How Did I Get Here?

About

The eventful few years separating Louis Tomlinson from 2022’s <i>Faith in the Future</i> and his third solo album more than justify the question he poses in the title <i>How Did I Get Here?</i>—a line taken from dreamy, soft-rock closing track “Lucid,” which narrates Tomlinson’s tenuously trippy connection to reality. “It’s a statement,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “I’m not interested in answering the question. The first couple of year, once I’d been doing this job, I think I was probably a bit more interested in answering that question, but after years and years of trying, there is no answer. I think it’s so out of the ordinary what I do. So I’m just looking around, open arm, like, ‘How the fuck did I get here? How did we get here?’ Me and my fan, you know? It’s basically gratitude, I suppose. That’s the feeling that I was thinking about.” Front-loaded with sugary, summery, lovestruck pop rock before opening the gate to a more insular excavation of Tomlinson’s darker mental recesses via the jagged chords and distortion of “Broken Bone,” the record is a game of two clear halve. “The intention with this record was to be a better reflection of my personality because parts of those first two records [2020’s <i>Walls</i> and 2022’s <i>Faith in the Future</i>], they’re quite gloomy,” he say. “It’s quite dark. It’s quite emotionally heavy. It’s not really how I live my life. I’ve had some tough things to deal with, but I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy and there’s always some kind of positive punchline, even in the darkest time. I feel like I’d got the emotional weight on the previous record, but not quite found the light at the end of the tunnel. And that’s what this record really was about because I feel really, really good in myself, personally, professionally.” Co-written with a clutch of old faithful collaborators including Jamie Scott (Tom Grennan), David Sneddon (Rag’n’Bone Man), and Hurts singer Theo Hutchcraft, the album kicks off with a rush of new-relationship energy. Sun-drenched tracks like “Lemonade” and “Lazy” add funky new shades to Tomlinson’s sonic palette, while “Last Night” builds a rush of apocalyptic euphoria onto skittering drum ’n’ bass production. Later, dramatic synth stabs punch up the “proper paranoia” of “Imposter,” in contrast to the slow, stripped-back climb to crescendo on “Dark to Light,” a poignant rendering of grief’s unanswered question. .

via Apple Music

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