#may make a short album of irish-influenced tunes once i get better

[everydaylouie]

got a concertina recently! here's a little tune i wrote for it.

[blackkudos]

Fats Waller

Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations to the Harlem stride style laid the groundwork for modern jazz piano. His best-known compositions, "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose", were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999.

Early life

Waller was the youngest of 11 children (five of whom survived childhood) born to Adeline Locket Waller and the Reverend Edward Martin Waller in New York City. He started playing the piano when he was six and graduated to playing the organ at his father's church four years later. His mother instructed him when he was a youth. At the age of 14 he was playing the organ at the Lincoln Theater, in Harlem, and within 12 months he had composed his first rag. Waller's first piano solos ("Muscle Shoals Blues" and "Birmingham Blues") were recorded in October 1922, when he was 18 years old.

He was the prize pupil and later the friend and colleague of the stride pianist James P. Johnson.

Career

Against the opposition of his father, a clergyman, Waller became a professional pianist at the age of 15, working in cabarets and theaters. In 1918 he won a talent contest playing Johnson's "Carolina Shout", a song he learned from watching a player piano play it.

Waller became one of the most popular performers of his era, finding critical and commercial success in the United States and Europe. He was also a prolific songwriter, and many songs he wrote or co-wrote are still popular, such as "Honeysuckle Rose", "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Squeeze Me". Fellow pianist and composer Oscar Levant dubbed Waller "the black Horowitz". Waller is believed to have composed many novelty tunes in the 1920s and 1930s and sold them for small sums, attributed to another composer and lyricist.

Standards attributed to Waller, sometimes controversially, include "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby". Biographer Barry Singer conjectured that this jazz classic was written by Waller and lyricist Andy Razaf and provided a description of the sale given by Waller to the New York Post in 1929—he sold the song for $500 to a white songwriter, ultimately for use in a financially successful show (consistent with Jimmy McHugh's contributions to Harry Delmar’s Revels, 1927, and then to Blackbirds of 1928). He further supports the conjecture, noting that early handwritten manuscripts in the Dana Library Institute of Jazz Studies of "Spreadin' Rhythm Around" (Jimmy McHugh ©1935) are in Waller's hand. Jazz historian P.S. Machlin comments that the Singer conjecture has "considerable [historical] justification". Waller's son Maurice wrote in his 1977 biography of his father that Waller had once complained on hearing the song, and came from upstairs to admonish him never to play it in his hearing because he had had to sell it when he needed money. Maurice Waller's biography similarly notes his father's objections to hearing "On the Sunny Side of the Street" playing on the radio. Waller recorded "I Can't Give You…" in 1938, playing the tune but making fun of the lyrics; the recording was with Adelaide Hall who had introduced the song to the world at Les Ambassadeurs Club in New York in 1928.

The anonymous sleeve notes on the 1960 RCA Victor album Handful of Keys state that Waller copyrighted over 400 songs, many of them co-written with his closest collaborator, Andy Razaf. Razaf described his partner as "the soul of melody... a man who made the piano sing... both big in body and in mind... known for his generosity... a bubbling bundle of joy". Gene Sedric, a clarinetist who played with Waller on some of his 1930s recordings, is quoted in these sleeve notes recalling Waller's recording technique with considerable admiration: "Fats was the most relaxed man I ever saw in a studio, and so he made everybody else relaxed. After a balance had been taken, we'd just need one take to make a side, unless it was a kind of difficult number."

Waller played with many performers, from Nathaniel Shilkret (on Victor 21298-A) and Gene Austin to Erskine Tate, Fletcher Henderson, McKinney's Cotton Pickers and Adelaide Hall, but his greatest success came with his own five- or six-piece combo, "Fats Waller and his Rhythm".

On one occasion his playing seemed to have put him at risk of injury. Waller was kidnapped in Chicago leaving a performance in 1926. Four men bundled him into a car and took him to the Hawthorne Inn, owned by Al Capone. Waller was ordered inside the building, and found a party in full swing. Gun to his back, he was pushed towards a piano, and told to play. A terrified Waller realized he was the "surprise guest" at Capone's birthday party, and took comfort that the gangsters did not intend to kill him. It is rumored that Waller stayed at the Hawthorne Inn for three days and left very drunk, extremely tired, and had earned thousands of dollars in cash from Capone and other party-goers as tips.

