YouSaid · the spoken record

Louis Tomlinson

lines on the record: 144
first: 2025-10-09
most recent: 2025-10-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“So the band split up and now I didn't have my pick of record labels. It was never like that. But even if I had, I could have had 10 offers on the table. Let's just assume they're all the same money. I would have picked Simon always because again, a little bit like the north of England. Loyalty is like a really important currency. It really is in these kind of, you know, working class places. It's really, really vital. And I think for me, it was, I always meant a lot to me. So I thought, well, if I'd heard that some of the other boys were thinking about going to other labels, which they were right to, and I found out I was the only one that was going to stay with him. And I just motivated me more. So all the other boys went and joined different record labels, some of them not even within labels that were in Sony, which Psycho was part of.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was in awe of it as a young lad. I love to be around him. I love to listen to him make decisions and all of that. And I thought he was definitely brilliant at that time. He just... He built me up on a pedestal to the point where I thought that it would actually have a real world meaning, not just a thanks darling kind of vibe.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were never with him, Simon would probably Simon was always very brilliant at making me feel like worthy in the band but as you said before like I was often a voice between the band and the label he was the label well he put me on side and that's a smart move in it one thing he would always do Stephen is he would always say my name now when you're a 19 year old lad and Simon Cowell says do you know what the thing is about that idea Louis you are empowered now we like people using our names now imagine that Simon Cowell nineteen years old there is a spell that comes with that and there's a power that comes with that and I think I think for a long time I kind of fell for all those kind of ideas. Now, I think Simon again is an interesting person. He is a brilliant businessman. Now, I learned a lot from him. I still deeply respect him.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was no credibility to that statement. The boys could have auditioned straight away. At that point, I was doing a lower harmony, and I would be shocked if anyone could even hear me in the mix at that point. So that was really challenging where I've already started to feel those things. And then you get something like that that's quite literal and they're trying to sell this jeopardy. And I remember thinking, oh, it just really, I wanted to do more. I just didn't know how to do that. Again, there's no context. I thought I was a good singer before I went to the X Factor. Then I get through the audition. They put me through. I'm like, okay, well, I must be all right. Then they don't show the TV audition. You're like, oh, maybe that's like a personality thing. Or I don't know. Maybe it is my voice. There's a lot of, especially as a young lad in this situation, there's a lot of unanswered questions. Did you ever ask those questions? Did I ever ask him why I wasn't that bad? No, I would love to, though. I would have loved to. But do you know why I wouldn't?”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ye have the auditions, then boot camp, judges houses live shows, and we went filming for judges' houses. And I was already questioned, I wasn't really singing at all. I'd not had like any individual thing to sing. It was all like harmony stuff. And I got stung by sea urchin, right? Random story. My foot blew up like an elephant. And we had to film all this, you know what X Factor's like, right? We had to film all this jeopardy, this like, how will, how will the boys audition without Louie? It was awful. It was awful because...”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I found it really tough. So as I said before, I was the kid who won the lottery. I sang my first audition for the X Factor. I didn't feel like I did a good job, was really surprised that I got the three yeses. Now, that was maybe four months before the first edition's air. So I've told everyone at this point, obviously. I'm in a band, I'm on the X Factor, and I have told anyone that will listen, like everyone. And actually nor Niall got any TV time on our audition. So the irony is we get put in this band, but people have no idea we are. Like there's no context for the viewers to actually see this and actually really care. I felt like I was playing Katcha from that moment in. I remember this really like real napp thing, typical X-Factor thing. They went filming for the judge's houses, which is the stage.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Defiance and decision making that's got me to where I've got. And that should give me confidence. So I think as a young lad, I did really just felt like a deer in the headlights and I didn't really have any kind of context what was going on. And I think when I'm talking about these things, I'm not talking about a no, we're not going to do this Disney performance because I don't think it looks good on the for one direction. I'm talking about more like introspective personal worth within the band or those kind of things. I really, really struggled with that as a young lad big time. So I would say I would give myself a bit more credit there.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Such a nice, really, really big question. I think I would just say to be confident in the earlier years because the older I get, the more I realize most people in their earlier years of doing said thing are to a degree faking it. And I think for a long time, I was just thinking, well, you know, I didn't spend my life as a young lad thinking I was going to be a singer, so I'm playing catch up and all those things. And listen, also, there's another thing I'm more than comfortable enough to say. I'm not the best singer in the world. I'm okay with that, right? But like there was definitely a time where those things were challenging as a young lad. And I think I would just cut myself a bit of slack as a young ad because it's been a lot of my...”