, the other other one and the frightening orange pixie. Only Teller takes the pictures in three minutes flat, leaving two hours stretching ominously in front of me, pulsating gently with alcopops, club juice and Lynx Africa.

What do you ask the most famous boyband in the world, anyway? The girls sitting on the pavement outside the studio say I should ask Niall about Demi Lovato, because he “fancies her, and he fancies Brooke Vincent as well”, or about Nando’s, because he once recited his favourite order on stage (a chicken wrap, peri-peri chips, corn on the cob, hot wings and a drink). I should ask Zayn about his tattoos — “He’s getting a half-sleeve” — but be careful of Louis “cos he’s hilarious and a bitch”. What about Harry and Caroline Flack? They turn puce. “She’s a total toe[rag],” shrieks one. “We like all their girlfriends,” spits another. “Except for her.”

Harry, T shirt, £185, by Balenciaga; matchesfashion.com. Jacket, £359, by APC; harrods.com (Juergen Teller)

Poor Flack — the most reviled 33-year-old in pop since she “stole” the hottest band member, Harry. Harry Styles is a cooing Lolitus with a heart-shaped face and cupid lips and a swoosh of Shockwaves hair that looks as if it has been combed lovingly out of his bellybutton. He split up from Flack in January, “but we are good friends, we are still in touch”, he mews. “Every time we’re in the same place we seem to argue, but we get along fine.” He doesn’t have a thing about ancient women — he has recently been seen with Alexa, Pixie and the model Cara Delevingne — “I’m an 18-year-old boy, I don’t just love older women, I just love women” — but it has become a thing anyway, a central trumpet volley in the great pageant of hair gel, nose-pickings and panty static that is One Direction. Other obsessions include Topman and PlayStation and David Beckham and Haribo and Katy Perry, the most luscious woman in the universe according to, like, Niall.

Liam, T-shirt, £18, from American Apparel. Jacket, £1,050, by Levi’s x Junya Watanabe, from selfridges (Juergen Teller)

The only fly in the ointment is that they are all rampantly homesick — “like 100%” — because they all grew up in Wolverhampton and Cheshire and Bradford, and were ripped from the sinister yet milky bosom of X Factor at the tender age of 17 and given as baby sacrifices to the great glittering He-Moob, Simon Cowell, and now live in large, sterile flats in London and have a minder called Tom, an enormous bodyguard called Andy, a stylist called Caroline who “used to do Blue and Chris Brown”, a publicist, a manager and the ultimate symbol of fame, a full-sized, monogrammed Baby-Gro each.

The only things they still have control of is their hair and sleeve-rolling. All crucial decisions here — “What’s crucial?” asks Louis — “come 100% down to us”, he nods. He sits at the table while the others have their photographs taken. Behind him, Niall is half-naked. At any given point, one of them is half-naked. It’s like their clothes hate them. I interview them one by one, grabbing them and shouting “Sit” like puppies, whereupon they peer at the chair and say, “This is very formal.” Upstairs they try on yet more padded jackets and skinny jeans, and gab about Perry and debate which tops are “more Harry” or “more Liam”, even though all the tops are exactly the same, and they are too. Then they rush off for some sweets — the publicist brings them two bags of Haribo at 5pm every day — and come and leave me bits of noninformation like doggy treats.

Niall (Juergen Teller)

It’s odd — like trying to interview milk. I get confused about which is which, and keep asking them about the wrong girlfriends. I still can’t guarantee I’ve matched the right quotes to the right boy, but Liam is definitely a bit angry and cried at the Katy Perry movie Part of Me and recently worried about having “piss” flung at him, because Cher Lloyd had that at a festival. Niall is frightened of sushi and is “too young” for a girlfriend, but weirdly too old for his hair, which has Shane Warne highlights and has been like that since he was 12, “so I’m getting past it now”. He seems flustered by girls — “I don’t want a girlfriend, man, not yet”. His ideal date “would be a theme park”, he says, so he wouldn’t have to make conversation. “Like, if you have dinner it’s awkward, and if you go to the cinema it’s been done a hundred times, so a theme park is a good way of not making it awkward.” Who gets the most girls? “We wouldn’t ever objectify women, ever,” he says, solemnly. I explain the question isn’t about objectifying them, just fancying them. He thinks. “Harry gets around, doesn’t he?”

