Niall Horan has praised Louis Tomlinson for opening up about his grief on his debut solo album ‘Walls’.
Louis’ mother Johannah Deakin passed away in 2016 after a battle with leukaemia, while his sister Félicité Tomlinson died from an accidental overdose in 2019 and Louis’ One Direction bandmate is proud of his friend for channelling his grief into something positive with his new music.
Niall told Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s New Music Daily: "He’s got a great bulk of songs and it’s going to do well this weekend. He obviously went through a horrific time, family-wise or, life-wise, but the fact that he got to turn that on its head and, and write about it … and, you know, make it what is going to be successful album out of it as well sheds some light on it."
Louis is the last One Direction member to release his own solo album, with Harry Styles already on his second and Niall preparing to release ‘Heartbreak Weather’, his follow-up to ‘Flicker’, next month.
However, Niall thinks Louis was right to take his time and figure out his own sound away from the band.
He explained: "As everyone keeps pointing out to him for some reason, everyone else is on their second album. I mean that must be hard to listen to. You have to go through that cycle. If you don’t know what it sounds like, you need to find it. But this is the kind of stuff that he listens to anyway, so it all makes sense."
Niall also fondly remembered his years in One Direction as "the most fun of all time."
He said: "It was that crazy and it’s very fun. You know, it’s just certain situations, you know, like when you couldn’t leave the hotel or you go to a city and we traveled the world but never seen it type thing. That was the part I always struggled with, because I’m not like, an indoorsy, sit-down, play video games type person. I have to go out and do something. So that’s the only part I ever struggled with."