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As daft as that might look and feel, again, it's of normality, it's creating the normality on tour. It's a version of what our friends were doing back home as well. But also it just was such a lovely way to kind of debrief from those moments, away from the manicness. You've just got this kind of really subdued, nice environment, the juxtaposition actually felt quite nice.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I feel the pull from Alco, and I definitely drank quite a bit when I was in the band. But I think an important distinction post show would be I'd smoke my weed and go back to my tour bus and I'd go and smoke my weed and saying would smoke with me too. I hope he doesn't mind me saying that I'm sure he won't. And that was great. And actually, like, you know, people do things for different reasons. And that was my advice. That was my choice. Now, the reason why that kind of suited my brain at that time was I've just had all this noise in my head. I've just had this crazy experience on stage. And that's the noise that you kind of need to quiet down sometimes. So what we would do is we'd get back on the tour bus. We'd play Call of Duty Zombies. We'd smoke our weed. And like, that's all we'd think about. And that's all we do. And then we'd get into cliche stoner chats, deep conversation, probably UFOs, you know, all that kind of shit.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because, like, if I'm having a conversation with someone, I don't even really want, like, I don't, I want to just be me. I don't want to be that guy that won those awards. Like, we can be and we can conversate like that. But truthfully, like, if someone, if Nizam came over to my house for like a chat and a coffee, I would hate that the conversation might end up then gravitating to me or my success. It's much more about just what those relationships and conversations look like in the real world. That's what I'm craving is that real normality. All I want is to just be on an even playing field with everyone in any kind of conversation. I think that was the toughest thing to deal with is just the lack of normality in every sense of the word.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I remembered the feeling of who else do I tell now? Because do I call up Nizam and tell him? Well, he'll be into that and he'll be really proud of me. But bear in mind, he's just seen me on the X Factor. And this is another thing I raised about people is they think if you're successful, then everything is just, you know, successful. And that's how it goes. So I think, you know, if I did it, I didn't call Nizam. But if I had called him, he probably would have been really nice. But in his head, when he shrugged his shoulders, like, well, obviously, you know, things are going really well for you. So I think there's definitely a lack of understanding there, rightly so. There's also a guild, you know, especially at that age. People, like, life's really, really expensive at that age. People are up to their eyes in student loans. It was only about two years ago that I put all the plaques up on my wall at home and my awards, like the Brit Awards and stuff that I got in the past from the band. They still annoy me even now in my life.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but it's also like the metaphor would be what's that really famous crossing in Japan if you took a drone shot and you pulled right out from that and you would just become a little dot amongst the noise. Sometimes that's kind of how it feels. Because also it's not the real world even in the way that people perceive you is not the real world. The first moment that one direction got, the first big pay packet was a merchandise deal that we got. And we always did really good merch. That was the first kind of moment where I felt. Really, really excited. And so I rang my mum straight away and told her about it like I always would. And she was really excited for me. And obviously, you know, she's just proud. That's it.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you feel alienated, you are living this lifestyle that, and there's a million different reasons, right? But the fame thing is really difficult. And mostly for me, it was about being alienated. And I can't, like any of my life experience was now not so relevant to some of my friends. And I think that also I have this, I think this is part of growing up in a working class working class town, but I have this like guilt for the success and money that I've earned as well. And I think that also is kind of part of the same thing. I think for it's kind of like two different things. The fame thing I'll never be okay with. Like if I like, of course, every artist says this, but if I could just do the music. Amazing. That would be amazing. I suppose I could on a lower level.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At least up to those 18 years was the best year of my life. You know, you've got independence at that point. I was thriving. You could go out. Like it was just so fascinating socially. There's always something to do. So to leave that behind was quite gutting, actually. That took me a second to get used to it first. Now I always felt incredibly grateful and really excited every time I was doing something with OneDirection. But any kind of time for reflection, I was really, really missing home. Like me and Zane would, when we were younger, we had countless conversations of like, you know, should we just pack it in? Should we just call it a day?”