#starting his first tour and then having to cancel it because of covid

[thenextdawn-temporarilyclosed]

Never Grow Up

Word count: 3.0K

Summary: Taylor's still going on tour despite having a teen kid and reader just wants to spend quality time with her but Taylor's too busy. Reader thought that Taylor would reschedule the tour dates around daughter's birthday until she saw the tour dates being released online. Reader got mad and that was her final straw so the relationship is fractured.

Warnings: angst, single mom, mention of abortion, hurt/comfort

Pairing: Taylor Swift X Daughter!Reader

First time writing for Taylor! Hope you like it💜

———

Being Taylor Swift’s Daughter had it’s own perks and flaws.

She had you in when she was 20, and your father has always been out of the picture. You never got to know him, never met him and never asked about him but as far as you knew, he wasn’t one of the famous Taylor’s exes, he was just a random guy your mother had fallen in love with. She never talked about him, not her, or her family and since the subject was apparently so delicate, not once did you ever dare ask. There weren’t any pictures in the house, not in photo albums… it seemed like everyone had tried deleting his existence.

However it’s not like you ever needed a father figure. Your family always made you feel loved, you had all the attentions you could ever ask for and you have always been happy, no matter where you were in the world. However the first years of your life weren’t easy for your mother. She was still very young herself, but at the same time she was supposed to be going on tours, concerts and make her fans happy, all while also having to take care of you. Thankfully, her mother was a big help in that too. She would help take care of you and watch you when Taylor was on concerts. She was busy, yes but she always, always made time for you, no matter where you were around the world, wether it be a couple days, and some times even a full week, depending on bow busy her schedule was.

Were you a fan of hers? Yes, of course you were. You have no reminiscence of when you were younger, buy ever since you turned 5 you had been going to every concert of hers. You would either stay in the backstage, or in the booth with your grandma, Andrea, with one of the best views in the stadium, and slowly people had started to acknowledge you too. Taylor had never publicly talked about you, buy everyone knew she had a daughter, and it was easy to know it was you, because you were identical, you were like Taylor’s mini-me, and also because of her song “Never Grow Up” which she wrote and published when you were just one year old. You knew every single one of her songs, you screamed each and every one of them while at times Andrea filmed you and posted it on her social, which is how Taylor’s fans found your social and start following you as well.

Going a bit back in time, when she took a break from music, you were just 7, you hoped to spend more and more time with her and you did, but to an extent. Her mental health wasn’t the best, and she was always busy writing/recording songs and getting ready for her next tours, so her time with you became less and less and less, to the point where you’d rarely get to spend time with her, however, you tried. 

During Covid you finally got to spend so much time with her, after her Lover Tour was canceled. That’s when you decided to follow in on her footsteps. You were 11 and you already knew how to play the guitar, but you wanted to learn how to play the piano as well. One night you were supposed to be sleeping but you couldn’t, so you went where you knew your mom would be. She was in the soundproof room playing the piano and humming, trying to get ideas for a new song. You stood there at the door, waiting for your mom to acknowledge you. That happened pretty soon. She turned around and saw you standing there, in your pjs as you were holding your favorite teddy bear. Taylor smiled brightly at you and beckoned you to walk over to her.

“Hey little one, why aren’t you asleep yet?” She asked in a low, soothing voice. “I can’t sleep” you said in a tired voice, rubbing your eyes as Taylor made you sit in her lap sideways, so that you were laying your head on her shoulder and she could look at you. She kissed your nose and cheeks and forehead, before moving some wild hair away from your face. “How about I sing to you?” She said with a smile, you looked up at her with your big, wide, sweet (e/c) eyes expectantly and she didn’t even need a reply before she started playing “Never Grow Up” on piano. That song is originally meant for a guitar but here she was, playing it on piano and singing it, turning it into a lullaby only for you to hear.

You were asleep in a matter of seconds, and even though Taylor noticed, she still continued singing until the song was over and then she picked you up and put you into her own bed, staying snuggled up to her for the night, feeling as safe as ever in your mother’s arms. “I love you little one” she whispered.

That was the last time your mother sang something to you.

The last time she cuddled you.

The last time she told you she loved you.

A few weeks after she started planning her Eras Tour. She needed everything ready in such a short matter of time, setlist, choreographies, stage shape and instruments, transitions, lights and all the stuff regarding a regular concert. Not a day went by without her on the phone, or working on her laptop, or in studios either dancing or singing. It was moments like this where you wished you had a father figure. Not even the holidays you two spent together anymore. It was like she had completely forgotten about you, it was like you were just one random person in her house she had to cook for.

Two years later, On another identical night of your mother working, you decided to disturb her, just this once. “Hey mom” you said, walking over and sitting next to her on the couch. She was leaning forwards to the table where her laptop was placed. However, she didn’t reply to you. “Mom?” You asked again. You heard her sigh as she gave you an answer, not taking her eyes off the screen. “Yes, sweetie?” She asked, “Can we watch a movie tonight? Maybe we can order McDonalds and watch something?” You said as you leaned in closer to her, laying your head on her shoulder. “(Y/N) I can’t, I’m busy” she said and for a moment you were quiet as you looked towards the screen of her laptop, you could see she was scheduling the dates for the concert. You just hoped she would have a free day on your fourteenth birthday, like she promised.

“Oh come on, it’s just a movie, only for tonight. Please?” You pouted and wrapped your arms around her, hoping this might convince her. “I said in busy. Tour starts soon and I still need to figure out a few dates” she said and you groaned. “Please mom, we haven’t cuddled in a while-“ she interrupted you by removing your arms around herself. “I said no, (Y/N)!” She said, raising her voice which made you look at her with wide eyes, and kind of in shock. She never raised her voice at you until now. “God these days you’re so bothering, just go sleep!” You knew she didn’t mean it, but in this moment you couldn’t help but be hurt at her words. She couldn’t even be bothered to look at you when you got up and ran to your bedroom, locking yourself in as you cried into the pillow.

That was the last time you asked your mother to cuddle you.

From that day on, you barely talked to her. Not that you even needed to, either way. She was still always on the phone. The only differences where the fact that you’d go to your room immediately after lunch, and not stay and watch TV with her, and you’d go to Andrea’s place all day. She noticed you were sadder than usual. She noticed that you were more cuddly with her than usual. She also noticed you were quieter. When she asked if you were okay, you shrugged and said you were, And she also asked Taylor, who replied telling her that nothing was different, and most likely you were just acting up. It was weird to you, how your mother didn’t realize that she was neglecting you and your grandma had realized that just seeing you a couple days.

You ended up telling Andrea what was happening, and she tried to reassure you, saying that she was just nervous for the whole eras tour thing, and when it started things would become easier… but you weren’t sure of that.

A couple weeks later, what you feared became true. You were in your room when your mom made a post on instagram announcing the Eras Tour dates and you scanned through it, until you read it. “KC night 1 7/7/23”. Your birthday. She was having a concert on your birthday. You took your phone and rushed to the living room, where your mom was on the phone with her publicist, Tree. “Mom, seriously??” You asked her, not caring if she was on the phone or not. You heard her sigh “Tree, wait a second” she said and put the phone on mute, looking at me. “What is it?” She asked and you rolled your eyes. “You put a concert date on my birthday” you said and she sighed again. “Can we not do this now? This is important-“ you interrupted her again. “More important than your daughter?” You talked back.

Taylor was silent for a while, before excusing herself with Tree and ending the call, and you repeated what you said. “You put a concert date on my birthday” she nodded, looking confused “yeah, and?” You shook your head. “You had promised me you’d have the day free so you could spend it with me! It’s been a long time since we last had a day together, just you and me…” you looked down, but she didn’t seem to be bothered. “We’ll spend some time together after the concert like we already did.” She looked away from you, eyes back on her phone. “But that’s not what you promised!” You said and raised your voice, making her look at you. “(Y/N), right now, tour’s more important-“ you interrupted her, “then why did you have me?” She looked up back at you, looking more confused than ever.

“Huh?” She asked and only now did she notice that you had tears in your eyes. “Why did you have me if tours are more important than me?” At that, Taylor got up and walked over to you, eyes full of worry and remorse, maybe. “The fact that I’m now busy with tour doesn’t mean that I love you any less” she said and knelt down in front of you. “But you don’t show it! You don’t show that you love me…” You said and she furrowed her brows, even more confused. A couple tears leaving your eyes. “do you remember when was the last time we celebrated my birthday together?” You asked her and saw how she shook her head, thinking of a reply. “It was 6 years ago. I was 8, mom” you said “it was 2017, remember what period it was?” Once again, she didn’t reply, but you both knew what period it was. “When was the last time you told me you loved? I don’t remember it” you didn’t remember it, but Taylor did. You had fallen asleep in her lap and she had just stopped singing you “Never grow up.” She stood up and sighed, watching you cry but she didn’t feel like apologizing would be enough.

“If you knew you weren’t going to have time for me, you could have aborted me” your voice broke as you were saying this, and you rushed back into your bedroom, not knowing that in that precise moment, your mother was bawling her eyes out too. She wanted to spend more time with you, she really did, but at the same rime, she really didn’t have time.

The day of your birthday, you wouldn’t be seeing your mother until the concert. You woke up to no text from her, which made tears well up in your eyes but you quickly blinked them away and went on with your day. Andrea had gifted you a necklace with a dream catcher, which you really liked, but you would have needed no gift if only you could spend your day with your mother, but by now you had given up on that occasion.

