IN OCTOBER OF last year, Niall Horan released Flicker – his debut album as a solo artist.

And for anyone who hasn’t given the record a listen, a number of the tracks make reference to a period of heartbreak the singer recently experienced – something which he says makes performing them a little difficult these days.

The Mullingar man elaborated on this during a recent interview with Coup de Main magazine, saying that he heard Sam Smith felt similarly after ultimately finding himself in a happy relationship.

I heard him saying in an interview he did recently that he feels weird singing these songs now that are on this album because he’s not heartbroken anymore.

And Niall gets it.

He’s singing about stuff that makes him sad, but he’s not sad anymore, so he does find it funny. And that kind of resonated with me. Now I’m thinking I just want to write songs, and not write about something in particular.

Without giving too much away about his personal life, Niall, who is reportedly dating Hailee Steinfeld, implied he’s over that particular period in his life, which will ultimately take his next album in a new direction.

A lot of this album was driven from personal experiences and heartache and stuff like that. But I don’t have that at the moment, so I think a lot more will just be going out and writing songs, and trying to write good songs, instead of being stuck on one particular concept.

In fact, the 24-year-old would be the first to admit that the heartache theme pretty much dominated Flicker.

The album kind of turned out to be a concept album because it was about one particular thing, so I do think that next time will be a little bit different.

In saying all that, heartache clearly sells, with Flicker debuting at No.1 in Ireland and the US.

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