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say that It's more gradual than that, really. You start to lose some of your own independence to a degree. At the age I was, right? So, like, I was 18 when I first joined the band. And I always say this, that year of my life before I auditioned for the X Factor,”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can't remember the number of how much we saw that week, but we broke some record of the pre-order and we got told this. We'd not released any music at this point. And I remember thinking that's fascinating because they don't know what it's going to sound like yet. But they're invested. That felt like power early on. And it also felt like that we could rewrite the rule book because people were invested in us. As much, if not more than the music, I think that's fair to say.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going into at this point, going into one direction when I was 18, you know, growing up in the north of England, it's like real, it's kind of like snobby musically, you know, there's like this like real music and then this boy bats, you know. So having that kind of feeling going into it, it was that that was why it was easy to kind of push against some of these old school ideas because they were the ideas that I didn't, the reasons I didn't like these bands is because they all looked the same and because they all felt very kind of PR pressed, you know. It was always a really interesting project for me to try and look at one direction and think, well, how could we make this a little cooler? I remember the real turning point in one direction was. When we put up the pre-order for our first single, What Makes You Beautiful?”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think what gave me confidence in those ideas is even if it wasn't a collective voice, even if it was just my voice delivering the message, it was always with collective intention. It would always be for the good of all of us. Making those decisions now on my own, they're not quite as easy. There's a lot of different kind of things at play, and again, it kind of comes from that big brother kind of role again. I was the oldest in the band. It was kind of my role in the band, I think, to kind of to do that. And I realized that by far I was the most opinionated in the band definitely. So I think I wanted to use that for good and not just try and shit about someone on Twitter or something. Another important distinction about one direction is this is not disrespectful to Ed. Like I appreciate I was in a boy band. I know that, right? But if there would be like one genre of music, then I would think might be the most naive. It's boy band. If you could call that a genre.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and that's something I've had a few conversations with my friends similar things about this. And I'm not certain where that was inspired by it's brave, right? To stare someone who at the time, at least in pop, was one of the most successful people in the music industry and say, no, you've got it wrong. Here's me, an 18-year-old with no experience telling you you've got it wrong.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had during that time, and I still have I'm not a dweller. I'm an overthinker for sure, but I wouldn't say like I'm a dweller. So I wouldn't use this phrase me very often, but there's definitely an element of ignorance, this bliss during that whole time.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say the way that we both handled it, me and Liam, was quite different. I think that's often why I kind of had a good relationship with Zane from early on, because neither of us are kind of rule abiding. And not in a way that's like utterly disruptive. It's just we have our own ideas, you know, and that at least alleviated a little bit of the pressure, knowing that deep down, if I want, it's just going to do something. I would genuinely just go and do it. Whereas I think Liam and the other boys actually, to a degree, there was an element of a little bit of fear, I think, you know, and also Liam had, you know, he'd worked so hard from the age of 14 to get there. Liam's journey was a lot different to mine. I just felt like a happy-go-looky guy won the lottery, you know, like, whereas Liam was very, very precise and deliberate and he'd got there for all his hard work. So I think we also came from a slightly different point of view. Another benefit that I”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I remember feeling pretty smug about that, but I think it was once I kind of got to bed that evening, and I was kind of thinking, I wasn't overly deep thinker at that point, but I was still thinking occasionally on a deep level. And I'm looking at this music manager and I'm thinking like this guy's like uber experienced. Like he's been in this situation countless times. So if he was to predict it wrong, like maybe he did. I'm like, well, maybe something is happening.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he sat down, it was like this dressing down, and it was like, look, this is what you need to expect from a gig like this. Expect people to only know the singles, and even if they know the singles, you know, like that's a real win. They're not going to know the words to the album tracks. It's going to be a very, very different show to what you expected. So we're all ready to go out fighting because we've not really had that at that point. We'd help most things that we'd done, we felt really confident doing. So we were kind of going on the back floor. And then I can remember when we walked out on stage, and I think we opened with something that wasn't a single and people were just locked in, like massively locked in. And it was really, really fucking loud in there. And I think that was a moment where I remember again I had this kind of”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's only now outside of being in one direction that I actually have a little bit of a concept of what happened and even, you know, the craziness of it because nobody has any context to it before it happens. So we definitely felt like things were going really, really well. But we also have been part of us, especially in that first year, of just assuming this is what success looks like, you know, a successful artist does these things. The first moment that I remember distinctly actually that I realized that maybe this was bigger than, let's say like the average thing at the time, we got booked on a support gig with a like a Disney band called Big Time Rush. And before that tour show, our manager, our like senior manager, the kind of guy you only see, you know, like six gigs a year and it just happens to be Vegas and LA and all the best places in the world.