Niall Horan, 26, continued his week-long residency on The Late Late Show in a big way on March 10. First, we watched the Irish lad nearly shed a tear while engaging in a spicy hot wings eat off with James Corden during a pre-filmed skit. The dinner got so heated, it ended with Niall dumping pitchers of blue cheese and ranch all over his head. But it was fans’ turns to cry when Niall took the stage at the end of Tuesday’s show to put on an emotional performance of his song, “Put A Little Love On Me,” found on the track list of his upcoming album Heartbreak Weather!
On the first night of his one-week residency, Niall rocked out on a guitar to his album’s lead single, “Nice To Meet Ya.” But Niall slowed it down tonight, opting to show his more vulnerable side as he crooned his new ballad while someone played on the piano. We have to commend the host, James, for pitching the idea that Niall should celebrate the release of his Heartbreak Weather album by appearing on every episode of this week’s Late Late Show!
Heartbreak Weather marks Niall’s second solo album since leaving One Direction, and he said that a lot of the ideas on this album came while he was backpacking through Asia. “[I was] coming up with ideas and stuff as I was away, like I always do,” said Niall when explaining the Heartbreak Weather songwriting process to Zane Lowe during the Feb. 7 episode of Zane’s Apple Music Beats 1 show. “Kept the head down, and people were kind of like, ‘I respect you, man.’ Just being a normal person. Then I went back, and I got bored and started writing straight away, and I felt like I wrote, like, five or six songs when I got back, and I was like, ‘Maybe I should do something with this, ’cause it feels normal.’ It feels natural. I’m not trying to write anything crazily in particular. Just, like, this is what I write, the way, the way I most naturally write.”
During the chat, Niall’s former One Direction band member Louis Tomlinson came up. Louis just released his debut, Walls, while Niall, Harry Styles, and Zayn Malik have two solo records under their belts. (To be fair for Louis, Liam Payne also has only one solo project out, dropping LP1 in December.) Niall defended Louis Tomlinson, stressing that making music isn’t a race.
“As everyone keeps pointing out to [Louis] for some reason, everyone else is on their second album. I mean that must be hard to listen to,” Niall said, per Billboard. “As we spoke about earlier, you have to go through that cycle. If you don’t know what it sounds like, you need to find it.” Niall also noted that Louis, losing his mother and sister, went through a “horrific-time, family-wise” and hoped that he “got to turn that on its head and write about it.. and make it what is going to be a successful album out of it as well sheds some light on it.”
Niall also gave some love to his former bandmates, saying that his time in One Direction was “the most fun of all time.” Though, he did say that he struggled with being the most famous band in the world at some points. “it’s just certain situations, you know, like when you couldn’t leave the hotel. 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. My dad always says that packed suitcase never came back, you know?”