The concert went by normally, like any other, and you had spent it in the booth with Andrea, smiling whenever people asked pictures of you as well and exchanging friendship bracelets with them, like grandma had showed you. Soon it was the moment of the surprise songs and you were expecting her to take her guitar, but she didn’t.

She sat at her piano, and started talking. “Well, welcome to the surprise songs” she started and everyone clapped their hands, screaming in joy and adoration. There was a reason behind every surprise song she chose for every night and you were curious as to what tonight’s reasons would be. “On normal occasions I would be playing this song on guitar, but this isn’t a normal occasion” she smiled at what she was about to say, and you furrowed your brows in confusion. Was she talking about your birthday? “As I’m pretty sure all of you know, I have a daughter, her name’s (Y/N)” everyone began cheering even more. Yes, she was talking about your birthday. “I have never talked publicly about her, but tonight’s her birthday, so I wanted to surprise her. She’s here tonight, and she’s in that booth over there with my mom” she pointed over to you with a smile, and everyone cheered again.

“It’s been a rough period for both of us. I’ve been very busy with tour, and she’s been wanting to spend more time with me and I feel like a very bad mother for not being able to give her what she wants, and apologizing doesn’t really work all the time, she’s stubborn as hell” the crowd laughed and you couldn’t help but smile at her words and you leaned into Andrea, who gave you a side hug. “Well anyway as I was saying, this is a very special occasion as it’s her birthday so I’ll play this song on piano instead of guitar, and I would like you all to look at the screen behind me as I play this song. Happy birthday little one, this is for you”

With that, Taylor started playing “Never Grow Up”, the song she wrote about you, for you.

Your little hand’s wrapped around my finger and it’s so quiet in the world tonight Your little eyelids flutter ‘cause your dreamin’ So I tuck you in, turn on your favorite night light

A video started playing on the huge screen behind her. Photos and videos of you as a child with her, both so young and happy. Taylor was smiling brightly and you laughed whenever you were around her and her family, now you understood more the words:

To you everything’s funny you got nothing to regret, I’d give all I have honey if you could stay like that

Oh, darlin', don't you ever grow up Don't you ever grow up Just stay this little Oh, darlin', don't you ever grow up Don't you ever grow up It could stay this simple I won't let nobody hurt you Won't let no one break your heart And no one will desert you Just try to never grow up Never grow up

You started tearing up more with the chorus as you sang along, and behind her more videos of the both of you were being played. No matter where or how Taylor was in life, she always loved you, every day more than the other. A side screen showed her as she was playing this song in this very moment, tears leaving her eyes and more forming in them. As the song came to an end, she spoke again. “Happy birthday babygirl, mama loves you so so much” she said and sniffled, wiping her tears. The crowd was louder than ever, and like other times she stopped to take it all in.

“Can I go to her?” You asked Grandma and she nodded, explaining that she had anticipated this would happen and already had a bodyguard ready and waiting for you. He quickly took you backstage and showed you the way up to the stage, even if you knew it already.

The stage doors opened to reveal you, and everyone cheered even louder as you started running your way to the front of the stage, where your mom was. Taylor turned around to look at you, smiling brightly as she got up and made her way towards you, arms opened for you to get into a tight, warm embrace. When you were finally in her arms, you both cried a bit more as you placed your head on her chest, and her head was right on top of yours. When you pulled back she took her in-ear monitors off, cupped your cheeks, looked at you and said “I love you so so so much, please never forget that”

“I love you too mom” you said almost in between sobs. She kissed your forehead and pulled you into another, tight hug.

[strawnarrries]

Heaven

Summary: Niall is away doing promo for Heaven and you miss him in more ways than one.

Requested: No but I'm always open!

POV: 2nd

Warning(s): Phone sex, masturbation, dirty talk

The phone rang three times before his face popped up on your screen, a grin planted on his lips, "Hey baby!"

"Hi," you mimicked his grin, happy to see his face.

Niall had been in LA doing promo for his new single Heaven as well as his upcoming album. He was going to be gone for a total of five weeks and you knew you were going to miss him like crazy. It had been years since you and Niall were long-distance. It was something you two went through pretty often while he was in the band and as well as his first solo tour. Because of Covid, you have had him all to yourself for almost three years now, so you knew it would be hard for him to leave again.

You would have gone to LA with him, but neither of you wanted to go through the hassle of taking your almost two-year-old son on the road, as well as risking him being seen by the public. Once Niall had officially canceled his tour for Heartbreak Weather, you had decided it was the perfect time to start the family you both had been wanting so dearly. Everybody knew it would be a while before things were back to normal, so you knew Niall would be home long enough to be with you throughout your entire pregnancy and the beginning stages of his little one's life.

During that time, he continued to write music, perfecting each song he wrote. Three years later, he realized how much he missed it. He missed interacting with all his fans, going to award shows, and being on tour. All three of you were at a good place for him to get back into the groove of things and start releasing new music, so he did.

"I miss my hubby," you pouted, watching as he started up the car and began driving to your LA home.

"Aw, I miss ya too. What time is it there?"

"Like midnight."

"What'rya doin' up?"

"I couldn't sleep," you hummed softly.

"Somethin' wrong?" he asked concernedly.

"I just miss you," you replied, your voice deepening slightly.

You missed him; every single part of him. It had been about two weeks since you had last seen him. You missed his touch, his lips, the way he made you feel. You wanted him so bad. You were laying down on his side of the bed, the smell of his shampoo coating his pillow and filling your senses, arousing you even more than you already were.

"Just a few more weeks and I'll be home," he soothed.

"No Niall, I mean I miss you in more ways than one," you replied, slightly frustrated that he wasn't picking up on your hints.

"Oh, I see," he smirked, "yer tryna have phone sex wit' me!"

"Niall!" you groaned into your pillow.

"'s been years since we done that, babe," he teased and you rolled your eyes, "well, 'm on me way home and I've got a few hours before me next interview so I think I can squeeze ya int' me schedule."

"You're so annoying," you teased.

He giggled and began asking you about your day while he drove home. You spoke back and forth, telling each other about your days; you spoke about the funny things your son had done and he spoke about the interviews he already attended. It took him about 45 minutes to get home, LA traffic was not on your side today but once he pulled into the garage, you began to get antsy.

"Are ya naked?" he asked as he walked through the door, setting down his things and taking off his shoes.

"No," you replied.

"Go ahead and get naked fer me," he ordered and you immediately obeyed, taking off every piece of clothing you had on.

It wasn't much later that he was up in the bedroom, discarding his clothing as well, getting as excited as you are, "Makin' me feel like a teenager again, babe."

"I miss you so much," you whispered desperately.

You couldn't resist the urge any longer. You reached your hand down to your throbbing center, fingers pressed against your clit and rubbing back and forth.

"Ya touchin' yerself?" he asked.

"Yeah," you whimpered.

"Wanna see ya, prop yer phone up."

You did as you were told, grabbing his pillow from his side of the bed and setting it down by your feet. You propped your phone up against it, doing your best to put it at the perfect angle for him to see, but still make it look sexy, "Dunno how I ever made this sexy."

"Yer always sexy," he smirked.

After flicking on the bedside table light so he could see you better, you leaned back on your left hand to support your body up. You spread your legs again and resumed your activities while he groaned, "Fuckin' hell, yer soaked. Been thinkin' of me?"

"Mhm, all day. Do you like watching me touch myself?"

"Yes, yer so hot."

He positioned his phone in a similar way as you did, revealing himself to you. His hand was wrapped around his member, already throbbing in anticipation. Once comfortable, he began moving his hand up and down, biting his lip as he watched you please yourself.

Your jaw went slack as you quickened your pace. You could already feel your orgasm growing, in desperate need of a release. You imagined your fingers were his, calloused tips moving back and forth across your clit, sending waves of pleasure throughout your body.

"Talk t' me. What do you wanna do t' me when you get home?" you hummed, wanting to hear his voice.

"Jesus," he groaned, "Everything, babe, I wanna do everything t' ya. I wanna kiss ya and taste ya. Wanna feel you wrapped around me cock. Gonna be so tight fer me once I get home, I just know it."

You whimpered his name as your head lolled to the side, "You always make me feel so good. I wish you were here with me."

"Me too. Not much longer and me fingers will be right where yers are," he breathed out, "Can ya stick one inside of ya?"

You hummed in response, moving south and circling your dripping entrance with the tip of your middle finger. You lifted your head up and watched as you easily slipped it in, feeling just how wet you are. You moved it in and out of you, the sound of your wetness filling the room and Niall cursed to himself. You let out a moan and your eyes fluttered closed.

"Jesus Christ, dis's so hot," he groaned, mostly to himself, "'s it feel good?"

With each entrance, you curled your fingers up, just like he would do. His fingers were much better than yours, longer and able to reach all your special spots. You made yourself feel good, but there was something about Niall's touch that you couldn't fulfill yourself, "Mhm, but not as good as when you do it."

"I know yer body better than ya know yer own, don't I?" he smirked smugly.

You hummed in response, watching as his hand moved up and down his member, squeezing tighter once he got to the tip, precum oozing out with each squeeze. Your mouth watered as you watched him, missing the way he whimpered when you wrapped your lips around him.

"I want you inside me so bad," you whined, your head lolling back again, "You fill me up so perfectly, Ni. I feel so empty right now."

"I'd kill t' be inside ya right now. I miss how ya feel around me. Always so wet and warm, fuck," he breathed out in response.

You laid back down on your back, your hips instinctively bucking up into your hand. You slipped your finger out of your entrance and began spreading your wetness. Landing on your clit again, you moved the tip of your finger back and forth at a more rapid pace, your orgasm drawing closer and closer by the second.