In 1926, Waller began his recording association with the Victor Talking Machine Company/RCA Victor, his principal record company for the rest of his life, with the organ solos "St. Louis Blues" and his own composition, "Lenox Avenue Blues". Although he recorded with various groups, including Morris's Hot Babes (1927), Fats Waller's Buddies (1929) (one of the earliest multiracial groups to record), and McKinney's Cotton Pickers (1929), his most important contribution to the Harlem stride piano tradition was a series of solo recordings of his own compositions: "Handful of Keys", "Smashing Thirds", "Numb Fumblin'", and "Valentine Stomp" (1929). After sessions with Ted Lewis (1931), Jack Teagarden (1931) and Billy Banks' Rhythmakers (1932), he began in May 1934 the voluminous series of recordings with a small band known as Fats Waller and his Rhythm. This six-piece group usually included Herman Autrey (sometimes replaced by Bill Coleman or John "Bugs" Hamilton), Gene Sedric or Rudy Powell, and Al Casey.

Waller wrote "Squeeze Me" (1919), "Keepin' Out of Mischief Now", "Ain't Misbehavin'" (1929), "Blue Turning Grey Over You", "I've Got a Feeling I'm Falling" (1929), "Honeysuckle Rose" (1929) and "Jitterbug Waltz" (1942). He composed stride piano display pieces such as "Handful of Keys", "Valentine Stomp" and "Viper's Drag".

He enjoyed success touring the United Kingdom and Ireland in the 1930s. He appeared in one of the first BBC television broadcasts. While in Britain, Waller also recorded a number of songs for EMI on their Compton Theatre organ located in their Abbey Road Studios in St John's Wood. He appeared in several feature films and short subject films, most notably Stormy Weather in 1943, which was released July 21, just months before his death. For the hit Broadway show Hot Chocolates, he and Razaf wrote "(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue" (1929), which became a hit for Ethel Waters and Louis Armstrong.

Waller performed Bach organ pieces for small groups on occasion. Waller influenced many pre-bebop jazz pianists; Count Basie and Erroll Garner have both reanimated his hit songs. In addition to his playing, Waller was known for his many quips during his performances.

Between 1926 and the end of 1927, Waller recorded a series of pipe organ solo records. These represent the first time syncopated jazz compositions were performed on a full-sized church organ.

Death

Waller contracted pneumonia and died on a cross-country train trip near Kansas City, Missouri, on December 15, 1943. His final recording session was with an interracial group in Detroit, Michigan, that included white trumpeter Don Hirleman. Waller was returning to New York City from Los Angeles, after the smash success of Stormy Weather, and after a successful engagement at the Zanzibar Room, in Santa Monica California, during which he had fallen ill. More than 4,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem, which prompted Dr. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who delivered the eulogy, to say that Fats Waller "always played to a packed house." Afterwards he was cremated and his ashes were scattered, from an airplane piloted by an unidentified World War I black aviator, over Harlem. One of his surviving relatives is former Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket and current Baltimore Ravens tight end Darren Waller, who is Fats' paternal great-grandson.

Revival and awards

A Broadway musical revue showcasing Waller tunes entitled Ain't Misbehavin' was produced in 1978. (The show and a star of the show, Nell Carter, won Tony Awards.) The show opened at the Longacre Theatre and ran for more than 1600 performances. It was revived on Broadway in 1988. Performed by five African-American actors, the show included such songs as "Honeysuckle Rose", "This Joint Is Jumpin'", and "Ain't Misbehavin'".

Recordings of Fats Waller were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame which is a special Grammy Award established in 1973 to honour recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance".

Probably the most talented pianist to keep the music of "Fats" Waller alive in the years after his death was Ralph Sutton, who focused his career on playing stride piano. Sutton was a great admirer of Waller, saying "I've never heard a piano man swing any better than Fats – or swing a band better than he could. I never get tired of him. Fats has been with me from the first, and he'll be with me as long as I live."

Actor and band leader Conrad Janis also did a lot to keep the stride piano music of "Fats" Waller and James P. Johnson alive. In 1949, as an 18-year-old, Janis put together a band of aging jazz greats, consisting of James P. Johnson (piano), Henry Goodwin (trumpet), Edmond Hall (clarinet), Pops Foster (bass) and Baby Dodds (drums), with Janis on trombone.

In popular culture

Waller is the subject of the Irish poet Michael Longley's "Elegy for Fats Waller".