Louis, T-shirt, £155, by Kenzo; harveynichols.com. Jacket, £45, by Topman (Juergen Teller)

Harry flirts. He does this by staring into your eyes and half-pursing his lips like a knowing toddler. It’s a bit off-putting, actually. The flirting is unconscious: “Sometimes I do it even when I’m not meaning to,” he says. “Perhaps it’s just how I was meant to be.” Louis is the least flirty. He is anxious and the colour of Tango. He’s a bit frightening, like Joan Collins or Dina Lohan. He says he’s worried about getting older. “I just don’t really like the idea of being called a kid any more,” he says. “I think you can always act young. I think I’ll always be immature, so that’s fine.” Which one is the stupidest? Louis says he “isn’t thick” exactly, but he thought he could “blag” his first year of A levels and failed. Liam tells me he was once asked about Syria and didn’t know there was a civil war on and blurted, “I’d throw a party”, because “the best way to cure things sometimes is throw a party, but I didn’t mean it in that way”.

Harry thinks he might be the thickest: “I think we’re all a little bit stupid,” he concludes, “but that’s what makes us what we are. At the end of the day, we’re just five idiots in the middle of an island.”

Liam, T-shirt, £80, by Commes des Garcons; liberty.co.uk (Juergen Teller)

The dream is to be Gary Barlow or Take That, minus the overeating and the drug abuse — as Niall puts it: “Take 10 years out and then come back.” Which one is Robbie? “There is no Robbie,” he says, sternly. There couldn’t be any Robbie. The band’s strength lies in its complete lack of maverick talent, the fact that they are five nice, very mediocre lads who happen, freakishly, to be much more than the sum of their parts — a phenomenon that must delight Cowell, who has long been beavering away in his forbidding onyx and fake-fur-lined laboratory trying to find exactly the right alchemy of rubbishness that will finally crack America.

Their album went to No 1 in the States earlier this year and they were immediately penned in by shoals of rabid fans who wanted to rip off their clothes, which Niall or was it Liam found “frightening” and Harry found “not as hard as you think”. Liam says that the fans in America are different because they try and rush them no matter what, “like 30 girls across the middle of this LA street”. I think he worries about road-traffic accidents; he is meant to be the sensible one, and when I ask how much he is worth, he looks serious and says: “I should probably find out.” The girls outside say the band members are worth £1.5m each — the same as each of Cowell’s teeth. Sometimes they work for two weeks without a break, and then they go home and Harry goes to Selfridges and Liam goes to a shop called “Di-or”. Zayn gets tattoos. He’s got a new one that looks like a tampon, or is it a bacterium? “It’s a mike,” he explains. He looks like an eerily handsome 12-year-old. He is extraordinarily charming. He seems amused by Harry’s love of ancient women and his seduction “routine”, which he “executes very well”.

Suddenly, the interview is over. They are collected like dolls and put into a people carrier, but not before I have a complete moment of insanity and beg for a photograph, and Teller has asked for all their autographs and tickets to the next show.

One Direction’s new single, Live While We’re Young, is released today

#One Direction #Harry Styles #Shaggy Hair #September #2012 #Up All Night Era #Fetus Era #Sunday Times #The Times #Magazine Scans #Style #from newsbank

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omdaily10 · 6 years ago

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Guest Artist: Demi Lovato

Writers: Wayne Hector, Daniel Davidsen, Maegan Cottone, Peter Wallevik, Mich Hansen

Producers: Cutfather, Daniel Davidsen, Peter Wallevik

Album: Never Been Better

Release Date: 04/01/2015

B-Side: Up (Live Acoustic Version) (Credits as above) / 'Dear Darlin’' (Live Performance at ITV Special)' (See 'Dear Darlin’' entry for writing credits)

Chart Positions: #4 (UK), #3 (Ireland), #3 (Slovenia), #5 (South Africa), #6 (Austria), #8 (US), #8 (Hungary), #9 (New Zealand), #14 (Australia), #15 (Belgium), #15 (Italy), #17 (Germany), #22 (Czech Republic), #28 (Switzerland), #29 (Slovakia)

Sales: 600k (UK, Platinum), 140k (Australia, 2x Platinum), 50k (Italy, Platinum), 15k (New Zealand, Platinum)

Nominations: ‘Best British Single’, BRIT Awards 2016

No sooner had 'Wrapped Up' charted - and foundered in its quest to give Olly another lead number one single from a new album - then plans almost immediately moved onto the single that was to follow it. And for only the second time in his career, it was to be a track that he didn't have a hand in writing.