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Must have done. You must have done. No, in Simon, I will have had these conversations with him in the past, but can't remember now. Knowing Simon, yeah, I think you know what he's like, right? He will have had that in his mind for at least for the year before.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not going to yield the best results from everyone. Some people it is, but I just remember feeling like a fucking date in a headlights, like really, really shaky, like really, really just felt really, really uncomfortable. I just wanted the ground swallowing me up. I'd never been in a situation where... I was quite a confident young lad, so it wasn't very often I'd even been out of my comfort zone like that, and I just felt like a deer in the headlights definitely.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was boot camp. So that was the second part of the audition. My first audition was a song called Hey They're Delilah. Did nothing for me like sonically. Like obviously now I can say this because I've got a bit more experience, but as young lad, you're not thinking about any of these things. It was just, I like that song. I'll sing that song. It was bad. It was really, really bad. And to the point where it still makes me deeply uncomfortable listening to or watching that audition, the only thing I've done like this is the school production of Greece. And that was to about 250 people over two nights. And that felt like a fucking mountain of people. Cut to then your live TV audition at the MEN in Manchester. And there's 3,000 people in the audience. 3,000 people is a big gig for anyone to play, like full stop. Like if you do 3,000 tickets, you're doing really, really well. So it's the definition of being thrown at the deep end. And I think that's part of what they want.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Throughout the year she would have been giving me a hundred different reasons to go, now not literally, but just from a confidence point of view, the way that she was talking to me, how she always put me on this amazing pedestal. She made me feel like I could do anything definitely. And I think that helps in those kind of situations, going for it for a third time, because my mom's saying I can do it, so maybe I can.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can't remember specifically, but I would say if I would have had any level of doubt 100%, the musical that you just referenced that I did at school, I didn't want to go to that audition. And she literally picked me up and drove me there. And I was so thankful that she did. She was often very, very good at pushing parents. That's not good. She was never like that. She always had the right amount of force, you know? Because sometimes you need that as a kid, and especially actually, even as adults, you know, in a situation where you're second guessing something, as soon as someone goes, Go on, you can do it. You're okay. So I think that definitely played a big role in that. Even if I suggested that I wasn't going to go to this audition.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I then didn't get through, and then we got because I was with her and I was traveling with her, we then got ushered into a room of, say, 200 people and every single person in the room had a yes. I remember that being really, really challenging. You're just surrounded by people that are dreaming, you know, that are really, really excited about what does the next stage look like. And that created a bit more fire, I think. It was like, okay, how do I get on the right side of this next year? How do I be in this group of people next year?”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, the first year I can remember it being utterly crushing. Like, I'd not really had real rejection at that point. I hadn't really experienced that kind of thing. The second time I went was even more challenging because I went with what I'll describe as like the hottest girl at school at the time, right? So she's also a singer. We got talking like months ago. Turns out she wants to audition for the X Factor as well. I'm like, well, let's go together. I think this could be like a smart little play. She goes before me. And I think at this point, I feel like I was still in the queue and she showed me that she got through to the next round. It was like a gold ticket.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that was the third time I auditioned for the X Factor. So every year previous to that, so that would have made me 16 when I first auditioned. There's like three producer auditions and then you get to see Simon. You know, it's the main one. And the first year, I didn't get through any of them. The second year, I got through the first round. And then for final time, I said to myself, well, I'm going to give this one more shot. Because that was another thing. At that age, it's one thing saying you're resilient. And I do think I am. But it's a lot easier to be resilient at that age as well, definitely.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Female levels, yes. That was the first time I'd ever, ever got a real ballicking off me mum, a real, real dressing down, because she was really, really fair. But there was something that she was kind of strict on with schoolwork. And I remember getting in the car and she said, you fucked your life up. And she never swore. She never swore. And I remember I got goosements thinking about it there. I remember thinking, maybe I need to do something with my life.