Robert Pinsky's poem, "History of My Heart," opens with Waller walking into the 34th St. Macy's at Christmastime

He was caricatured in several Warner Brothers animated shorts, most notably Tin Pan Alley Cats.

In the 2008 film Be Kind Rewind, Waller was a major theme and influence for the storyline.

Italian comics book artist Igort published a comic book about Waller entitled Fats Waller on Coconino Press in 2009.

His song "Inside This Heart of Mine", is used in the queuing areas of the ride The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

Some of Waller's music ("Jitterbug Waltz") is used in the video game series BioShock.

Waller's version of "Louisiana Fairytale" was used for many years as the theme song to the American television series This Old House.

Waller's church organ music featured prominently in David Lynch's breakthrough film Eraserhead in 1977.

Irish rock band Thin Lizzy, wrote the song "Fats" in their album Renegade. It is inspired in the figure of Waller.

Wikipedia

[trendingnewsb]

What Harry Styles and Zayn can tell us about life after boy bands

One Direction is accidentally the best named boy band in the history of coordinated turtlenecks. Legend has it that Harry Styles picked it on a whim because it sounded cool after Simon Cowell gave the five boys a second chance to compete on X Factor if they were willing to go at it as a team.

For about five years, it worked remarkably well, and then the tears fell.

There’s a line in Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man, a book about the the trappings of idolization published when Harry Styles was eight years old, that seems oddly prescient for the current situaton. Just after a line that happens to be about a character’s ruffled shift, Smith writes, “All fandom is a form of tunnel vision: warm and dark and infinite in one direction.”

And yes, there are plenty of horribly original “different directions” jokes to be made about the lads’ respective solo careers. But the truth of the matter, is that separating was the only way they could all head upwards.

Before 1D, the *NSYNC model was the best case scenario for life after a boy band’s prime years. Justin Timberlake was the one who got to keep the music career, and lives happily ever after in the A-List while the rest are relegated to TV hosting gigs. Joey Fatone’s Live Well Network show, My Family Recipe Rocks, is delightful, but it can’t be what he envisioned for himself. Or you have the Backstreet Boys, tethered together for eternity in Las Vegas playing the old hits. Harry Styles’ solo debut, out today, makes it clear that it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

SEE ALSO: Harry Styles hasn’t quite mastered the stage dive yet, but his solo music sparkles live

Zayn Malik was, of course, the first to go. He exited the group in flames with some comments about wanting to be a normal 22-year-old but quickly came back with bold promises of #realmusic, as opposed to whatever he considered One Direction.

ZaYn

Image: MIKE WINDLE/GETTY

Malik wasn’t content to fall into traditional boy band roles and be “the shy one” when he was actually experiencing severe anxiety. Plus, he favored R&B over the classic rock influences that were beginning to dominate One Direction and he has the voice for it, so he left the band to make music that was more his speed, working with M.I.A., PartyNextDoor, and even Styles’ ex, Taylor Swift.

It’s no surprise that fans, despite some very harsh words on Twitter when he split, responded positively to the new music. One Direction was the first major boy band to treat young women with respect as music fans instead of just assuming they want washboard abs and a Max Martin hook, as great and necessary as those things can be to young fans coming of age.

When Styles was recently on the cover of Rolling Stone, Styles explained as much to Cameron Crowe, who just happened to be profiling him.

“Who’s to say that young girls who like pop music short for popular, right? have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That’s not up to you to say. Music is something that’s always changing. There’s no goal posts,” he said. “Young girls like the Beatles. You gonna tell me they’re not serious? How can you say young girls don’t get it? They’re our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going. Teenage-girl fans they don’t lie. If they like you, they’re there. They don’t act ‘too cool.’ They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick.”

Malik echoed the sentiment in his book. (Oh yeah, he has a book, some fashion collaborations and a TV show on the way, NBD.) “I think we need more women in positions of power across the world,” he wrote. “I think a lot of the world’s problems could be solved if we allowed more contribution from women.”

Instead of making the music they thought girls wanted to hear, they put a little faith in their fans and tried to make the best music they could. It paid off.

Instead of making the music they thought girls wanted to hear, they put a little faith in their fans and tried to make the best music they could. It paid off.