"'m gonna cum," you whimpered softly.

"Do it, baby. Wanna see ya cum all over yer fingers," he encouraged, his voice deep and raspy.

Only a few seconds later and you could feel the tight band in your stomach begin to unravel. Your orgasm took over your entire body, crashing over you with waves of pleasure. Your back arched and your toes curled as your body was numbed with pleasure. You struggled not to moan, not wanting to wake up your son but you couldn't help the small whimpers that left your lips. Not long after you, you heard the deep groans of your husband on the phone, signaling he had just released too. The sounds of his sexy moans carried you through the end of your orgasm, your body slowly relaxing back into the soft sheets beneath you.

You both lay there in comfortable silence while you regained your breath. You soon reached down and grabbed your phone, pulling the covers up to your neck and watching as he did the same.

"'member dat one time we were havin' phone sex and Harry walked in on us," he giggled at the memory of when he was in One Direction.

"Oh gosh Niall, don't even bring that up, I was so embarrassed."

"'m just glad it was Harry and not Louis."

"I probably would've never visited you on tour ever again if it was Louis," you chuckled softly.

"Yer so cute," he grinned as you blushed slightly before he shifted the conversation, "Ya feel better?"

You shook your head.

"No?" he asked.

"Mm mm. I still miss you."

"Few more weeks. I promise. Now get some sleep."

You yawned, "okay."

"Goodnight, baby. I love ya," he hummed softly.

"Goodnight. I love you, Ni."

[foxes-that-run]

Why do I have a feeling that HS4 is coming a lot sooner than we expect? Co-opLive opens in April? I'm thinking maybe we have a single until then. And the potential of him being the first performer there and doing an ONO for HS4 like he did with Harry's House. I get so excited just by the thought of it.

I hope he will open co op live with an ONO, that also lines up with the rumours about a sphere residency in May, is same Grammy cycle his albums have been in and has a 9 month break. It’s hard to gauge how much the pandemic messed with how spaced out his albums have been.

What he said was:

“We’re going to finish these shows and then I’m going to go away for a little bit” he also said “these last couple of years”

In the last show he said something like:

In English: The last 2 years have been the greatest experience. In the Italian part, based on those captions he said something like it is time for me to rest, I’m very tired but happy I will have fun as if it was the last

I think it’s the Italian part that has everyone writing him off forever, he didn’t say that in English as far as I can tell.

He had a break of 18 months between 1D and releasing HS1, but also did a lot of work then because it was his first album, he was in the studio within 3 months of leaving the band and filmed the behind the scenes and Sign of the Times video.

He had another touring break of 18 months between covid cancelling show and LOT starting, but recorded HS3 and filmed 2 movies in that time. He was in the studio after a few weeks.

If the April theory is true it would have been a 9 month break, he was seen with Tom and Tyler 3 months into it. I think HS4 was probably well progressed when the tour ended.

It’s anyone’s guess, I hope for an April release. If not, the end of year will be as long as any other break he’s taken but they’ve been touring breaks, he kept working.

[undertheniall]

The Louis cancellation. Asian leg was to start in about a week. About 15 hours ago, the promoter posted a bare bones announcement - tour cancelled across all of Asia, refunds will be issued. (There were rumors about this bouncing around twitter yesterday, which is its own problem.) No other info. in that initial announcement. NOTHING from LTHQ or Louis himself. Went about 12 hours before we heard anything. Then it was LTHQ with a post on his official website — we’re sorry, Louis really wanted to do this, and basically nothing else. Still nothing from Louis.

1) people are understandably concerned about Louis and those close to him. Sure he drinks and smokes, but he’s a professional when it comes to touring. Just like Niall. Louis broke his arm twice this past year, kept touring. Fulfilled a performance commitment three days after his mother died Not saying this is exceptional among performers, but just saying this really is unprecedented for Louis.

2) people are pissed at LTHQ. No matter what is going on with Louis, and pls let it be nothing awful, but regardless, the delay in LTHQ’s response is inexcusable. Disrespectful to fans and just pathetic. Their statement should’ve gone out at the same time as the promoter’s announcement. Even if they were ambushed by the announcement, unlikely since twitter knew, it shouldn’t have taken 12 hours to put out a short, basic PR blurb that contained zero substantive info. A high school intern could’ve written it in ten minutes. Not that we have a right to all details, esp with personal stuff, but the content was so basic there is zero excuse for the delay.

3) again, really hoping it’s nothing personal, but pics unveiling new tattoos came out a couple days ago. If and only if nothing bad happened personally between then and the cancellation announcement, it’s not ok he hasn’t posted. He will fully deserve criticism around it.

I’m so sorry. Please feel free to ignore this and not contaminate your blog! I’m going to go listen to Heaven. 🫡

Louis ranter here. Lord knows I don’t want to subject you to other Louies coming over here to argue. Please feel free to 💯 ignore me. Maybe this summary is better: unclear if Louis is ok. haven’t heard from him directly. Terrible communication by everyone involved. People are worried and pissed. Much more concise! 🥴

Please don’t block me for coming back! But I can’t not mention that Louis just tweeted. Don’t know how to paste it here. “Absolutely gutted we couldn’t make it out to the shows this month. I’ll be back! I’m sorry to anyone affected. Love you all!!” We’ll likely never know anything about what really happened. As Louis’ chest tattoo says, “it is what is.”

.

Heeey hahaha def not blocking you don't worry! I just put all your 3 messages in one so it's clearer 😊

Damn that is some mess! I understand why people are upset tbh. Especially because you didn't even get an explanation. Like I remember Shawn mendes canceling part of his tour and he posted about feeling anxious and overwhelmed and not being in a good headspace to tour and everyone understood. But with this... So strange!!!

Also the lack of announcement from him first is weird... Or at least to me but maybe it's because I experienced niall canceling his tour when covid hit and he was the one to announce it and apologise and everything. Like I know they all hire people to do these stuff for them but canceling a tour is a huge deal so I like when artists take 2 min out of their lifes to inform the fans themselves you know.

Now I really want to know what happened jsisksksksks like anyone has any guesses? 👀👀

[lettersfromleslie]

TOUR FADES / FINGER DAYS / & THE TWISTY PATH UNSCROLLIN AHEAD

Welly well, much has happened since I last wrote ya, as ever. The new album, "Halfway Home" went live on August 5th. There was a slammed release show at the Sultan Room. Vinyl records, CDs, and cassettes started tip-toeing their way out into the world. A hectic and sweaty phase of nightly park busking. And then off on my first tour since 2014, an 11-date meander around Central Europe.

What a lot of ground to cover! Especially looking back at it from the start of this next phase of lassitude and healing. I reckon I'll just not cover most of it, for now. It's out of sight, out of mind. I'm back in my place in Brooklyn, with a garbled head and a bandaged finger, all of it behind me, and little idea of what comes next. I always knew the old lost feeling of having-put-something-out would find me once I got home, but it's been stepped up some because of my damn finger.

The finger phase, that's how I'll remember this time. Here's what happened: Two thirds of the way through the tour, in Slovakia, on my way from Bratislava to a concert Nitra, I caught my left index finger in an especially slicey metal door. One minute I was whistling away, thinking bout my set, looking forward to diving into some Raymond Chandler on the train ride over, and the next I'm looking in complete disbelief at my finger, half the damn tip hanging off and the blood starting to flow. A lot of paper towels, a panicked ride to the hospital, a very sheepish phone call with my Slovakian booking agent from the E.R. waiting room, asking her to cancel the night's performance. And then a big, serene Slovakian surgeon preparing the needle and thread. "Do you think you could give this finger a bit of extra love?" I mumble, lying down on the operating table, hot on top of everything else because I'm still wearing my coat (too much blood and paper towels to take off). "I mean, not doubting you, but I really need that finger to be okay. I'm a guitar player. I'm here on tour." "You play the guitar? For work?" "Yeah." "You should take better care of your hands, then!" "Well, yeah." "How long before you go home?" "About two weeks." He looks at me laconically. "I think you will not be playing guitar in two weeks." My finger was anasthetized, disinfected, stitched up, bandaged. I was worried about the bill because I have no health insurance. As it turned out, the out-of-pocket cost of stitching up a finger in Slovakia comes to $37.10. So that was something.

Depressing conversations followed, of course. Everyone around me took it as a given that the remaining four dates would be cancelled. I refused to consider it... I figured that as much as I love noodling around on the guitar, I'm a yodeler first. Shit, even if the crowd showed up and I was just standing there in a hospital gown with me finger in the air, mumbling apocalyptic verses, that sounded like less of a bummer than if I cancelled. Besides, I had other acts to consider - the lovely Andrea Bucko, a local celeb in Bratislava, was opening the following night, and after that two shows with my old friend Karl who would open with his act Interbellum. Even if I bombed I wanted to give them a chance to play. So, what can you play without a left index finger? Started looking around for autoharps. I found out that Bratislava is not a great place to search for autoharps. I started looking around for keyboards. As luck would have it one of our contacts in Bratislava was able to loan us a small Yamaha keyboard - one of those slightly cheesy-sounding jobs with the built-in speakers, drum patterns, and an unnecessary amount of functions. I stayed up half the nite trying to re-arrange my songs for keys while taking breaks to ice me throbbing fingey. As good a way as any to keep yer mind off the catastrophes...