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That are going to tell you if you're being a dick, vitally important in this job, definitely. And those things I think when you surrounded a lot of successful people are, when you're surrounded only by success, it breeds a funny kind of narrative to be respected from people in Doncaster. That means a lot to me, definitely. So that's another reason why I wouldn't drive through the streets of Doncaster in a fucking Ferrari or whatever.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At least 50% conscious that, or at least it started out as that idea. Because I think when you enter a crazy situation and one direction being like the pinnacle of that idea, there's people around you that all of a sudden feel that used to feel really, really similar and all of a sudden they feel really different. I'm not talking about day-to-day conversation, but I'm talking about stuff that we can relate to, problems that I might have had that I might, you know, talk to them about. And I think that's quite an alienating feeling. So instead of kind of just submitting, I've always, always resisted that it's been really important to me. And those kind of things, you know, hearing that and hearing other people say that about me, that does make me really proud because it's definitely a lifestyle that can kind of sweep you away. But I think the other side of that and getting swept away, I don't really like the idea of what that might look like. And I think you need people around you.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, lots of them. So, when I grew up, kind of like the bulk of my childhood, there were seven of us living in a three-bed house. I've got a little bit better at it, but one thing I really have struggled with is being on my own. And the more I've thought about that as I've got a bit older, it's because I just never had an opportunity to be when I was young. When you live in a house that, you know, it's three-bedroom, there's seven people living in it. You're literally all living on top of each other. And I loved that. Like it was like one of the best things that have happened to me being an older brother. Like I just, it's just, it's like one of the definitions of my purpose, I would say. I just like to look after people in mine. So being an older brother is like a role I feel like I was always supposed to do. And then I think even, you know, as we move through life and a couple of things got more challenging, that role has become more prevalent, definitely.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, mum was always really good at that. I think she realised the fact that my dad wasn't going to be around, that she had to play dad as well. And she had this kind of mischievous instinct in her mamma and definitely kind of inspired some of that. And part of that was her being her, but part of that was also trying to play that kind of dad role. You know, we kind of lock about and encourage the do kind of silly things that aren't going to hurt, you know. She was just like, I could get emotional to talk about. She's just the best woman I ever knew, definitely. And also just, I feel so vitally lucky to be able to have her as my mentor because she just, everything that I look to in like friends and partners, et cetera, they're the kind of things that she embodied really.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's not really something I speak loads about, but I'm happy to. Yeah, he wasn't involved in my life at all. I've met him like three times ever.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Something that played a massive role for me in my life was the fact that maybe for the first four or five years of my life, it was just me and my mom. My first proper memories are just kind of having like really kind of nice and warm and really like emotional conversations with my mom. I think something that I'm kind of proud of is that I find it easy to be emotional and I kind of like talking about my feelings and I like getting into conversation with other people about that. And that was definitely something that she instilled in me from like a really young age. And something that still definitely, really helps me today, especially, you know, navigating through the life like I have. Those kind of things of being able to talk about your emotions and your feelings is vitally important actually for the job that I do mentally, you know.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I wanted to do more, but mostly for me, I didn't realize the value of family time. And the more time I spent at the band, the more time I spent away from poem, like two of my sisters who are identical twins. I've never taught them this, but I wasn't confident enough to tub a pop. That shows just how little I was at home.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the toughest thing to deal with is just the lack of normality. And part of growing up in a working class town have this guilt for the success and money that I've earned. And then personal worth within the band, I really, really struggled with.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't spend my life as a young lad thinking I was going to be a singer. Like I grew up in a working class town, seven of us living in a three-bed house. My mum used to work a lot of nights. She had to play dad as well because I would have to get my sisters ready for school. People in Donkassa didn't get those opportunities. And then the X Factor came along. I auditioned three times. First time I failed, second time I failed. I remember thinking this is utterly crushing. Just sobbing to me much. But she made me feel like I could do anything. So instead of running away, it was like, I know I deserve it. I know I can. So how do I relearn confidence and go for a third time?”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, ever spoke about it in depth like this. Nothing prepares you in life for those kind of situations, but I felt like I'd failed at the time. That's the truth. And it's still something that I'm unpacking still to be honest.”
2025-10-09 · The Diary of a CEO · Louis Tomlinson: "The Room Was Cold That Day". When The Police Knocked... I Just Knew · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT