Louis Tomlinson has admitted that it was "really difficult" to write songs about anything else, but the tragic death of his former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne.
Payne died following a fall from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina in October 2024. He was 31 years old. The singer had previously shot to fame as part of the boyband One Direction alongside Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik.
Speaking on Zane Low's Apple Music Show, Louis Tomlinson did not want to detail which songs from his album, How Did I Get Here? were about about Payne, but did say that "people will find what they need".
"Listen, when something like that happens in your life, it's really difficult to write anything else", Tomlinson said. "I remember the first time that I experienced grief. How can you write a love song when you’re feeling the feelings that you’re feeling? It feels so unimportant to everything that’s going around in your head".
"So, yeah, there are definitely moments where I’ve written about him kind of directly and then other moments that are a bit more subconscious. But it’s also not something I want to over-explain because, it won’t be too hard for people to join the dots".
At this point, Tomlinson, 34, was asked if his song, Dark to Light was about Payne, to which he said: "It’s a really intimidating concept to entertain, definitely, because there aren’t enough words really to explain love like that".
"But it certainly is one of the songs on the record that, pretty much every time I hear it, there’ll be a moment where I get goosebumps and drift off in my head and have a little think about it", the singer added. "It’ll probably be a challenging one to do live, but it is still one that I want to do live".
This comes a week after Louis Tomlinson released his new album, How Did I Get Here, which sees him working with primary collaborator and co producer, Nico Rebscher, with Tomlinson as lyricist, songwriter and performer on this record.
Tomlinson also announced an new tour to go with this album starting in Hamburg on 23 March, before finishing in Miami on 24 July.
“I sum up it as ‘The record I always deserved to make'", Tomlinson says of the album. “ My bread and butter is the honesty. I genuinely wear my heart on my sleeve, and I hope it comes through in the music. I’m still learning and getting better as a singer and a songwriter. I find it impossible to be complacent; it’s not in my vocabulary. For the first time now, I’m allowing myself to be the artist I’d always hoped to be".
More on this story here.
