On his third solo album following One Direction, Irish singer-songwriter Displaced: Review.
Reviewed by June 23, 2023
matthias will
Those Beach Boys’ “good vibrations” chorus and explicit quotes from Brian Wilson and collaborators (“God only knows”) in “Heaven” aren’t surprising: after all, One Direction already flirted with classic rock on their records. Does, in the blink of an eye The Clash, The Who etcetera. “Pet Sounds” isn’t the band’s only respectful reference to “The Show”: here and there, in the ten pieces that make up his third solo album, Niall Horan also cites Crosby, Stills and Nash, Jackson Browne and other icons. Are. The music scene of the 60s and 70s in Laurel Canyon, the refuge of the American alternative culture of those magical and unattainable years.
All stuff already re-enacted and revisited by another former director, Harry Styles: The 29-year-old Irish singer-songwriter is seeing his ex-bandmate. Bear in mind that Harry reached his maturity practically immediately after the disbandment of One Direction (those directly related never utter a dirty word: they claim that the group simply took an indefinite hiatus). , having recorded it already in 2017 on the eponymous debut album. “Sign of the Time”, while Niall is now only on his third album. “One thing I’ve learned over the years is that society likes to pressure us to achieve certain milestones by a certain age. We really should trust our instincts. I’ve tried to shake off those expectations and Have tried to listen to your heart,” he says. Perhaps it first had to cater to the general public in a simpler, more traditional guise, before it conformed to the teen pop of 100 million-selling boy bands.
If 2017’s “Flicker” and 2020’s “Heartbreak Watar”, which allowed the Irish singer-songwriter to chart on both sides of the Atlantic to her satisfaction (the first also conquered the top of the Billboard 200, ranking in the United States Most Popular Albums in the U.S.), was dismissed by international critics as two mediocre albums, “The Show” is already one of the geographical surprises of this season. And that’s exactly what a third album represented once, before Liquid Music in an artist’s career: an album of maturity. Someone said, listen without any bias.
His rise, his awareness, sings and plays in the ten pieces contained in his third album Niall Horan.
He recorded them in the United States in Nashville, Hollywood, Oakland, Joshua Tree Beach, in collaboration with hitmakers such as Tobias Jesso Jr., John Ryan, Joel Little, Mike Sabath, Jamie Scott, Mark Landon, James… Napier, the award-winning writer, producer and composer, has already teamed with artists like Adele, Sia, OneRepublic, Lorde, Taylor Swift, Imagine Dragons, Sam Smith, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran: practically an all- Star Team. You listen to it, hear the songs: “Paradise” to “Must Be Love”, “If You Leave Me” to “Science”, “Meltdown”, “Never Grow Up”, “Show” to Going Through, “You The songs “Cold Start a Cult”, “Save My Life” and “On a Night Light Tonight” are all potential chart hits.
It doesn’t matter if it’s ballads (“The Show”, “Science”), more electropop pieces (“If You Leave Me”, “Save My Life”, “Meltdown”, which is based on those choruses and that ultra-sticky refrain. with Practically “The Way It Is” by Niall), with other folk influences (“Never Grow Up”, “You Can Start a Cult”) or indie-rock (“On a Night Like Tonight” and “Must Be Love”) : Disco has its own harmony, its own harmony, the way the singer-songwriter talks about his versatility. And it is listened to willingly, and not only by (former) One Direction fans who will have husbands and children by now. Niall Horan certainly tries to shake off that somewhat cumbersome past and demonstrate that there is more to that past: now the “show” begins.