One Direction Announce 10th Anniversary Plans: New Site, Archives and Rarities – One Direction plan on celebrating their 10th anniversary on July 23rd with a trove of new content for their passionate fans. The date marks when Simon Cowell put the five teens in a group together on The X-Factor after they all auditioned as solo artists. For their anniversary, a brand-new, interactive 10 Years of One Direction website will launch next week. The site will function as a “timeline” from their audition up until 2016 when they released the song “History” and revealed that they would begin their “hiatus.” Each era will feature music videos, art and rarely seen content. The site will also generate a mixtape for fans based on how they interact with the content, weighted by each era. A new video will also be released on July 23rd that will show highlights from the group’s time together. Across streaming platforms, new 1D playlists will emerge along with updates on old ones. There will also be “reformatted EPs” released containing B-sides, rarities, acoustic performances, live recordings and remixes.- Read more at Rollingstone.com
Interview: Gabby Barrett talks Goldmine, The Good Ones and collaborating with Charlie Puth – Congratulations on the success of I Hope. Has it surprised you with how well it’s done? Or did you know it was something special when you were writing the song? I mean I think so. Quite honestly of course it definitely surprised me when we first started to see such an immediate positive reaction. Because I actually released the song originally when I didn’t have a record deal or a record label, so I didn’t have any backing or anything. So for the song to just explode the way that it did showed that it’s very special. But of course when you write a song you could think that it’s hit material, but you don’t really know how other people are gonna react to it until you put it out. And so never in a million years would I have thought over the past two years the song would have did what it’s done, and it’s just been amazing to watch. So definitely didn’t know that it was gonna do all this stuff. It’s such a huge blessing. – Read more at Entertainment-focus
David Cook’s Newest Single Flips the Switch on Anxiety – You said you wanted to bring the guitar back to the table a little more than you had in the last couple efforts, but feature it differently than before. Can you elaborate more on this? You know, I kind of grew up on 90s alternative, so historically, I have always wanted to angle towards, like, the big, wall-of-sound guitar stuff. I really made a concerted effort with Chromance and “Death of Me” to make the guitar more of an ancillary instrument and try to bring in more modern synth stuff and programming. So, with “Reds Turn Blue,” and a lot of the stuff I have been writing, I am trying to come back to the guitar, but not go back to the wall of sound. Use the guitar as more of a jumping off point. I just want those two to mingle a little bit better. I think in the past couple releases, it has been more focused on the synth and programming, then bring in the guitar later as a taste. So, I really just want to allow those two to coexist a little more equally. – Outfrontmagazine.com
Exclusive Interview: Pop-Culturalist Chats with David Cook – P-C: Take us back to the beginning. How did you discover your passion for the arts? David: My first real experience was when I got busted singing while getting ready for school one day. My mom told my music teacher at my elementary school that I could sing. She put me in a Christmas pageant, and that’s how I got started. I didn’t find a passion for it until maybe middle school when I was doing school plays and stuff. Then music came along towards the end of high school. I was in bands most of high school, but that was just for fun. I didn’t start taking it seriously until end of high school, beginning of college. – Read more at Pop-Culturalist
Kree Harrison Recalls the Roots That Led to “Chosen Family Tree” – “I feel like in the process of [singing on ‘Idol’] especially, you know, I had a lot of people around me that would challenge me in a good way, and that my being chosen family that like, don’t hold anything back. I think that was one of the biggest moments in my world, as far as just friends being there for me during that process – among a million others. But just as far as music goes, that’s the first thing that comes to mind,” Harrison says, as she proceeds to recall a piece of wisdom imparted on her long ago by her sister, which rang true during experiences like “Idol,” among other moments of personal achievement. – Read more at AmericanSongwriter