For Louis Tomlinson, that meant the sunny “Just Hold On” with DJ Steve Aoki, and if there is anything that’s a fairly sure bet, it’s a handsome boy with a devout social media following dipping his toes into EDM. Sometimes, I imagine I’m in a The Graduate situation, at pool party. Instead giving the tip “plastics” to a lost boy unsure what to do with his potential, I whisper, “EDM” into his ear. While Aoki is a veteran of the scene at this point, “Just Hold On” is actually his highest charting single in both the UK and the USA, where the song hit #2 and #52, respectively.

Liam Payne, meanwhile, signed a record deal with Republic in 2016. Like Tomlinson, his ambition has some EDM leanings, but he’s got his eye on hip hop, as well. He previously released a single with Juicy J and Wiz Khalifa and has a new single with Migos’ Quavo out on May 19.

Niall Horan and Styles were always the most likely to hit the ground running with One Direction’s ’70s rock influence. Horan, the guitar-wielding Irish man, was the most involved in the group’s songwriting process and Styles baked a damn carrot cake for Stevie Nicks on her birthday. Horan beat Styles to the punch releasing his first solo single, the sweet acoustic number “This Town,” but Styles’ solo album came first.

A good suit.

Image: mike coppola/Getty Images

He considered calling it Pink, because The Clash’s Paul Simonon once said that, “Pink is the only true rock & roll color.” Nearly every review of Harry Styles has focused on Harry Styles, the rock star, in an age when the form is limp. “Sign of the Times,” the lead single, is a bold statement of intention to fill that void. Styles announced the Bowie-channeling tune exactly 20 years after the Prince album the song borrows its name from was released.

But he ended up simply going with Harry Styles instead, and it’s a fitting choice. In interviews, he’s wants to make it clear how honest the lyrics are as he avoids getting into details about just about everything. “I didn’t want to write ‘stories,'” he told Rolling Stone. “I wanted to write my stories, things that happened to me. The number-one thing was I wanted to be honest. I hadn’t done that before.” Styles knows he’s not reinventing the wheel, but what he can offer that no one else can is a direct line into his psyche.

“Mature” details of the album will inevitably be sensationalized, sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll were never really absent from One Direction (sample lyric: “waking up beside you, I’m a loaded gun.”) The main difference is that now it doesn’t have to be sung with a wink.

Communication, or lack thereof, is the album’s focus. Styles desperately wants people to say what they mean. “Tell me something I don’t already know,” he begs and begs on “Ever Since New York.” Hell, he doesn’t even use emoji, as he confessed to the crowd at his very first solo show.

At his most confessional, the soft, Eliott Smith-indebted, “From the Dining Table,” Styles begs for resolution. “Woke up alone in this hotel room. Played with myself, where were you? Fell back to sleep, I got drunk by noon,” he confesses. “I’ve never felt less cool.”

The mumbling masturbator is, of course, not a traditional boy band archetype, and definitely not what would be expected of “the cute one.” But thanks in large part to the infinite feedback loop of fandom online, it’s what we know fans needed to hear. The boy they worship (and the subject of their own erotic fan fiction) gets lonely, too.

It’s too early to tell what the longevity of the One Direction boys solo careers will be, but they’re already tipping towards a higher success rate than any previous boy band. Their increasingly web-savvy fans seem poised to ensure a decent run.

Pop groups are no longer a survival of the fittest. They’re better prepared to service the passions and desires of their young, predominately female fanbase better than ever and even grow up with them after they grow up and start running the world.

Read more: http://ift.tt/2r1SQB5

from Viral News HQ http://ift.tt/2r3n5aI via Viral News HQ

[tune-collective]

John Lydon Explains How the Chinese Government Inspired His Book of Drawings & Lyrics

John Lydon Explains How the Chinese Government Inspired His Book of Drawings & Lyrics

John Lydon is known primarily as the lead singer in iconoclastic-but-canonical rock groups like The Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd., but he demonstrates a different talent on his latest project: Mr. Rotten’s Songbook collects the lyrics from all the tunes Lydon has written and pairs them with his own drawings. Each image is supposed to reflect his state of mind at the time he wrote the song.

Lydon is planning to print just 1,000 copies of Mr. Rotten’s Songbook, which hits shelves March 31; you can pre-order a volume here. The reason for the limited edition? “Mass consumption tends not to be very helpful,” Lydon explains. “You find yourself in that pop star world I spent so much effort trying to escape.” Nevertheless, he hopes that the small batch approach won’t entirely prevent him from earning commercial accolades: “I do expect to be No. 1 on the Billboard limited editions [chart]!” 

