Louis Tomlinson has explained why he won’t perform certain One Direction songs at his solo shows.
- READ MORE: Louis Tomlinson on finding his artistic identity: “It’ll be an ever-evolving process”
The singer is due to release his third solo album, ‘How Did I Get Here?’, this Friday (January 23), having already shared the singles ‘Lemondade’ and ‘Palaces’. He’ll embark on a UK and European headline tour in March, including a gig at London’s O2.
During a recent interview with Billboard, Tomlinson was asked if he had decided which 1D songs he would be working into his 2026 setlist. He has previously performed the boyband’s tracks ‘Night Changes’, ‘Drag Me Down’, ‘Little Black Dress’, ‘No Control’ and more.
“For starters, I like to pick one that I wrote – but the biggest challenge is finding a lyric that feels all right to sing as a 34-year-old guy,” he responded.
Tomlinson explained that this was “actually not the easiest thing to do” now he is an older artist, “because some of those One Direction lyrics are fucking raunchy, man, proper!”
He continued: “But it’s also a really fun thing to try and integrate something sonically.
“We do a version of ‘Night Changes’ that’s got some real tempo behind it – Sam Fender was an inspiration for that composition of it. That’s a full-circle feeling of a song that I sang in the band, and now I’ve found a way for it to fit in [my] set.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Tomlinson admitted that it was “a bit of a shame” to watch BTS eclipse One Direction’s success. “Every time I logged into Twitter, they’d just taken one of our records for something – some fastest-selling thing, and they’d take it away!” he said.
“But I don’t begrudge them that – that’s the nature of the music industry, it keeps moving.”
The imminent ‘How Did I Get Here?’ will follow on from Tomlinson’s second solo record, 2022’s ‘Faith In The Future’. His former bandmate Harry Styles is set to release his fourth LP, ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’, on March 6.
Speaking to NME in 2022, Tomlinson explained that he was “definitely” more comfortable with who he was as an artist compared to when he first went solo.
“That has been a process and I think it’ll be an ever-evolving process as well,” he told us. “But I definitely feel really comfortable about just following my heart musically and seeing where it gets me.”
