Niall Horan Opens Up on One Direction’s Success

Niall Horan is looking back on the massive success of One Direction.

The Ireland native was introduced to the world when he was 16 as a member of the wildly popular teen boy band, One Direction. The five-member band of Horan, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne were joined together in 2010 on The X Factor. They later became one of the most popular boy bands in history with hits like “What Makes You Beautiful” and “Best Song Ever.” The band broke up in 2015, leading Horan to launch a solo career.

Looking back eight years later, Horan says he and his bandmates managed to keep their heads on straight by not getting wrapped up in the pandemonium surrounding them. “I just think we never believed the hype,” Horan tells Willie Geist on Sunday Today. “The state of shock was always there.”

The “Slow Hands” singer explains that they were kept in a “bubble” with their team, traveling around the world and going through the motions during the height of their career.

“If you’re looking in, it must have looked crazy, and everybody’s going, ‘You’re in the biggest band!’ We were just still having a great time,” he continues. “We always used to say, ‘Normal people doing an abnormal job,’ which is a good outlook to have.”

The Voice coach says they channeled this humble mentality into their stadium-sized Where We Are Tour in 2014, which was named after a particular phrase they’d use to describe their mentality about fame. “One of the stadium tours was called Where We Are Tour because we always used to be like, ‘Look where we are,’” he describes. “It was literally named because we were always like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ Every now and then, you catch yourself looking at each other just going, ‘This is nuts.’ Thankfully, that’s never gotten old. I love it.”

Horan recently released his album, The Show, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. “I feel like it sounds like an album that a 29-year-old would release,” Horan told American Songwriter. “I could have kept releasing the same stuff as I did before, but I feel like when my new influences come into play it’s [inevitably] gonna sound just a little more mature.” 

Photo Credit: Tina Benitez-Eves