Billboard caught up with Lydon to discuss the origins of the book and his longstanding interest in drawing; before signing off, the singer offered a blessing of sorts: “May your enemies always be behind you; may they scatter, flatter, batter, and shatter.” These are excerpts from the rest of the conversation.

What gave you the idea for a book of lyrics?

China allowed us to do a couple gigs in their very strange and wonderful country. They have an incredible vetting system where they analyze every lyric you’ve ever written. It was the putting of that together, really, and then their approving it, that tweaked an interest in my own head. I felt, my god, have I become acceptable? What’s happened here? How strange but interesting but that the Chinese government would find my stuff thrilling and welcome me to their country.

From there on in, the idea was floating around, since we had to amass all the lyrics like that, what to do with them. I thought of drawing images next to them so you get an idea of the frame of mind I was in when I write. It’s a very limited edition. That’s how we like things to be because that way you can guarantee high quality, and only those that really want it get it.

Is that lyric investigation standard practice by the Chinese government?

Well they did it with me, so I just assumed they did it for everyone else. I think over the years I’ve said far more volatile things then half the bands that have been sent packing [by China]. It shows they do like a bit of saucy and challenge! I found the population very friendly and really glad we were let in. It was a great meeting of the minds! 

Have you always been into drawing?

Since I was very young. I love to draw. I draw in a particularly cartoonish way because I think I can capture the character better that way. I’m not one for still portraits. Drawing led me into all kinds of trouble in the catholic school I was forced to go to. Being left handed, the nuns and priests see that as the sign of the devil. I’ve always been pleasantly cursed. 

Did you read cartoons when you were younger?

I don’t do that, don’t read comic books. I find far more movement and reality in a quick drawn cartoon than a still life — which I can do. Sometimes I’m just bored, and I’ll do photographic representations of things. But there’s no life in that. The way us as human beings are, we have so many different motives running at the same time. A cartoon can capture that. 

I’ve always done the artwork for PiL; had a lot to do with the Pistols as well. This is a field I’m not trained in, but I have an aptitude. There’s my gallery — it’s called an album cover.

I read an interview you did where you said you were also influenced by Native American art — how did you discover that?

Visiting Arizona, seeing the rock art, I found that fascinating. The most simplistic lines tell you so much information. It’s more free flowing; it allows you to sense these things are moving. I like static cling, but I don’t like static behavior. Early caveman drawings too in Europe, they’re deeply beautiful, and seem far more artistically advanced than most of the rubbish in the art galleries these days. I think they were clever enough not to pile a couple bricks together and call it art. Which is what goes on a lot at these places.

You had to produce quite a lot of drawings in a very short time frame for this book.

I love that. When there’s time limits and pressure of a deadline, I love it. I love it! I love working under pressure. It makes me concentrate more and better things come out of that. Rather than taking six months and being indolently artistic.

We definitely don’t condone indolence! All the lyrics from PiL and the Sex Pistols are in the book?

Yeah I think it’s 127 songs. I’ve stopped counting! To go back and analyze every single line that I’ve written is at times quite shocking. God, did I really put that together? I’m shocked by the bravado I display when I write. It’s quite great. There’s nothing that I would call fluff in anything. It’s me analyzing myself. I’m very accurate, I don’t take no prisoners, particularly with myself. And I do tend to be my own worst enemy, judgment-wise. Over the years, that’s paid off really well. There’s nothing anyone can say negative about me that I haven’t already considered. I see my life as a work in progress. I’m not yet perfect, but I fully intend to try to be.

Is that intense self-criticism sometimes paralyzing when you’re trying to write songs?

It can absolutely immobilize you with fear sometimes. Particularly before performances. I’m riddled with self-doubt to the point where I make myself physically ill. The idea of letting people down is just not acceptable to me. I’m not the strongest person in the world; childhood illness left me with many fault lines, and I can come apart at the seams at any point. It’s a knife edge every night, but I love it. Once I’m on, I’m fine. I know no rule book need apply at that point. Other than: get it right, and tell it truthfully. 

When you got a chance to evaluate all your writing in this way did you see changes over time that you hadn’t noticed before?