I was thinking about David Byrne the whole time. Last January Ariel and I had snagged tickets to see his American Utopia show on Broadway, and days before the concert half his band had tested positive for COVID. Rather than cancel the show, he'd written all ticket holders a breathless email in which he wrote that he would be happy to refund or change our tickets, but that we should know he and the remaining band members were creating an "Exciting new show, a show you'll never, ever see again, a 'Once in a Lifetime' experience, that will only be seen for a few performances!" What was striking was how badly he still seemed to want us to come. Every seat was filled in that theater that nite. And all through the chaotic, stripped-down performance, Byrne and his band did everything they could to make the crowd feel like they really were getting something special, something that attendees of the regular show wouldn't experience. For the crew it must've been a nightmare, but for us in the crowd it was inspiring.

So I'd like to thank D.B. for that one, as well as his music. That's the attitude I took to putting together a new set... And the show went on, eh? I stumbled and gaffed plenty, but I made sure everyone was in on it. "We'll always have this, me darlings" - said jokingly, but I meant it - "Up to the days of our deaths we'll always have Stubby Bob's Fingerless Roadshow - for your eyes and ears only. Enjoy!"

Hell, I'm proud for seeing it thru. And I hope everyone does remember it. Aside from Nitra, the day of the slice, not a show was cancelled.

That was that. Ariel joined for the last part of the tour and we flew back to NYC via Romania, a country we'd both always wanted to visit. Took a night train from Budapest to Sibiu, going thru the grotesque learning process of changing a finger bandage in our rattling sleeping compartment. Spent a week slinking about Transylvania, dragging me mummyfinger around the vampire-kitsch of the local tourist industry. Spooky season. Just right. Blew some tour money. Pushed off the reckoning.

Anyway, here it is, that reckoning. Out of work I be for a while, sitting on my arse in Brooklyn watching the weather turn from gold to grey, signing bills for suture removal and hand specialists. No workers comp for DIY busker bum tours, chappies. You just pay the dang bill. As part of my ongoing effort to never have a real job, I'm planning to go out into the parks all the same to tell fortunes and improvise poems for finger money. Can I predict the future..? Guess we'll see.

And you - have you listened to the new record yet then, eh? If you're here reading this, I reckon so. I'm doing two long-form bits here back to back - keep scrolling for my post-partum thoughts on the new baby. What a lot of luv I have for those songs. Every one I send out into the world feels like a form of life insurance.

[codywolfefamouscountrysinger]

#CodyWolfe @CodyWolfeMusic

​Cody Wolfe’s “Better Without You” music video gained nearly over 57k in 48 hours streams after a mass message was sent asking fans to stream the song to support Wolfe after his July 27th show at The Bijou Theater in Bridgeport Connecticut was canceled over a Rebel flag post on Twitter.

“It’s horrible, people have no freedom of speech anymore,” says Wolfe “People gotta start standing up to this Bull $hit, a lot of great southern people fought and died for that flag to honor something they believed in, I don’t cuss out your Pride flag, you don’t tread on my Rebel flag” Wolfe’s mostly conservative country music fan-base supports his music and is all for freedom of speech.

“Oh I made it a point to go after the conservative fanbase, I want people that support music. Not people who want to cancel it. Hell, I’d tour with Kid Rock, Morgan Wallen, or John Rich any day. I support people and artists who have the nerve to speak up or to be themselves that’s the trouble with this world. No more freedom to be yourself and everyone forced to be someone they are not. Every venue that tried to screw me in the past has gone out of business, every single one, I offered to pay the Bijou Theater to secure a spot, feeling bad for local venues post Covid and I was dead positive I would make the money back from the show so I figured I’d do everything I could to help. I’ve seen it mentioned he was struggling to keep his doors open. But when he canceled my show just like that because of a Tweet I honestly hope people stop supporting him. You see what happened when they tried to cancel Morgan Wallen. I know it’s lofty comparing myself to him but they are pulling the same $hit with me they did with him. My fans will not stand for it, they’ve already shown their support.

The venue owner called me on the phone and said “I don’t want the Facebook Group Fairfield Mom’s seeing I booked an artist with a Rebel Flag on his page, if I lose her support I will go out of business” caring more about a Facebook page with 4,000 members then an artist with 10 Million views on his song and a massive local email list. I couldn’t believe how stupid it was” says Wolfe. One email I could put this guy right out of business but I’m not a jerk, I’d rather fans stream my song in to prove a point! Not only will we not back down, but we are ready to Bring Country Back!

I’m also gonna make a song about this you can bet on it” says Wolfe, pleased to see a large bump in both iTunes downloads and YouTube Streams from his fans joining together in support. His song “Better Without You” which came out in 2021 has amassed 10 Million total views and charted #1 in 3 countries on iTunes Digital Sales Charts. The song hasn’t seen much of a jump in streams since its initial release as marketing campaign funds tend to be spent elsewhere. This was the first genuine organic bump in streams since the song's release.

Show your support for Freedom Of Speech and Stream Cody Wolfe!

[timandlucy]

hi suz! i'm sorry it's been a hot minute, it's been a little crazy on my end, and i didn't want you to think i was neglecting you! are you feeling any better? being sick is always the worst, but this time of year it definitely lingers much longer than anyone wants it to.

kdsbflkbdsglkdhas the hallmark christmas movies are basically always the same, but that's why i find them comforting. i like knowing that it's all going to turn out okay in the end lol very few stick with me, but the ones that stick definitely stick!

linstead <333333 i started watching chicago pd because i love sophia bush and totally loved linstead. i also love upsted...can you tell that i just love jay in general? lol i have...THOUGHTS about how they wrote him off but...anyway, i would definitely love to read your linstead fic 👀

pride and prejudice is just...brilliant. that feels like such a basic way to describe it, but that's what it is. jane austen was a genius. i have heard a lot about the chesapeake bay saga, and i'm glad to hear that you enjoy it! i love found family so i'll have to check it out!

i'm so excited that you'll be going to the eras tour multiple times next year! i love that journey for you! is there a certain set that you're most excited for? i can't wait to go the eras tour again next year, i'm already planning my outfit and my show is at the end of next year lol

ohhhhh romancy books! okay, uh i absolutely loved ashley poston's the dead romantics (i need to read the seven year slip). the bright falls series by ashley herring blake (deliah green doesn't care, astrid parker doesn't fail and iris kelly doesn't date) is super fun, as is the written in the stars series by alexandria bellefleur (written in the stars, hang the moon, count your lucky stars) and i always recommend emily henry for great romances. i also really like rachel lynn solomon and loved her latest, business or pleasure! i'd be happy to give more recs, just let me know what kind of books you're interested in!

awwwww i'm so glad that resonated with you 🧡 that means so much to me. oh, yes, once ss is over i'll definitely tell you what it is lol

how're things going with you? what has your week been like/what are you looking forward to? lots of love! - secret sleuth 🧡 🔎

Omg not at all! I know you have a life and all, and you're spoiling me with messages anyway, so don't worry! I am feeling better, but there's some lingering cough that I can't seem to get rid of. Soon I hope.

And yes, absolutely! You always know without fail that the main characters will end up together and there will be a happy ending. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.

Yeah that's the same reason I started watching it! And yeah I totally know what you mean, they really butchered his character. Okay, since you asked, this is the fic I'm still most proud of to this day, it's called Wish That You Were Here, and please feel no pressure to read it!

I'm so thrilled to just go, my friend and I had tickets for Lover Fest but it got cancelled because of Covid, so I am hoping nothing comes up this time! I'm super excited to scream the Cruel Summer bridge, obviously dreaming about my ideal surprise songs, but I'm really excited for the folklore and evermore sets, those are the ones we didn't really see live much and she made it so stunning. The willow in the movie is just wow (I'm speechless) and also my tears ricochet. I'm so excited to see those live. Which were your favorites the first time you went?? And don't remind me my original outfit idea fell through so now I'm not sure what I'm wearing. If push comes to shove I'll just wear my cruel summer t-shirt and jeans and do the lover heart around my eye or something haha.

Those all sound amazing and I will be checking them out! I've had emily henry on my list forever but then I saw some reviews that were like pretty negative and I have to admit in that moment that swayed me because I was pretty pressed for time at the time. But I'll have to give her a shot now that you mention it. Thank you so much for these recs!

My week was okay, I was still on sick leave till wednesday and then worked on thursday, friday and saturday. I took a nap yesterday that I only woke up from this morning. My neck hurts quite a bit, I think I strained a muscle because I'm sleeping with more pillows because of my cough. And I was working on my own ss gift, which is a little scary but mostly fun!

How about your week? Are you getting more into the festive spirit as the holidays approach?

Lots of love right back to you!

[dancewithlou]

I have you been following the solo careers of all the 1D guys? I was just talking to a friend about my observations and it dawned on me how radically different they have all been.

Zayn I had a strong first album, his streaming numbers were excellent, and had a massive movie theme song hit with Taylor. Since then he just quietly released his songs that still do very well on streaming platforms.

Liam literally get it out of the park with his first song STD. Since then he’s crashed and burned and it’s been very difficult to watch.

Niall started out so strong! His second album launched right as Covid started, and he had very little luck selling his second tour and ended up canceling it. His team regrouped got him a judge position on a US music show all inserting him into the festival lineup. This has given him great exposure and now his tour and album are both selling well.

Harry bought his success with power, influence and $. Then Louis. He’s tragedies along with mental hang ups paired with management teams and labels that didn’t prioritize him caused many waisted years that prevented him from capitalizing on the 1D fans the others benefited from. It’s fascinating to see how the industry ppl you surround yourself with actually have a massive impact.

I was a massive 1D fan when they were together then they went solo and I like dropped out of the fandom for a couple of years I still listened to their singles they released but was only ever truly properly interested to see what Louis was doing.

