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I GOT MY BLOG BACK!! So thank you for following or joining me for this detour but I will be moving posting back to my homebase, @1ddiscourseoftheday​, hooray!! This blog will stay in case of future need but will be going inactive as of today, please rejoin for our regularly scheduled updates at the old homestead and celebrate with me!

Zayn is doing a Zach Sang interview!! A whole long talk with someone we can trust to ask him good questions and be respectful and be funny, um YES THANK YOU?! What a good choice for such a rare interview, I love that. We don't know when, but Zach is asking for questions now. And parts 3 and 4 of the NIL comic are up, set to songs 3 and 4 off the album. Who is chasing our protagonist and why? Stay tuned for weekly updates! Meanwhile back in Bradford, Zayn's sisters Doniya and Safaa show off the mini Aristocats themed princess paradise they've created for baby Khai and Zayn's niece Zaniyah to share, complete with mini pink poofy furniture and their names painted on the walls with pink sparkles and pictures of Aristocat Marie. If that doesn't make little Khai feel wanted and welcomed for visits IDK what could!

Another set of pap pics of shirtless Niall working out in his garage in LA yesterday; he's tummy out, waving a laptop overhead while juggling a can of water and a phone and a towel and looking like a raccoon caught in the trash in most of them, just being a living meme. They (Niall) say you only get papped by choice and this is no exception- observe how he chooses to just stay right there in view staring the pap down while they snap him, doors still open (and is right on top of any opportunity to remind us about the wonders of canned water besides)- but that doesn't mean he's gonna look happy about it by god! The one of him craning his neck to look at the camera over his own crotch while weight lifting in particular was uh a choice and a half of a pose to drop into when you know there are paps shooting. He also won Irish Song of the Year in the RTE’s voted awards (of course he did!) for No Judgement.    

LTHQ posted the first of probably many things about the upcoming one year anniversary of the Walls release: a fanart contest, with chosen pieces for each song to be posted to spotify on Sunday, the anniversary. I look forward to the 'find the larry art they accidentally let slip in' treasure hunt! Fans hoped in vain that the 28th would bring a special anniversary merch drop (or We Made It merch, is it EVER coming??), but alas; no merch drop today. Louis just liked a post from footballer Steven Gerrard about a 40+ artist (including Liam Gallagher) livestream to benefit stagehand and food security charities (because ofc he did it’s like that post was crafted just for him) and another friend of his (Donny boy boxer Dave Allen) said they "just talked to him earlier", he's just on the phone all the time huh? Lockdown mood tbh, I get it.

Louis tweeted “How's everyone doing?” No Louis, HOW ARE YOU DOING?? “Alright thanks!” he says. It's the third time this month he's checked on us but does that Mean anything? Says SBB himself, “You lot read into things too much” HAHAHAHHAAAA SKSKKDJ WE LEARNED IT FROM YOU MOM!!  Well WHY is MTV posting about Copy then?? asked a fan in a very GOTCHA tone but Louis has an unarguable answer: “because it's a banger.” Well alright alright you got us there, that's very true. He says many other little things too including Strong Opinions about breakfast food (“pancakes obviously” ...was that in fact ...obvious??) and talking about a sports related series he's watching-- it really is about basketball this time unlike UFC! He also tells us that he tried to talk to Liam “earlier” “but he was in Tesco”. A fan posted that he replied to a their DM- a picture of their cat pawing adoringly at a pic of Louis- and said “this put me in such a good mood haha! Love the little lad. Bless him x”, but then later they said they it was fake, sorry. A convincing Louis imitation, but more to the point a very convincing screen record video showing the exchange: please remember this next time such a video is offered as proof for something.

Niall is in the studio with his favorite collaborators, Eskeerdo and John Ryan! The man does value consistency in all things, no question, but you know what they say- if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Despite a Morning Mashup snippet from yesterday where he agreed with the host that maybe their little kid shouldn't be exposed to Small Talk, we know he is happy with the Heartbreak Weather sound, so why not more of the same? The only question I have is: when?

Zayn's sponsorship deals continue to be increasingly wacky; today it's a coloring app! The Nobody Is Listening coloring book is now available; as usual, things I really could NOT have predicted happening every single day around here. Liam's sponsorship is less wacky today: a new Hugo pic posted.

Today, even more obviously than usual, literally everything is fake-- except Cliff's birthday which I have no reason to disbelieve! Happy 5th birthday to the good boyo Cliffy the dog!! Now onwards to the guys, who are very much working this weekend, even if that work is to pretend they Being Very Chill and Doing Chill Stuff.

