Niall Horan's got love on the brain — and he's sharing that feeling with his fans on his newest record.
The former One Direction member released his third studio album The Show on Friday. In light of the release, he opened up about how his girlfriend, Amelia Woolley, inspired some of the tracks during an interview with ET Canada.
When the interviewer suggested there was a lot of relationship material on the record, the "Slow Hands" singer, 29, responded, “Yeah, 100%. I’m in a relationship, so I think that comes with [it]."
He added, “Usually it’s the love songs are heartbreak songs, so it’s nice to be able to write better, you know, more happier stuff.”
Reflecting on how she feels about the songs, he said: “I think she’s just like, what? Really? She’s like, taken aback, I suppose.”
Elsewhere in the interview, he revealed that he looks for a good sense of humor in a partner — especially when they're as sarcastic as him.
Niall Horan.Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for Bauer Media
On Thursday, he told Bustle that his song on the record "You Could Start a Cult" served as a metaphor for being madly in love, When asked if he's madly in love, he responded, "That's dead right."
Horan also opened up about wanting to keep his relationship private.
"If everyone knew everything, [my songwriting] wouldn’t be as candid, would it?” he said. “There’d be all these theories, and I’m not in town for that. I’m here to write what’s on my brain, and love happens to be one of those things that’s flying around me.”
The Voice coach has been dating Woolley since early 2020, although they've kept their relationship largely out of the public eye.
The following year, Horan and Woolley made their public debut at the singer's Horan & Rose Gala in September 2021. They were photographed together at the event, which raised over 800,000 euros for charity.
As for the new record, Horan told PEOPLE on Tuesday that it was inspired by the pandemic, and the way that the lockdowns forced him to look inward.
"Watching the news at six o'clock every day was… It definitely provoked other thoughts, internal stuff that I would never really think about,” he said. "During the pandemic we were mostly pissed off because we lost all of our control that we like to have. It was taken out of our hands. So I think there was a sense of gratitude for what we had before. I think we've all changed now because of it."
He continued: "Everyone's like, 'Jesus, I’ll never take anything for granted.' I’ll go everywhere. If someone says we're going for a drink on a Tuesday, I'll go. So I think there was a lot of that seeped in, being grateful, and being grateful for what you have, who you have. That made an impact on the record, I think… It's the biggest cliché in songwriting that songwriting is a form of therapy, [but] it absolutely is. All you have to do is listen to this stuff and then you get a fair idea of where I’m at."
