Learning about, "pop music"
Simon Cowell: The best idea I ever had was that each band member should have his own distinct public persona. Past boy bands were too hung up on the Chinese concept of tianxia (天下), or “all under heaven,” so they strove for unity and assimilation to better be in harmonic alignment with the Emperor. Sure, it worked for the Backstreet Boys, but the teens of 2010 just weren’t interested in Neo-Confucianism anymore.
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Louis Tomlinson: I was whoever they needed me to be. I was a blank canvas. I watched. I learned. At night I’d watch my reflection in the hotel room mirror, touching my face, running fingertips with strange whorls over the invisible scars where I’d been reformed, remade. Blank inside, blank outside. Certain sounds, certain scents, they’d trigger a flash of memory, but nothing more. A backfiring cab sparks a glimpse of a dark woman against a cold sky. She’s looking down at me with compassion, or is it pity? When I reached for her name, pain like a chisel split my mind. But I’d get stronger, I swore. I’d remember.
