As it became increasingly apparent in 2015 that One Direction were about to go their separate ways, the blockbusting boy band’s oldest member, Louis Tomlinson, fretted that he might slip between the cracks.
He was aware that Harry Styles had “everything it takes to be a great artist” and had a keen sense that Niall Horan, his Mullingar bandmate – whom he recently described as “Irish and lovely” – would thrive too. Where did that leave him? Was he about to be the Shane Lynch to Styles’ Ronan Keating?
That question continues to hang in the air as Tomlinson releases his thumpingly okayish third album, How Did I Get Here? Blending Oasis guitars and Ed Sheeran-style saccharine bangers, it’s a record that tries to be all things to all potential listeners but is, in the end, not much of anything.
Recorded in Costa Rica, Los Angeles and rural England, the project is superficial and lightweight to the point that it’s hard to avoid suspicions Tomlinson set out to make an LP with the staying power of a Friday-night takeaway.
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Anyone parsing its 12 tracks for insights into the death of his One Direction friend Liam Payne, in 2024, will certainly be none the wiser. It is froth above feeling, a suite of airheaded anthems with little in the way of emotional ballast.
Much like Tomlinson’s public persona as an amiable Doncaster lad, How Did I Get Here? brims with superficial highs. Its lead single, Lemonade, for instance, is as agreeable and disposable as a fizzy drink on a hot day. The same shrugging amiability characterises the swooning synths and vapid vocals of On Fire, a lukewarm showcase for Tomlinson’s husky, anonymous voice and his love of an unchallenging melody.
To be middle of the road is not the worst sin a now 34-year-old former X Factor star can commit, and Tomlinson’s laid-back qualities are the redeeming feature on the psychedelic Sunflowers, a mild-mannered pastiche of the acid popsters Tame Impala that culminates in a moreish hook.
The problem is that, underneath the sugary arrangements, it’s hard to get any sense of who Tomlinson is as a person. On the Sheeranesque Lazy, he wants to sit back and soak up the vibes, while the chugging Broken Bones suggests Robbie Williams fronting the louche indie poseurs The 1975 at their most annoying.
It’s a shame Tomlinson seems so at ease with superficiality, because on the few occasions he probes deeper, he is revealed as an artist capable of considerable thought and introspection. If his indie stomper Palaces is patterned on the corporate alternative rock of The Killers, its lyrics orbit the darker subject of the challenges of fame and the price paid by those who chase it to the exclusion of all else. “I’m lost in the time, I don’t care for the world outside,” he observes in a mournful unpacking of how it feels to be surrounded by fans yet feel totally alone.
The background to the song is a low-level online spat between Tomlinson and Robbie Williams, who posed for selfies with cabin staff on a flight last year and revealed that the crew told him he was much nicer than another celebrity they had recently encountered. Tomlinson speculated to Rolling Stone magazine that he might have been the celeb in question, saying he had not been in a good place at the time.
“Robbie never actually called me out on it, but I’m sure I was who he was talking about,” Tomlinson said. “I felt cross with the world, to be honest ... What’s tough in that situation, psychologically, is that you know there’s no answer other than, ‘Sorry, I’m a c***.’ Because you know there’s no excuse you can make that can kind of alleviate that blow.”
Long before Payne’s awful death, Tomlinson had endured his share of heartbreak: the death from cancer of his mother, in 2016, when she was just 43, and his sister’s death from a drug overdose three years later, at the age of 18.
Tomlinson touches on those bereavements in Dark to Light, a pared‑to‑the‑marrow ballad where he tells a loved one that they’re missed (“I wish you could see how you looked in my eye”). It’s a stark departure from the playlist filler that dominates How Did I Get Here? – a splinter of emotion on an album that could have done with far more moments like it.