A fan receipt placed Harry at Azoff owned LA restaurant the Apple Pan last night; there would be nothing at all odd about Harry eating food at a restaurant in the city where he currently is, or even choosing to go to one owned by his friends, but it's difficult not to side eye the location when the Azoff name is invoked, and sure enough! By morning rumors of him having been there with Olivia were circulating, along with a picture so blurry it could have been anyone, but sure- it would make sense if it was them. We all said the ridiculous insta follow would be followed by some more Very Casual and Private Holivia content we just Happen to see, and yep- it seems we're now firmly in (extremely ham-fisted) “make it look organic” territory, although if they think having an actual news outlet saying “it's DEFINITELY not promotional, just like if anyone was wondering if it's promo one thing it definitely is NOT is promo”, using a public blog to draw attention to a 'private' instagram account that has been known and publicly said to be Harry's for a year, or having the pair go for an outing to a restaurant OWNED BY THE AZOFFS are going to sway people from thinking this is laughably fake, WELL. Just call ME a news outlet cause I have a breaking story for them about how likely that is...

Zayn, who has been tweeting about UFC (and ONLY UFC) all this last year, has moved into doing more official spon-con for them, which I guess retroactively explains why he was publicly tweeting about just this one single thing. Anyway, he posted a blurry pic of swag they sent him, including a big ass prize belt (“the belt is a naughty little touch” uhh okay calm down) and later he tweeted about a fight. Niall also tweeted about the same fight (along with many golf related posts) and I never thought I'd think Niall tweeting about sports was anything other than from the heart but damn! Now I gotta ask, is he getting paid too? Meanwhile stans- “so is UFC football?” “no I think it's basketball...?” TBH not sure we're the ideal audience for this ad content lol, but get that coin boys! (I'm gonna be real with you guys, I thought it was boxing this whole time AND not a single one of you corrected me so we are no better over here: it turns out it's Mixed Martial Arts fighting!) Niall also posted a bunch of golf related things which I would never question his passion for but even so, that is promo too, for his golf management company. So a business day all around.

Liam posted a very cool black and white studio shot of him singing into a mic from a couch with guitars piled everywhere captioned “naming songs is the hardest part, any suggestions?” LP2 is coming trended on twitter for hours, but idk if there were any good song title suggestions in there. Zayn posted a pic, with of course a swipe up to his website, which has a cool new layout and now says to check back weekly for new pages of the NIL inspired comic book.

Everyone is posting memes of Bernie with Harry like they don't even care about poor Barack's feelings! First the Forum added Bernie to the picture of Harry watching the teardown of the last night of HSLOT, Beauty Papers has Bernie hanging out with Harry in fishnets (er, Harry in fishnets: not Bernie), and Jeff posted Fine Line ft Bernie-- it's really the mitten in place of the black glove that makes it!

A barrage of anons hand wringing about instagram follows and likes were sent out to larrie blogs and universally blown off by everyone saying that nothing we were seeing was particularly suggestive of anything at all. Like clockwork, 24 hours later Olivia publicly followed Harry's supposed private account (like is it his account, sure, seems like it, is it his actual secret private life not for us to know about account, well clearly not entirely ya know?). Okaaaay? I mean gold star I can see you're really trying to incorporate feedback or whatever ('please believe me don't you see' indeed!) but uh, they're still not dating? Anyway in case fans weren't paying close enough attention, someone made very sure people would know about it by submitting to gossip page DeuxMoi. Well big deal, ofc they did, except DM increasingly appear to be entangled with the back end of this whole thing-- they have been posting a barrage of Holivia content from day one much of which seemed like it was coming from the PR desk rather than organic submissions, and equally significantly, NOT posting submissions contradicting the Holiva party line, and have become such a mouthpiece for the whole business that the tabs now seem to be using them as a source for Holivia reporting. Oh yes, all very organic indeed! Meanwhile those tabloids report that Harry and Olivia are ramping things up, that they are taking things slow, that they want to have children, that they are very professional on set, that “everyone knew” on set, that they chose to take things public, that they didn't know the paps were there, and, perhaps most peculiar of all, that Harry isn't a fan of marriage! Maybe they should get a better source...

Episode 2 of Liam's Play On is out-- it's his weekly podcast co-hosted with sports annoucer Jaydee Dyer where they interview FIFA stars and musicians about football and favorite songs with a focus on inspirational positivity (sincerely do they use madlibs to come up with ideas for Liam's projects??) Lots of Liam chat and reminiscing! He talks about meeting various famous people, including mentioning getting to do free kicks with football legend Ronaldo (very topical!) and says “I just think back to those times of being in the band and it was just so much more chill and everything was just happening around us, and then life just hits you in the face” and “I feel like life just wants to throw you a different lemon everyday, you just have to take it” (is this... positivity?) and about how early in COVID lockdown he was making dance music at home all the time- “I went back into producing. My house was like living in Ibiza, like a nightclub most days.”

He also gets excited to learn one of his guests is calling in from LA and says “I love LA! I miss it!” Well, maybe so, but not enough to call off the sale of his LA house: that's right, many price drops later, Liam has finally unloaded the haunted LA mansion, and the buyer was a high profile directioner-- Halsey! While lots of fans might be fascinated by that house's rich history of being used as a location for various staged moments, or just want their very own garden tea house, it's not just anyone that can manage to pay $10 million, so a perfect fit there. And speaking of unobtainable real estate, Hello! has discovered where Harry's $6.4 million NYC apt is and decided to publish a picture of the building. Most of us could never afford to live there, but now anyone can go bother Harry in person when he's in NY, how lovely :/

Zayn remains MIA, which is not normally newsworthy but it's his fault it's worth comment for saying he was going to do lives “every night this week.” It was a suspect premise, we shouldn't have been taken in, but alas, hope springs eternal! Last night's listening party was uneventful, and it seems our Tues surprise was maybe the limited merch? A teaching assistant from Zayn's childhood school shared a poster he signed and sent to her a few months ago, that was a nice surprise, but not I think what they meant.  It says “thanks for having patience with a very mischievious child... you know me as Zain :)” and she shared some memories-- “he was a bit shy... he was always polite and well mannered... I said he'd break hearts when he got older but I wasn't prepared for him actually doing that on this scale lol” and more cute things, as well as that he donated enormous christmas trees and decorations to the school a few years ago.

Pitchfork gave Zayn a bad and condescending review, which was easily predictable based on everything else they've ever written, but then they took the bizarre step of changing the opening to it in response to ztan outrage, though ofc leaving all the negative parts in. It originally opened with “five days after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, as the Congress lurched towards a second impeachment, Zayn tweeted his phone number...” which they then changed (“for clarity”) to “amid the constant political turmoil that has shaken the foundations of American democracy” but WHY? That does nothing to correct the implied framing of Zayn as an American artist in situating his promo with relation to U.S. political events; do they know he's British?? But mostly-- you don't like the album, fine, but don't try to pretend it's because you have some moral high ground for disapproving of his release date, you know? Give me a break.

With two Zayn lives behind us, fans were excited to think they'd gotten an idea of what to expect and settled in, ready for another late night/early morning live-- to no avail! The sun rose all around the world with no sign of Zayn, except an ad bit for the Harry Potter game thing (a video of him being like "I updated my avatar to show my new hair" with his hair from last month) and him demo-ing the NIL insta filter (it's a little video game!) We were told to expect a surprise today, remember, as of press time I remain unsurprised, but with us going on Zayn Standard Time for this promo one could argue that there are still like 13 hours left in today! Some zquad (pronounced zgwad as Zayn helpfully sounded out on the last live though tbh I think the time he spelled out how to pronounce it was funnier) were hopeful that today's live was delayed for zomething more exciting, and some justified his absence like so: technically the first ones were after midnight where he was, so if you go by what DATE they were done on, he's already done today's! I mean... I GUESS. Anyway, (Nobody is) Listening Parties were scheduled for today, the second of three days they'll happen on; one of today's already happened without any major excitement but the other is this evening sooo? Surpise me! The earlier one featured exclusive merch, a cool t-shirt which you can also get by tuning in tonight, and the Zaynbot in action ("are you excited?!" "who wants some airhorn?"). And for now, there is a playlist takeover on spotify (Pop and Play playstation playlist). 25 Zayn curated songs and a new picture (from an old photshoot) for the cover! Note that only the first 25 songs on the playlist are his picks though, not the ones below. And NIL was the most played album on spotify this weekend worldwide! Nice. I also am enjoying seeing pictures of the big promo posters in cities all over the world, very cool looking.

A slow completely dead news day except for Zayn doing a live... which is bizarre sentence to write tbh wow, 2021 is already weird af too huh?! Anyway, Zayn live #2! Again, mostly loud music (NIL obvs) you couldn't quite hear him over and Z just being like what you can see my pretty face, what more do you want, but he said a little bit more this time. Maybe it was because he liked typing in the cool alien font he found, which is also the only thing that actually gets him talking out loud; he complains about people not liking his fonts and then gets excited about the supporters, "eeey somebody said wonderful font king! see?!" but the real news here is he also said WOOPSEH DAISY, now that's what I'm here for. Anyway he used his fancy font to say that he's getting a tattoo for the album today and will show us it tonight, that pineapple on pizza is great, and to defend his fonts. He gets someone to make him a microwave pizza and eats it after the topic comes up ("I bet they're makin memes out of me eating pizza", lol, zelf aware king), wishes they had chips, and talks about missing samosas. And! Actual news! He said “so I seen some people askin if I did the album artwork-- and the answer is yes! I painted it” and he said the Vibez video was his concept and “new video soon”! Also soon-- more new music?! He’s been working on new music nights it seems, then doing the very late lives (5:30 am EST this time, 4 am last time), and says this time that he just finished a sick song and that he’s “working on Z4 at the mo”! UMMM? WOW.

Zayn tweeted “yo who's listening,” yes yes very clever, but the real news is Zayn did a LIVE (omg??) and said he was going to be on again EVERY NIGHT THIS WEEK (OMG??!) Live #1 is him vibing to NIL, smoking weed, reading comments, a little crooning along, and he answered some questions, which you could barely hear over the music. He said his favorite song on the album is Connexion (he didn't comment on the possible kazoo on the track but if it's really the next single as rumored we'll get more chances to explore that), cracks up at someone asking whether he can sing while he's high, but mostly just chilled for like 20 minutes! For us! Then it cut off abruptly and he posted “battery died see you tomorrow,” with a cute fanart. Stuff he said in chat, well first off just a smattering of yeses which showed up under various random questions, thannnnks for confusing people Z, plus: "was workin on some new stuff tonight," "got some other cool shit," "so proud of this album," "Baba Malik," and "deadass thanks." The NIL truck, Vibez van, Calamity mobile, whatever it is-- it's got West Coast clone now and is out and about, driving around to visit people at home around LA and give them their chance inside the decorated black lit interior. Zayn reposted the California peoples' videos of them enjoying the inside of it with their masks and with the official camera crew filming it all, including Ingrid Michaelson, Vanessa and Natalia Bryant, Tanya Rad, and Syd (with her dog!), who posted more about When Love's Around too; “We wrote and recorded this song in an Airbnb in San Pedro lol along with some other chunes you guys are bound to hear one day”. “Siiiiiick” Zayn said to Jojo– the set up is exactly the same as the NY van but did he actually see that one in person, no reason to think so tbh.

Jeff Azoff, the man responsible for One Night Only at the Forum, perhaps the most poorly organized event since Dashcon (I won't even go into that Superbowl concert where attendees were forced out of the leaking venue into filthy knee high water and a major tropical storm and left stranded on an island, as Jeff wasn't the direct promoter of that event), posted his opinion that “if the live event industry was tasked with vaccination distribution we would have it done in a weekend, sold t-shirts and beer and a meet and greet with Fauci” and I'm so gobsmacked I can't barely muster anything but a heartfelt THANK GOD they are not in charge of this vital service. They certainly would seize the opportunity of a medical necessity to sell us overpriced merch though, yeah, that part rings hideously true.

But would anyone actually GET that merch or would customers merely hand over the money and hope? Watermelon Sugar vinyls (sold in July of last year) have for the most part still not arrived, and patience for HSHQ's evasions is wearing extremely thin throughout the fandom. While last year's fire that destroyed one of the only two facilities left in North America making lacquer masters (necessary to manufacture records) could be the source of a bottleneck that would cause this particular delay (and HSHQ not offering Golden on vinyl like they did for every other Fine Line single suggests to me that it is a manufacturing problem and they had realized it by the time that song was released), the failure to provide actual respectful (or really ANY) customer service to the thousands trying to contact them about this or other merch issues (which are less comprehensively horrid but there are plenty) is completely their fault. ...TPWK? Choose Love? <Deadpan Harry voice: ‘okay.’>

Niall, like the legend of the Bloody Mary, was invoked by saying his name thrice; he liked a tweet-- “niall niall niall.” And Olivia Rodrigo talked about how grateful she was for him- “The fact that he reached out to me was amazing. We’ve actually been like texting and he’s giving me like advice on all the craziness of the music industry. It’s been really amazing.”