When I first started I was attacking systems and regimes and politics. Enough of that I thought, let’s move on to PiL, where it was more self analysis, and really a great cleansing of the soul. That’s what I mean when I saw PiL is my heart and soul, Sex Pistols is all mind and body. It’s really good that I’ve gotten so many songs out. And there’s more to come. Sorry public! I can’t help myself. 

You’re given an opportunity to tell the whole truth and nothing but in music. It’s one of the few forms out there where you can do that. I’m not gonna abuse that. Hopefully it helps people. Hello! You’re not the only fucked up out there. We all are. 

Do you have the same high standards with your lyrics as you do with your drawings?

Yeah. If it’s not close don’t bother, scrap that, move on, or come at it from a different angle. But get it right. 

So you would look back at the lyrics and your drawings would correspond to your mindset at the time of writing?

Yeah — I tend to remember photographically. It’s pretty damn accurate. I think in a childlike way — that’s why I assume I’m innocent. My childhood was stolen from me through illnesses. Then I joined the Sex Pistols, and let’s face it, no one was innocent after that. Somehow I shined through, unperturbed and determined to tell it how it really is. You know there’s no alternative truths acceptable to me.

I believe alternative facts are in fashion now.

Not to me they’re not! Fascinating times. 

Is it difficult to maintain a child-like approach as you get older?

Not as long as you don’t tell lies. There’s the trouble you see; the Irish in me — we love to get drunk and tell a story. You can’t. In memory of your culture, you’ve got to tell it proper. But I have time out every now and again.

You’ve expressed distrust of the art world in the past. Are you worried it will come calling now that you’re releasing a book of drawings?

What sells in the art world is just what businesses have invested in — it has little to do with the human race at that point. I can’t go that way. So here’s my outlet: picturesque descriptions of what I’m trying to achieve through voice in music.  

Source: Billboard

http://tunecollective.com/2017/02/17/john-lydon-explains-how-the-chinese-government-inspired-his-book-of-drawings-lyrics/

[trendingnewsb]

What Harry Styles and Zayn can tell us about life after boy bands

One Direction is accidentally the best named boy band in the history of coordinated turtlenecks. Legend has it that Harry Styles picked it on a whim because it sounded cool after Simon Cowell gave the five boys a second chance to compete on X Factor if they were willing to go at it as a team.

For about five years, it worked remarkably well, and then the tears fell.

There’s a line in Zadie Smith’s The Autograph Man, a book about the the trappings of idolization published when Harry Styles was eight years old, that seems oddly prescient for the current situaton. Just after a line that happens to be about a character’s ruffled shift, Smith writes, “All fandom is a form of tunnel vision: warm and dark and infinite in one direction.”

And yes, there are plenty of horribly original “different directions” jokes to be made about the lads’ respective solo careers. But the truth of the matter, is that separating was the only way they could all head upwards.

Before 1D, the *NSYNC model was the best case scenario for life after a boy band’s prime years. Justin Timberlake was the one who got to keep the music career, and lives happily ever after in the A-List while the rest are relegated to TV hosting gigs. Joey Fatone’s Live Well Network show, My Family Recipe Rocks, is delightful, but it can’t be what he envisioned for himself. Or you have the Backstreet Boys, tethered together for eternity in Las Vegas playing the old hits. Harry Styles’ solo debut, out today, makes it clear that it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

SEE ALSO: Harry Styles hasn’t quite mastered the stage dive yet, but his solo music sparkles live

Zayn Malik was, of course, the first to go. He exited the group in flames with some comments about wanting to be a normal 22-year-old but quickly came back with bold promises of #realmusic, as opposed to whatever he considered One Direction.

ZaYn

Image: MIKE WINDLE/GETTY

Malik wasn’t content to fall into traditional boy band roles and be “the shy one” when he was actually experiencing severe anxiety. Plus, he favored R&B over the classic rock influences that were beginning to dominate One Direction and he has the voice for it, so he left the band to make music that was more his speed, working with M.I.A., PartyNextDoor, and even Styles’ ex, Taylor Swift.

It’s no surprise that fans, despite some very harsh words on Twitter when he split, responded positively to the new music. One Direction was the first major boy band to treat young women with respect as music fans instead of just assuming they want washboard abs and a Max Martin hook, as great and necessary as those things can be to young fans coming of age.

When Styles was recently on the cover of Rolling Stone, Styles explained as much to Cameron Crowe, who just happened to be profiling him.

