Baby, Here We Go Again

Louis smiling during walls 

I don’t know that Harry’s team approved this particular sentence in Variety, but the fact that it’s a consistent pattern is why I won’t just excuse this as one journalist going rogue. It’s something we’ve been watching happen for years. And for someone who genuinely loves both Louis and Harry, and all the boys, actually, this has been the second most painful thing to watch over the past five years, only after the neglect and abuse that Louis receives from his team when it comes to his solo career. And it leaves such an ugly taste in my mouth when all I want to do is be excited about new content - I was so fucking excited to see these pictures and this article until I saw that.

The reality is that Harry’s team has been pushing this idea for four years and these kinds of demeaning remarks are included in almost every single article about him. With Harry’s success in the industry and the friendly relationship that his team has with many of these outlets, it seems hard to believe that Harry and his team are powerless to prevent it in every single instance.

I’m glad that Harry speaks positively about the band himself, but he doesn’t say the words One Direction and never mentions any of the boys by name or highlights their achievements. All of them have done that for him. It’s not hard to do, and it would be especially easy for Harry because he has a level of fame where it wouldn’t always become the headline like it so often does for Liam, Niall, and Louis (which I understand is frustrating for any solo artist).

And even if Harry’s vague statements about the band are positive, when you have Stevie Nicks and your co-writers and producers and stylist and the media outlets you and your manager is besties with (everyone from James Corden to HDD to Rolling Stone) ALWAYS saying or heavily implying “yeah, Harry is world’s ahead of One Direction and his former bandmates” and “he’s the only one that’s worth paying attention to,” it becomes very easy for people to interpret Harry’s nice vague words as just him being diplomatic while the true narrative about him being more successful and talented than the rest is reaffirmed repeatedly through everyone else around him.

In 2017, the fact that Harry’s team was pushing this narrative was frustrating, but I was also like, well, he wants to launch his solo career and escape the One Direction thing so that he can have his own career. Four years later when he has has some of the most popular songs of the year, has sold millions of albums, has three Grammy nominations, has been on SNL as a solo artist twice, has two Rolling Stones covers, has a Vogue cover, is one of the most streamed artists on Spotify.....he could talk about his bandmates and acknowledge their work without just saying something like “oh, I loved that band.”