But I did follow their careers as solo artists for a while.

Liam I followed until he released LP1 which I didn’t even properly like him before that but I definitely didn’t like him after that and he then solidified it for me with that weird interview he did last year. I agree his career took off really well to begin with but it was one thing after another and his terrible debut album that really sucker punched his career I think.

Niall I followed for a while, never had anything against him I just find him a little erm plain I suppose, he’s a wannabe in my eyes and while he’s very talented he just doesn’t do it for me, I really enjoyed heartbreak weather though and he definitely deserves better with that album.

I still listen to Zayn but don’t follow his career as such if that makes sense. I think with Zayn I really appreciate his talent and he deffo deserves to get more recognition I don’t think he really wants it? I think he likes how things are and that’s good for him people need to stop pushing this whole ‘if he toured or did promo like Harry he’s be bigger than him’ cause he clearly doesn’t want that.

I stopped following Harry not long after I saw him in concert June 2022, I agree much of his career is based on money and power and knowing the right people, connections are so much more important than people realise in that industry.

And Louis I obviously still follow him and his career he was always my favourite and always will be, seeing how far he’s come despite the challenges he’s faced with his career is impressive and has inspired me to be more resilient. Not only that but he is sooo talented.

I used to be ot5 because when I came back into the fandom in 2017/18 I thought that was the only option you either follow them all or you’re not a real fan? The logic is sooo dumb.

But yes I agree with you the shape and direction all of their careers as solo artists have taken has been interesting to watch and quite mind boggling in many ways. I’ll be interested to see what happens in the future.

[yessadirichards]

'So sorry': Celine Dion cancels 2023-2024 shows over health

PARIS

Pop icon Celine Dion has canceled all her remaining shows scheduled for 2023-2024, saying she was not strong enough to tour as she battles a rare neurological disorder.

The 55-year-old Canadian revealed last year that her condition -- Stiff-Person Syndrome -- was affecting her singing.

"I'm so sorry to disappoint all of you once again... and even though it breaks my heart, it's best that we cancel everything until I'm really ready to be back on stage," the "My Heart Will Go On" singer tweeted.

"I'm not giving up... and I can't wait to see you again!" she added.

A statement released by her tour said: "With a sense of tremendous disappointment, Celine Dion's Courage World Tour today announced the cancellation of all remaining dates currently on sale for 2023 and 2024."

"I'm working really hard to build back my strength, but touring can be very difficult even when you're 100 percent," Dion said in her statement, which was also posted on Instagram.

Dion, one of the top women singers with an octave-busting voice, is the author of hits like "Because You Loved Me", "My Heart Will Go On" and "Think Twice".

In December 2022, she posted a tearful video on Instagram to say she had recently been diagnosed with Stiff-Person Syndrome and would not be ready to start her European tour in February as planned.

She said the disorder was causing muscle spasms and was "not allowing me to use my vocal cords to sing the way I'm used to".

Sufferers commonly experience stiff muscles in the torso, arms and legs, with noise or emotional distress known to trigger spasms.

The cancellations will affect her 16-country tour in Europe which was due to start in Amsterdam in August and conclude with two dates at the O2 arena in London in April next year.

Tickets purchased for the canceled dates will be refunded via their original point of sale, her website said.

Her "Courage World Tour" began in 2019, and Dion completed 52 shows before the COVID-19 pandemic put the remainder on hold.

She later canceled the North American section of the tour due to her health problems.

The dates in Europe were to have been the Grammy-winning singer's first global concert tour in a decade and the first without her husband-manager Rene Angelil, who died from cancer in 2016.

Fans online reacted with disappointment, but wished Dion well.

"Not surprising, but no less sad. Courage to you Celine, we are with you," wrote fan information account @LesRedHeads.

"You don't have to apologize queen! Take care of yourself. Your health should take number one priority," wrote @notaerz.

Dion had sparked hopes of a recovery when she released a new album "Love Again" last month, the soundtrack for a film of the same name, which contained five new songs as well as past hits.

The youngest of 14 children, Dion was born in Quebec, Canada and got her start at 12, when her mother sent a recording of her to Angelil, who mortgaged his own home to finance her first album.

She began singing in French, but started bellowing out hits in English after taking English lessons in the 1980s.

She gained worldwide fame in 1997 with "My Heart Will Go On", the theme to James Cameron's epic film "Titanic".

She parlayed that success into a regular gig at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, playing for audiences night after night for 16 years, with only a few breaks.

[taylorswiftstylequestions]

Happy Thursday, Sarah :) So, a few of my biggest concert regrets (bc as a music lover I have many, lol) were not being able to see Maggie Rogers and Dermot Kennedy live back in 2019, right when they started to blow up and I was just becoming a fan and before covid. Well, last night I got to see Maggie play a sold out show at Radio City Music Hall in NYC and omg, it was insane!! “Feral Joy” could not be a more perfect name for the tour, I was SO happy and you could just feel the joy, even where I was up in the second balcony and I swear at times I could feel the floor shaking. She even brought out David Byrne, who I admit I have no idea who he was until he appeared in the music video for “That’s Where I Am”, and they did a cute little choreo moment when they sang one of his songs together. She was just wonderful! Will you be able to make it to any of her upcoming shows? If not, I hope you are soon <3 I was super excited because over the summer Dermot Kennedy was going to be opening for Shawn Mendes, and it would’ve been my first time seeing them both but sadly SM canceled his tour. But later Dermot Kennedy announced a tour in support of his new album so I’ll be seeing him play Madison Square Garden (!) in June!

BWAHHHHH feeling feelings. I love that you had such a fun time at the show. The closest Maggie is coming to me is Los Angeles sadly so I won't be making it to her show but I love hearing that you had A TIME. That really just makes me so happy hearing all the feels of live music and its magic.

[swimmingleo]

Lol conspiracy theory much

By the way, RAtM cancelled the European tour too. Old man Zack de la Rocha broke his crociatus during the first leg of the US tour, he did the last couple of gigs sitting down on a chair (which I'd say is not the best RAtM experience). Anyway doctors told him he'd better start doing physio and rehab instead of going on a WHOLE FUCKING TOUR.

Either he is not healed yet or he risks fucking up his knee again, and I guess they tried to wait as long as possible to officially call it off, both for concert-goers and financiers and insurance companies (they mustn't be too psyched).

Also usually the labels have little say in tour matters, artist get around a 85% cut of the money on tours, the rest goes to the promoters and venues (or at least it used to work like this, new artists like your boy who came up in a post-streaming world probably have contracts that impinge on touring as well).

(I had tickets to the Zagreb date a couple of weeks ago, me and the bf went anyway because we already had our plane tickets and hotel paid, let me tell ya you could definitely tell our plane was full of Italian forty-somethings that did the very same thing, the same faces flying in on Saturday and back on Sunday)

(RAtM cancelling sucked double because their opening was Run the Jewels, basically two concerts in one)

yesss. i like to entertain some theorizing but providing point A and B, let your brain fill the gaps all the while dismissing counter points as lies or 'fairly vague excuses' is not enough for me, especially when the excuses aren't even vague to begin with and none of them follow a similar line. These artists all being tied to Sony really isn't that coincidental either because those are all big selling names and most likely they are going to be under one of the biggest music companies anyway. One would need to check the number of artists under Warner or Universal that are cancelling shows as well to see whether or not it is an exceptional occurrence on Sony's side. with covid ramping up we can expect more to come

(such a shame your show got cancelled cuz having run the jewels as an opener sounds absolutely fire, talk about a warm up!!)

[maketrust]

Ringo starr today

Starting in Australia, and New Zealand and ending in Hawaii, Starr hopes to wrap the Earth in a wave of peace and love. People are already organizing local events, and details and live streams from the gatherings will soon be available on Ringo’s Facebook page. 20.Īdditionally, on July 7 Starr will welcome friends and fans around the world to join him for his annual Peace and Love birthday celebration, where he invites everyone everywhere to say, post or even just think Peace and Love at Noon their local time. They’ll continue to traverse North America until their shows in Mexico City, Mexico on Oct. The ensemble which is comprised of Starr along with Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Warren Ham, Gregg Bissonette, Hamish Stuart and Edgar Winter will now kick their tour off at Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass. But we were able to reschedule these shows and add them to our Fall tour – and so as the song goes – I’ll see you in September! Peace and love, Ringo.” When the shows were canceled Starr shared a statement that read, “We were having so much fun playing again and it was disappointing to have to stop. Starr had fled there because he had had enough of the strife within the band when recording the White Album.Today Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band shared the updated and revised itinerary for their tour dates set for September, which now includes all 12 of the rescheduled dates they had to postpone after Edgar Winter and Steve Lukather tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, June 7, during the second of three sold-out shows at New York’s Beacon Theater. He just release a new album On October 25 called Whats. According to a 2020 report, Ringo Starr is the richest drummer in the world, clocking in ahead of Phil Collins (estimated net worth of 300 million) and Dave Grohl (320 million). His song "Octopus's Garden" appeared on the 1969 Abbey Road album and was inspired by a trip to Sardinia in August 1968 on the yacht of his friend, the actor Peter Sellers. Ringo lives in LA and still plays and tours with his band since 1989. He composed the song "Don't Pass Me By" soon after joining the band, though it wasn't recorded until 1968 for the White Album. Ringo Starr has announced the rescheduled dates of his 2022 North American tour with his All Starr Band for the concerts that were postponed when two of the. The fact that the drummer also contributed to the Beatles' work as a songwriter is often overlooked. He also occasionally sang lead vocals, most notably in Yellow Submarine and With a Little Help from My Friends while also acting as the down-to-earth counterweight to the growing tension between Lennon and McCartney that precipitated the band's demise. Starr's quirky style would remain central to the signature Beatles sound until the band broke up in 1970. Throughout his career, Ringo Starr has received nine GRAMMY Awards and has twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - first as a Beatle and. In August 1962, Starr got the Beatles gig and the rest is history - even if some fans did not take kindly to the move, shouting out at a Cavern Club show, "Pete forever, Ringo never!" The Beatles in 1964 with their manager Brian Epstein "Only way out of there, drums, guitar and amp." "My mother was a barmaid, at the age of three my father was gone," he sang on the 2010 track from the Y Not album. Meanwhile, though inevitably overshadowed by the songwriting duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Starr is still playing live and putting out solo records (some 20 at last count) at the age of 80.īorn Richard Starkey on July 7, 1940, in Liverpool's Dingle district, the Beatle wrote an autobiographical song about his poor, working class upbringing called "The other side of Liverpool." Often voted among the top drummers of all time, Rolling Stone wrote that "Ringo didn't just ground the greatest band of all time, he helped give their music shape and focus." Here's a look back at the drummer's time with the Beatles and the decades that followed, in photos: Ringo Starr turns 81 today. Known for his "silly fills," Starr's unorthodox style (due, he says, to being left-handed but playing a right-handed drum kit) is also often praised as a key source of the Beatles' unique sound ⁠- ironically, he was also the drummer on John Lennon's first solo record. Stay informed and read the latest news today from The Associated Press, the definitive source for independent journalism from every corner of the globe. "Ringo Starr isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles," is the legendary quote attributed to John Lennon that continues to define the legacy of the Liverpudlian musician who joined the Fab Four in 1962.

