Niall Horan releases ‘The Show’
Chart-topping global superstar Niall Horan released The Show, his third studio album, via Capitol Records today. Revealing the immense growth and life experience he’s gained since 2020’s Heartbreak Weather – an album made in his early 20s – the result is a deeply felt and endlessly spellbinding statement on following your heart to its absolute truth. Download / stream The Show HERE.
Today, Horan shared the official video for the album’s title track. Directed by Connor Brashier (Kygo, Shawn Mendes), the video was shot at the Downtown Palace, a downtown Los Angeles theatre that dates back to the vaudeville era. As a crew rushes around preparing for the evening’s concert, Horan performs “The Show,” accompanying himself on piano. View the video HERE.
Set against a hypnotic backdrop of swooning strings and poignant piano work, “The Show” was the first song Horan worked on for the new album. The track reflects on the undeniably human desire to control the uncontrollable—then gently urges the listener to fully embrace life for all its messiness. He wrote it late one summer night in 2020, after his tour in support of Heartbreak Weather had been cancelled due to the pandemic. With most of his guitars stowed with his touring gear, he sat down at the piano and spontaneously composed a song that would come to define a whole new era of his career.
To celebrate the album’s release, Horan will perform today in New York City as part of the Citi Summer Concert Series on “TODAY.” After making his festival debut at Boston Calling last month, he will be playing festivals around the globe this summer. He’ll embark on a global headline tour next February. Due to the high demand for tickets – over half a million sold to date, resulting in numerous sold-out shows around the world – additional dates have been added to “THE SHOW” LIVE ON TOUR 2024, including a July 28, 2024 show at The Kia Forum in Inglewood, CA. See below for itinerary. Tickets are available at www.niallhoran.com.
Photo Credit: Christian Tierney
Horan – who joined NBC’s The Voice” this season and logged his first win as a coach with contestant Gina Miles’ victory – recently performed “Meltdown,” another song from the album, on the show. View his performance HERE. Rolling Stone observed, “Unlike the optimistic pop songs that bury devastating lyrics beneath the sound of sunshine, ‘Meltdown’ keeps up an unrelenting pace that more so echos the heightened anxiety and panic Horan sings about.”
In the making of The Show, Horan worked with a close-knit circle of collaborators, including Julian Bunetta (Thomas Rhett, SG Lewis), Amy Allen (Halsey, Sam Smith), Jamie Scott (Jessie Ware, Rag’n’Bone Man) and acclaimed producers John Ryan and Joel Little. Built on a lush and radiant form of alt-pop, the album draws much of its mesmerizing power from Horan’s ingenious use of harmonies—an element inspired by Crosby, Stills & Nash, Jackson Browne, and other members of the ’60s/’70s music scene in Laurel Canyon – the very same Los Angeles neighborhood in which he’s lived part-time for the past seven years.
A near-lifelong songwriter who taught himself to play guitar as a kid in Ireland – and who names attending an Eagles concert at age four as a pivotal moment in shaping his sensibilities – Horan has sold over 80 million records and toured the globe multiple times as part of the iconic One Direction. In 2017, he made his full-length solo debut with Flicker, a Platinum-certified and chart-topping album featuring the triple-Platinum single “Slow Hands.” Heartbreak Weather followed in 2020 and topped the U.K.’s Official Albums chart and Billboard’s Top Album Sales tally.