LOOKING UP

After a challenging few years that saw him lose some of those closest to him, Louis Tomlinson is determined to celebrate life through music, with songs like ‘Lemonade’ from new album How Did I Get Here? reflecting a sunnier, more upbeat phase

- NICK LEVINE

One word keeps coming up when you interview Louis Tomlinson: resilient. He doesn’t exactly wear it as a badge of honour, but he seems content for it to settle into Louis lore. “I would say it’s a word that people associate with me – and more [so] since some of the darkness I’ve had in my life,” he says. “But truthfully, it predates that, and it’s kind of helped me to deal with those things.”

Understandably, Tomlinson is keener to shake off that other word – “darkness” – which he uses as a euphemism for the devastating loss of people he loved: his mother, his sister and his bandmate Liam Payne, who passed away last October. He describes his upcoming third solo album, How Did I Get Here?, which is due next year, as a “sunny departure” from the “darkness that was a bit of the perception with me, musically and also personally”. When he was in his late teens, Tomlinson called on this resilient streak to carve a role for himself within One Direction, the Anglo-Irish boyband that became the defining pop act of the early 2010s. Realising he wasn’t the group’s flashiest character – with Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Payne as bandmates, how could he be? – Tomlinson channelled his energy into songwriting. By the time One Direction went on hiatus in 2016, he had racked up 38 co-writes across their discography, more than any other member. Huge hits like ‘Steal My Girl’, ‘History’ and ‘Perfect’ all have his name on the credits.