[kiwikiwiandkiwi]

.

[kingstylesdaily]

Exclusive: Harry Styles Shares the Meaning Behind His New Album, 'Harry's House'

On his new album, Harry Styles explores themes of belonging, peace, and discovering domestic bliss wherever you can find it.

By Lou Stoppard

Looking back, it was undoubtedly risky suggesting to meet Harry Styles, the global music megastar, the apple of so many millions of eyes, at a public open-air swimming pool in London on an unusually sunny March morning—right when people were bouncing around the city with a vaguely manic, newly liberated energy, catalyzed by the total lift on COVID restrictions. But swimmers, particularly all-weather swimmers (the lido I chose is unheated and open year-round), take the meditative pleasure of swimming seriously, as Styles himself, who swims outdoors daily, knows well. "I feel like people who have discovered cold water swimming are just so happy for you that you've also found it," Styles said. In other words, no one is hassling you for water-side photos. Indeed, around us, most swimmers were doing an admirable job of feigning indifference to the fact that an instantly recognizable pinup (the hair, the face, the tattoos) was stripped off, poolside.

Styles has spent the last few years on a quest to enjoy things for what they are, to "be in the moment," as he put it. Swimming is good for this; it's hard to think about anything else when you are struggling to keep breathing. Just before the pandemic, in December 2019, Styles released his second solo album, Fine Line, to acclaim. The corresponding live shows, Love On Tour, were due to start in April 2020. But by then, the pandemic was raging; disaster declarations had been made across the U.S., and Europe was on lockdown. Styles had envisaged himself busy, playing packed shows each night, the music bellowing from his lungs, his pearls and sequins glittering in the light. Instead, nothing. "Suddenly, the screaming stopped," he said. Everything was canceled, an end to the relentless merry-go-round of attention Styles has been on since 2010—then a smiling 16-year-old in a skinny scarf that would hint at the kind of fey hip-wiggling rocker he would go on to become a decade later—when he appeared on the British talent show The X Factor and was set on a conveyer belt to stardom.

Now Styles was stuck in L.A. for months with nothing to do. "It was the first time I'd stopped since I left my mum's," he said. For a while, at the beginning of lockdown, productivity drilled into him, Styles felt like he should work, create. The ethos with One Direction (the boy band he was packaged into on The X Factor) was always more, next, bigger, better. It was "all about how do you keep it going and how do you get it to grow," he said. "There were so many years where, for me, especially in the band and the first few years coming out of it, I'd just been terrified of it ending, because I didn't necessarily know who I was if I didn't do music."

Styles came to see that COVID was out of his control, that he just had to ride it out. He bubbled with a group of friends and for about six weeks did "practically nothing." Didn't write any music. Didn't record. He was suddenly just another young guy in a house-share trying not to bug his roommates. Styles came to realize that his past schedule had facilitated avoidance. "Whether it was with friends or people I was dating, I was always gone before it got to the point of having to have any difficult conversations," he said. So he used lockdown to commit to being a better friend, son, brother. He pushed himself to confront things he hadn't brought up, had many long, honest chats. And like most people who found themselves suddenly very, very inside, he thought a lot about the idea of home—about belonging, peace, sanctuary. "I realized that that home feeling isn't something that you get from a house; it's more of an internal thing. You realize that when you stop for a minute," he said.

A few months later when he started recording in L.A., and later in Oxfordshire and London, he thought about what he was doing not as the creation of a new record but as an extension of that time kicking back with friends (he has a close-knit circle and was living with some of the same people he writes and plays with). "I've always made my worst, most generic work when I'm just desperate to get a single," he explained. So he tried to see what he was doing as open, speculative. That is, he has realized, his great skill as a musician; he's not naturally gifted at guitar or piano, not the most confident singer, can't read music, but he excels when it comes to bringing people together. He is at his best, he said, when he pulls away from what is formal or expected and does something playful, collaborative, instinctive, fun. While Fine Line is full of references to Styles' musical heroes (Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Van Morrison), this time, when he started recording, he deliberately didn't listen to anything—except classical, music that cleansed him of sonic references—so he could start again with "a blank canvas."

He knew he had to commit to the reset, to the sense of a fresh start that was happening across his life. He is aware that this all sounds a bit pretentious, a bit airy-fairy, but then, who didn't get caught up in a rush of pandemic life-improvement epiphanies? "I think everyone went through a big moment of self-reflection, a lot of navel-gazing, and I don't know if there's anything more navel-gazing than making an album. It's so self-absorbed," he said.

Two years on, Styles and I are meeting because that album, titled Harry's House, is about to be announced to the world. The day before we meet, I listened to the album in a room at Sony's London headquarters under the watchful eye of a company executive. Only a handful of people knew then about its existence, and, overwhelmed by the pressure of secrecy, I briefly freaked out when I found myself audibly humming one of the songs on the train home. Harry's House is, as you can probably guess, about home. Not just home in the sense of a physical space—though there are plenty of references to kitchens and "sitting in the garden" and "maple syrup, coffee, pancakes for two"—but also to home "in terms of a headspace or mental well-being," as Styles put it. "It sounds like the biggest, and the most fun, but it's by far the most intimate," he said of the album.

At this point, Styles and I were sitting with a coffee on a patch of grass outside the pool, and I had begun to realize that I had kept him in the cold water way, way too long. He was visibly shaking. "Two lengths was too much," he agreed. I think we were both trying to show off—me, nonchalance to a popular heartthrob, and him, hardiness to another committed cold water swimmer. I became worried I had incapacitated him, something that would get me into great trouble, as a member of his team reminded me by text later, as he was due to perform at Coachella in a few weeks. "If you killed me, it would make for a good story," Styles said, eager to see the sunny side. We set off in search of heat.

Almost anyone who meets Styles will tell you how polite, breezy he is. Few interviews go by without mentioning his charm. Indeed, it is hard not to describe his boyish enthusiasm in the same campy, knowing cheesiness that enlivens his songs ("strawberries on a summer evenin'" or the exquisitely saccharine, "If I was a bluebird, I would fly to you; you be the spoon, dip you in honey so I can be sticking to you," from "Daylight" on Harry's House). Styles is teddy bears on your teenage bed, perfect handwriting on thank you cards, picked flowers on Sunday morning, puppies running on fresh-cut grass, Grandma's favorite homemade cake. At points, he is almost daffily nice, too attentive, as if held in the throes of a decade-long bout of imposter syndrome (he confirmed that he does, sometimes, expect that someone will tap him on the shoulder and say, "The jig is up. You're done now"). Surely a mask, you are thinking. No one that fancied can be that sweet. I asked Styles this myself: Is he actually pleasant, normal, sane? "My producer keeps asking me when I'm going to have my big breakdown," he said, laughing. "The most honest version I can think of is, I didn't grow up in poverty by any means, but we didn't have much money, and I had an expectation of what I could achieve in life. I feel like everything else has been a bonus, and I am so lucky."

That said, both Styles and his therapist have questioned why he cares quite so much about being likable. This is one of the things he thought about a lot in his big pandemic reflection. In part, it's a choice, he explained. He recalled moving to London after The X Factor and hearing tales of petulant celebrities screaming because someone got their coffee order wrong and deciding to never be that guy, to never give someone a petty reason to bad-mouth him. But more recently he's come to worry that the drive for approval came from a more complex place, a place of caution, fear, control. "In lockdown, I started processing a lot of stuff that happened when I was in the band," he said. He thought about the way he was encouraged to give so much of himself away, "to get people to engage with you, to like you." He thought about the fact that no baby photos exist of him that aren't on the internet (you give a bunch to an X Factor producer doing a piece on your backstory without much thought, and suddenly your childhood is online). He thought about the journalists asking questions, when he was still a teenager, about how many people he'd slept with and how, rather than telling them to go away, he would worry about how he could be coy without them leaving the room annoyed. "Why do I feel like I'm the one who has done something wrong?" he said to me, after we got up to shift spots in the park when a teenager started filming us for a prank video.

Styles said he often spent interviews terrified about saying the wrong thing until he stopped to question what abhorrent belief or bizarre opinion he was scared he'd accidentally reveal and realized he couldn't think of anything. He thought about how, when good things happened—say, a No. 1 album—he wouldn't feel happy, just relieved. And he thought about the cleanliness clauses in the contracts he used to sign, which would dictate that they would be null and void if he did anything supposedly unsavory, and about how terrified that used to make him. And about when he signed his solo contract and learned that the ability to make music would not be affected by personal transgressions, he burst into tears, a reaction he still seemed shocked by, retelling it to me now, years later. "I felt free," he explained.

Recently Styles began to work through issues related to intimacy, dating, love. "For a long time, it felt like the only thing that was mine was my sex life. I felt so ashamed about it, ashamed at the idea of people even knowing that I was having sex, let alone who with," he said. The life of a boy band member is something of a Ken Doll existence—a smooth nothingness where sex should be. One must be flirtatious (swoon!) without ever being seen to have sex, let alone casual sex. One must project the intrigue of a bad boy without ever doing anything bad; you are an object, an image, onto which people project fantasies, not a person who actually does things, who gets messy. "At the time, there were still the kiss-and-tell things. Working out who I could trust was stressful," Styles said. "But I think I got to a place where I was like, why do I feel ashamed? I'm a 26-year-old man who's single; it's like, yes, I have sex."

Styles has come to fame at a complex time for the idolized. When he emerged, the UK was at the height of its tabloid culture, when celebrities were being hounded, exposed. That gave way to social media, where everyone expected to see everything, where anyone could publish snapshots, footage, gossip. "I think we're in a moment of reflection," Styles said. "You look back, especially now there's all the documentaries, like the Britney documentary, and you watch how people were abused in that way, by that system, especially women. You recall articles from not even five years ago, and you're like, I can't even believe that was written." He has been thinking a lot recently about autonomy, ownership, privacy. About what he should be able to keep to himself, what he should be able to simply communicate through his music without follow-up questions or prying. Around the time of Fine Line, he faced scrutiny around his sexuality. People became incredulous that he wore dresses, waved Pride flags, and yet hadn't clarified with precision, publicly to a journalist or on social media, the specifics of who he'd slept with, how he defined. This expectation is, to him, bizarre, "outdated." "I've been really open with it with my friends, but that's my personal experience; it's mine," he said. "The whole point of where we should be heading, which is toward accepting everybody and being more open, is that it doesn't matter, and it's about not having to label everything, not having to clarify what boxes you're checking."

But Styles does not want to appear ungrateful or defensive, or even angry. All of this contemplation, this honesty, is not to say that he didn't love it, hasn't loved it all—because he has, he reminded me several times, "absolutely loved it." Despite the acceptance that some things could, should, have been different, he still feels lucky every day, he said, lucky to make music, lucky to do what he loves.

By now, we were snug in a local café; all the other attendees appeared to be in their late seventies, and no one gave us a second glance. In about an hour from now, just after we've parted, Styles' album's existence will be announced to the world on Twitter. The cover, on which he stands alone in an upside-down room, will go on within mere hours to receive over a million likes. The first single on the album, "As It Was," begins with a clip of a voice note from one of his goddaughters asking him to say good night to her. It is, he said, about "metamorphosis." About when you look back on life, and on your past selves, and barely recognize them. About when you realize everything has transformed, irrevocably. About when you grow up, change, begin to move on.

"Finally, it doesn't feel like my life is over if this album isn't a commercial success," he said. "You've never felt that way before?" I asked. He said, "Honestly, I don't think I have." With his first album, he explained, he was terrified to make fun music, "because I'd come out of the band, and it was like, if I want to be taken seriously as a musician, then I can't make fun music." He called it "bowling with the bumpers up, playing it safe." While the second album was "freer," he became concerned with making "really big songs," an objective he now questions. Now his goals are, on the surface, smaller but, to him, far greater: "I just want to make stuff that is right, that is fun, in terms of the process, that I can be proud of for a long time, that my friends can be proud of, that my family can be proud of, that my kids will be proud of one day," he said. We hugged goodbye, and he set off through North London on foot—a sex symbol, a fashion darling, a very modern rock star, weaving his way back home.

[codywolfefamouscountrysinger]

​Cody Wolfe’s “Better Without You” music video gained nearly over 57k in 48 hours streams after a mass message was sent asking fans to stream the song to support Wolfe after his July 27th show at The Bijou Theater in Bridgeport Connecticut was canceled over a Rebel flag post on Twitter.

“It’s horrible, people have no freedom of speech anymore,” says Wolfe “People gotta start standing up to this Bull $hit, a lot of great southern people fought and died for that flag to honor something they believed in, I don’t cuss out your Pride flag, you don’t tread on my Rebel flag” Wolfe’s mostly conservative country music fan-base supports his music and is all for freedom of speech.

“Oh I made it a point to go after the conservative fanbase, I want people that support music. Not people who want to cancel it. Hell, I’d tour with Kid Rock, Morgan Wallen, or John Rich any day. I support people and artists who have the nerve to speak up or to be themselves that’s the trouble with this world. No more freedom to be yourself and everyone forced to be someone they are not. Every venue that tried to screw me in the past has gone out of business, every single one, I offered to pay the Bijou Theater to secure a spot, feeling bad for local venues post Covid and I was dead positive I would make the money back from the show so I figured I’d do everything I could to help. I’ve seen it mentioned he was struggling to keep his doors open. But when he canceled my show just like that because of a Tweet I honestly hope people stop supporting him. You see what happened when they tried to cancel Morgan Wallen. I know it’s lofty comparing myself to him but they are pulling the same $hit with me they did with him. My fans will not stand for it, they’ve already shown their support.

The venue owner called me on the phone and said “I don’t want the Facebook Group Fairfield Mom’s seeing I booked an artist with a Rebel Flag on his page, if I lose her support I will go out of business” caring more about a Facebook page with 4,000 members then an artist with 10 Million views on his song and a massive local email list. I couldn’t believe how stupid it was” says Wolfe. One email I could put this guy right out of business but I’m not a jerk, I’d rather fans stream my song in to prove a point! Not only will we not back down, but we are ready to Bring Country Back!

I’m also gonna make a song about this you can bet on it” says Wolfe, pleased to see a large bump in both iTunes downloads and YouTube Streams from his fans joining together in support. His song “Better Without You” which came out in 2021 has amassed 10 Million total views and charted #1 in 3 countries on iTunes Digital Sales Charts. The song hasn’t seen much of a jump in streams since its initial release as marketing campaign funds tend to be spent elsewhere. This was the first genuine organic bump in streams since the song's release.

Show your support for Freedom Of Speech and Stream Cody Wolfe!

[hldailyupdate]

Exclusive: Harry Styles Shares the Meaning Behind His New Album, 'Harry's House'

On his new album, Harry Styles explores themes of belonging, peace, and discovering domestic bliss wherever you can find it.

Looking back, it was undoubtedly risky suggesting to meet Harry Styles, the global music megastar, the apple of so many millions of eyes, at a public open-air swimming pool in London on an unusually sunny March morning—right when people were bouncing around the city with a vaguely manic, newly liberated energy, catalyzed by the total lift on COVID restrictions. But swimmers, particularly all-weather swimmers (the lido I chose is unheated and open year-round), take the meditative pleasure of swimming seriously, as Styles himself, who swims outdoors daily, knows well. "I feel like people who have discovered cold water swimming are just so happy for you that you've also found it," Styles said. In other words, no one is hassling you for water-side photos. Indeed, around us, most swimmers were doing an admirable job of feigning indifference to the fact that an instantly recognizable pinup (the hair, the face, the tattoos) was stripped off, poolside.

Styles has spent the last few years on a quest to enjoy things for what they are, to "be in the moment," as he put it. Swimming is good for this; it's hard to think about anything else when you are struggling to keep breathing. Just before the pandemic, in December 2019, Styles released his second solo album, Fine Line, to acclaim. The corresponding live shows, Love On Tour, were due to start in April 2020. But by then, the pandemic was raging; disaster declarations had been made across the U.S., and Europe was on lockdown. Styles had envisaged himself busy, playing packed shows each night, the music bellowing from his lungs, his pearls and sequins glittering in the light. Instead, nothing. "Suddenly, the screaming stopped," he said. Everything was canceled, an end to the relentless merry-go-round of attention Styles has been on since 2010—then a smiling 16-year-old in a skinny scarf that would hint at the kind of fey hip-wiggling rocker he would go on to become a decade later—when he appeared on the British talent show The X Factor and was set on a conveyer belt to stardom.

Now Styles was stuck in L.A. for months with nothing to do. "It was the first time I'd stopped since I left my mum's," he said. For a while, at the beginning of lockdown, productivity drilled into him, Styles felt like he should work, create. The ethos with One Direction (the boy band he was packaged into on The X Factor) was always more, next, bigger, better. It was "all about how do you keep it going and how do you get it to grow," he said. "There were so many years where, for me, especially in the band and the first few years coming out of it, I'd just been terrified of it ending, because I didn't necessarily know who I was if I didn't do music."