“Who’s to say that young girls who like pop music short for popular, right? have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That’s not up to you to say. Music is something that’s always changing. There’s no goal posts,” he said. “Young girls like the Beatles. You gonna tell me they’re not serious? How can you say young girls don’t get it? They’re our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going. Teenage-girl fans they don’t lie. If they like you, they’re there. They don’t act ‘too cool.’ They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick.”

Malik echoed the sentiment in his book. (Oh yeah, he has a book, some fashion collaborations and a TV show on the way, NBD.) “I think we need more women in positions of power across the world,” he wrote. “I think a lot of the world’s problems could be solved if we allowed more contribution from women.”

Instead of making the music they thought girls wanted to hear, they put a little faith in their fans and tried to make the best music they could. It paid off.

Instead of making the music they thought girls wanted to hear, they put a little faith in their fans and tried to make the best music they could. It paid off.

For Louis Tomlinson, that meant the sunny “Just Hold On” with DJ Steve Aoki, and if there is anything that’s a fairly sure bet, it’s a handsome boy with a devout social media following dipping his toes into EDM. Sometimes, I imagine I’m in a The Graduate situation, at pool party. Instead giving the tip “plastics” to a lost boy unsure what to do with his potential, I whisper, “EDM” into his ear. While Aoki is a veteran of the scene at this point, “Just Hold On” is actually his highest charting single in both the UK and the USA, where the song hit #2 and #52, respectively.

Liam Payne, meanwhile, signed a record deal with Republic in 2016. Like Tomlinson, his ambition has some EDM leanings, but he’s got his eye on hip hop, as well. He previously released a single with Juicy J and Wiz Khalifa and has a new single with Migos’ Quavo out on May 19.

Niall Horan and Styles were always the most likely to hit the ground running with One Direction’s ’70s rock influence. Horan, the guitar-wielding Irish man, was the most involved in the group’s songwriting process and Styles baked a damn carrot cake for Stevie Nicks on her birthday. Horan beat Styles to the punch releasing his first solo single, the sweet acoustic number “This Town,” but Styles’ solo album came first.

A good suit.

Image: mike coppola/Getty Images

He considered calling it Pink, because The Clash’s Paul Simonon once said that, “Pink is the only true rock & roll color.” Nearly every review of Harry Styles has focused on Harry Styles, the rock star, in an age when the form is limp. “Sign of the Times,” the lead single, is a bold statement of intention to fill that void. Styles announced the Bowie-channeling tune exactly 20 years after the Prince album the song borrows its name from was released.

But he ended up simply going with Harry Styles instead, and it’s a fitting choice. In interviews, he’s wants to make it clear how honest the lyrics are as he avoids getting into details about just about everything. “I didn’t want to write ‘stories,'” he told Rolling Stone. “I wanted to write my stories, things that happened to me. The number-one thing was I wanted to be honest. I hadn’t done that before.” Styles knows he’s not reinventing the wheel, but what he can offer that no one else can is a direct line into his psyche.

“Mature” details of the album will inevitably be sensationalized, sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll were never really absent from One Direction (sample lyric: “waking up beside you, I’m a loaded gun.”) The main difference is that now it doesn’t have to be sung with a wink.

Communication, or lack thereof, is the album’s focus. Styles desperately wants people to say what they mean. “Tell me something I don’t already know,” he begs and begs on “Ever Since New York.” Hell, he doesn’t even use emoji, as he confessed to the crowd at his very first solo show.

At his most confessional, the soft, Eliott Smith-indebted, “From the Dining Table,” Styles begs for resolution. “Woke up alone in this hotel room. Played with myself, where were you? Fell back to sleep, I got drunk by noon,” he confesses. “I’ve never felt less cool.”

The mumbling masturbator is, of course, not a traditional boy band archetype, and definitely not what would be expected of “the cute one.” But thanks in large part to the infinite feedback loop of fandom online, it’s what we know fans needed to hear. The boy they worship (and the subject of their own erotic fan fiction) gets lonely, too.

It’s too early to tell what the longevity of the One Direction boys solo careers will be, but they’re already tipping towards a higher success rate than any previous boy band. Their increasingly web-savvy fans seem poised to ensure a decent run.

Pop groups are no longer a survival of the fittest. They’re better prepared to service the passions and desires of their young, predominately female fanbase better than ever and even grow up with them after they grow up and start running the world.

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