An early demo of 'Up', written for the main part by one of his long time collaborators, Wayne Hector, and produced by the legendary Danish pop producer Cutfather - who had been behind countless UK and international chart toppers over a twenty year plus career - was put forward in the initial recording sessions for the 'Never Been Better' album.

A rousing, almost country esque mid-tempo thumper about rekindling the spark in a relationship gone awry that called to mind Lady Antebellum’s ‘Need You Now’, it was clear that Olly had recorded a sure-fire smash, but he felt that it needed another presence on it to elevate it to another level. Chiefly, in contrast to his other collaborations to that point, it needed a female vocal. Numerous different names were touted and approached - amongst them, Nicole Scherzinger, Cheryl and Ellie Goulding. But for his US label Columbia, keen on building Olly's Stateside profile after the success of the 'Right Place Right Time' album, they had their eyes on a much bigger star.

Enter Demi Lovato. A child star from the age of 10, she was one of the big breakout stars from the Disney fold like Britney Spears, Hilary Duff and Miley Cyrus before her, best known at that point for her role alongside Jonas Brothers in the 'Camp Rock' films for the Disney Channel. She had already successfully crossed over to a contemporary pop career, and was relatively well known to British audiences, having hit the UK top 10 with the hits 'Skyscraper' and 'Heart Attack'. However, her success here was a drop in the ocean compared to what it was Stateside, where she was absolutely huge – and in a further tie with The X Factor, she was also a judge on the US version of the series.

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It made sense therefore, to have her on board for 'Up'. Demi flew over to the UK to film the video with Olly in November 2014, which saw them go hell for leather, Aerosmith style, around an old apartment, literally tearing down walls and smashing up instruments to find each other. She returned just a few weeks later at the start of December, when Olly and Demi debuted their first – and to date only - performance of the single together on the final of that year’s X Factor at Wembley Arena.

Even though the single didn’t officially appear until the new year, the impact of the performance and the song had clearly crossed over in a big way, as just on sales of the track as an album cut, it raced into the top 5 for Christmas that year, eventually settling at a peak of #4. It was still on the chart and all over the airwaves three months later, when Olly’s next single we’ll meet in our next review made its debut.

The plan had been to push ahead with this as a summer single in America following the release of the album Stateside in January 2015 and the conclusion of his UK arena tour in May. However, several changes of circumstance meant that this wasn’t to be, chiefly the availability of Demi for promotional commitments, but also with some developments in Olly’s career back in Blighty.

Regardless, it became a top 20 hit in fourteen other countries, and also earned Olly his fourth nomination at the BRIT awards for the ‘Best British Single’ trophy at the 2016 ceremony, and even now remains one of his most popular songs on tour, with everyone from Ella Eyre to former member of girl group legends The Saturdays, Vanessa White, joining him on occasion to perform Demi’s section. It also proved that even if it didn’t hit the top of the chart, a song like ‘Up’ proved that Olly was still one of pop’s most consistent hitmakers.

OTHER THOUGHTS

A live acoustic version was the main B-side of the digital bundle and Europe only CD single, recorded around the same time as the video for the song. UK fans also had a treat in store on the digital bundle, in the form of a stripped back mix of ‘Dear Darlin’’, first performed for his 2014 TV special for ITV, A Night In With Olly Murs. The show was an hour-long entertainment and variety show showcasing performances of tracks from the ‘Never Been Better’ album, as well as sketches with John Bishop, Shane Richie and Caroline Flack.

#Olly Murs #Olly Murs Daily #OM Daily #OMDaily10 #Up #Demi Lovato #Never Been Better #2014 #2015 #Review #10th Anniversary #Fourth Album #Retrospective

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