Styles came to see that COVID was out of his control, that he just had to ride it out. He bubbled with a group of friends and for about six weeks did "practically nothing." Didn't write any music. Didn't record. He was suddenly just another young guy in a house-share trying not to bug his roommates. Styles came to realize that his past schedule had facilitated avoidance. "Whether it was with friends or people I was dating, I was always gone before it got to the point of having to have any difficult conversations," he said. So he used lockdown to commit to being a better friend, son, brother. He pushed himself to confront things he hadn't brought up, had many long, honest chats. And like most people who found themselves suddenly very, very inside, he thought a lot about the idea of home—about belonging, peace, sanctuary. "I realized that that home feeling isn't something that you get from a house; it's more of an internal thing. You realize that when you stop for a minute," he said.

A few months later when he started recording in L.A., and later in Oxfordshire and London, he thought about what he was doing not as the creation of a new record but as an extension of that time kicking back with friends (he has a close-knit circle and was living with some of the same people he writes and plays with). "I've always made my worst, most generic work when I'm just desperate to get a single," he explained. So he tried to see what he was doing as open, speculative. That is, he has realized, his great skill as a musician; he's not naturally gifted at guitar or piano, not the most confident singer, can't read music, but he excels when it comes to bringing people together. He is at his best, he said, when he pulls away from what is formal or expected and does something playful, collaborative, instinctive, fun. While Fine Line is full of references to Styles' musical heroes (Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Van Morrison), this time, when he started recording, he deliberately didn't listen to anything—except classical, music that cleansed him of sonic references—so he could start again with "a blank canvas."

He knew he had to commit to the reset, to the sense of a fresh start that was happening across his life. He is aware that this all sounds a bit pretentious, a bit airy-fairy, but then, who didn't get caught up in a rush of pandemic life-improvement epiphanies? "I think everyone went through a big moment of self-reflection, a lot of navel-gazing, and I don't know if there's anything more navel-gazing than making an album. It's so self-absorbed," he said.

Two years on, Styles and I are meeting because that album, titled Harry's House, is about to be announced to the world. The day before we meet, I listened to the album in a room at Sony's London headquarters under the watchful eye of a company executive. Only a handful of people knew then about its existence, and, overwhelmed by the pressure of secrecy, I briefly freaked out when I found myself audibly humming one of the songs on the train home. Harry's House is, as you can probably guess, about home. Not just home in the sense of a physical space—though there are plenty of references to kitchens and "sitting in the garden" and "maple syrup, coffee, pancakes for two"—but also to home "in terms of a headspace or mental well-being," as Styles put it. "It sounds like the biggest, and the most fun, but it's by far the most intimate," he said of the album.

At this point, Styles and I were sitting with a coffee on a patch of grass outside the pool, and I had begun to realize that I had kept him in the cold water way, way too long. He was visibly shaking. "Two lengths was too much," he agreed. I think we were both trying to show off—me, nonchalance to a popular heartthrob, and him, hardiness to another committed cold water swimmer. I became worried I had incapacitated him, something that would get me into great trouble, as a member of his team reminded me by text later, as he was due to perform at Coachella in a few weeks. "If you killed me, it would make for a good story," Styles said, eager to see the sunny side. We set off in search of heat.

Almost anyone who meets Styles will tell you how polite, breezy he is. Few interviews go by without mentioning his charm. Indeed, it is hard not to describe his boyish enthusiasm in the same campy, knowing cheesiness that enlivens his songs ("strawberries on a summer evenin'" or the exquisitely saccharine, "If I was a bluebird, I would fly to you; you be the spoon, dip you in honey so I can be sticking to you," from "Daylight" on Harry's House). Styles is teddy bears on your teenage bed, perfect handwriting on thank you cards, picked flowers on Sunday morning, puppies running on fresh-cut grass, Grandma's favorite homemade cake. At points, he is almost daffily nice, too attentive, as if held in the throes of a decade-long bout of imposter syndrome (he confirmed that he does, sometimes, expect that someone will tap him on the shoulder and say, "The jig is up. You're done now"). Surely a mask, you are thinking. No one that fancied can be that sweet. I asked Styles this myself: Is he actually pleasant, normal, sane? "My producer keeps asking me when I'm going to have my big breakdown," he said, laughing. "The most honest version I can think of is, I didn't grow up in poverty by any means, but we didn't have much money, and I had an expectation of what I could achieve in life. I feel like everything else has been a bonus, and I am so lucky."

That said, both Styles and his therapist have questioned why he cares quite so much about being likable. This is one of the things he thought about a lot in his big pandemic reflection. In part, it's a choice, he explained. He recalled moving to London after The X Factor and hearing tales of petulant celebrities screaming because someone got their coffee order wrong and deciding to never be that guy, to never give someone a petty reason to bad-mouth him. But more recently he's come to worry that the drive for approval came from a more complex place, a place of caution, fear, control. "In lockdown, I started processing a lot of stuff that happened when I was in the band," he said. He thought about the way he was encouraged to give so much of himself away, "to get people to engage with you, to like you." He thought about the fact that no baby photos exist of him that aren't on the internet (you give a bunch to an X Factor producer doing a piece on your backstory without much thought, and suddenly your childhood is online). He thought about the journalists asking questions, when he was still a teenager, about how many people he'd slept with and how, rather than telling them to go away, he would worry about how he could be coy without them leaving the room annoyed. "Why do I feel like I'm the one who has done something wrong?" he said to me, after we got up to shift spots in the park when a teenager started filming us for a prank video.

Styles said he often spent interviews terrified about saying the wrong thing until he stopped to question what abhorrent belief or bizarre opinion he was scared he'd accidentally reveal and realized he couldn't think of anything. He thought about how, when good things happened—say, a No. 1 album—he wouldn't feel happy, just relieved. And he thought about the cleanliness clauses in the contracts he used to sign, which would dictate that they would be null and void if he did anything supposedly unsavory, and about how terrified that used to make him. And about when he signed his solo contract and learned that the ability to make music would not be affected by personal transgressions, he burst into tears, a reaction he still seemed shocked by, retelling it to me now, years later. "I felt free," he explained.

Recently Styles began to work through issues related to intimacy, dating, love. "For a long time, it felt like the only thing that was mine was my sex life. I felt so ashamed about it, ashamed at the idea of people even knowing that I was having sex, let alone who with," he said. The life of a boy band member is something of a Ken Doll existence—a smooth nothingness where sex should be. One must be flirtatious (swoon!) without ever being seen to have sex, let alone casual sex. One must project the intrigue of a bad boy without ever doing anything bad; you are an object, an image, onto which people project fantasies, not a person who actually does things, who gets messy. "At the time, there were still the kiss-and-tell things. Working out who I could trust was stressful," Styles said. "But I think I got to a place where I was like, why do I feel ashamed? I'm a 26-year-old man who's single; it's like, yes, I have sex."

Styles has come to fame at a complex time for the idolized. When he emerged, the UK was at the height of its tabloid culture, when celebrities were being hounded, exposed. That gave way to social media, where everyone expected to see everything, where anyone could publish snapshots, footage, gossip. "I think we're in a moment of reflection," Styles said. "You look back, especially now there's all the documentaries, like the Britney documentary, and you watch how people were abused in that way, by that system, especially women. You recall articles from not even five years ago, and you're like, I can't even believe that was written." He has been thinking a lot recently about autonomy, ownership, privacy. About what he should be able to keep to himself, what he should be able to simply communicate through his music without follow-up questions or prying. Around the time of Fine Line, he faced scrutiny around his sexuality. People became incredulous that he wore dresses, waved Pride flags, and yet hadn't clarified with precision, publicly to a journalist or on social media, the specifics of who he'd slept with, how he defined. This expectation is, to him, bizarre, "outdated." "I've been really open with it with my friends, but that's my personal experience; it's mine," he said. "The whole point of where we should be heading, which is toward accepting everybody and being more open, is that it doesn't matter, and it's about not having to label everything, not having to clarify what boxes you're checking."

But Styles does not want to appear ungrateful or defensive, or even angry. All of this contemplation, this honesty, is not to say that he didn't love it, hasn't loved it all—because he has, he reminded me several times, "absolutely loved it." Despite the acceptance that some things could, should, have been different, he still feels lucky every day, he said, lucky to make music, lucky to do what he loves.

By now, we were snug in a local café; all the other attendees appeared to be in their late seventies, and no one gave us a second glance. In about an hour from now, just after we've parted, Styles' album's existence will be announced to the world on Twitter. The cover, on which he stands alone in an upside-down room, will go on within mere hours to receive over a million likes. The first single on the album, "As It Was," begins with a clip of a voice note from one of his goddaughters asking him to say good night to her. It is, he said, about "metamorphosis." About when you look back on life, and on your past selves, and barely recognize them. About when you realize everything has transformed, irrevocably. About when you grow up, change, begin to move on.

"Finally, it doesn't feel like my life is over if this album isn't a commercial success," he said. "You've never felt that way before?" I asked. He said, "Honestly, I don't think I have." With his first album, he explained, he was terrified to make fun music, "because I'd come out of the band, and it was like, if I want to be taken seriously as a musician, then I can't make fun music." He called it "bowling with the bumpers up, playing it safe." While the second album was "freer," he became concerned with making "really big songs," an objective he now questions. Now his goals are, on the surface, smaller but, to him, far greater: "I just want to make stuff that is right, that is fun, in terms of the process, that I can be proud of for a long time, that my friends can be proud of, that my family can be proud of, that my kids will be proud of one day," he said. We hugged goodbye, and he set off through North London on foot—a sex symbol, a fashion darling, a very modern rock star, weaving his way back home.

via Better Homes & Gardens. (26 April 2022)