Niall Horan - Heartbreak Weather | Review

Not my usual genre but I thought I'd give it a go from a pop fan's POV!

Niall Horan dropped his recent album, Heartbreak Weather, at the beginning of this month, two and a half years after his debut as a solo artist. Heartbreak Weather has already claimed the title of UK Number 1 album in the charts - Niall’s first solo Number 1.

Niall Horan’s most recent album just reached Number 1 in the UK charts so what better time to see what the hype is about in ‘Heartbreak Weather’. The ex-One Direction vocalist released his first solo album in October 2017 (Flicker) and recently followed it up on 13th March 2020 with his second album. Released through Capitol Records, the album documents the journey through a relationship from beginning to end, starting with ‘Heartbreak Weather’, and 13 songs later, finishing with ‘Still’.

According to The Sun (2020), Horan was inspired by his recent breakup with now ex-girlfriend, Hailee Steinfield, to write this album, laying out the stages of his relationships. The title track, ‘Heartbreak Weather’, for example, is about the pleasantries of the start of a relationship. The lyric: “It can be so lonely in this city/But it feels different when you're with me”, highlights the sweet rose-tinted point of view that the honeymoon stage of a relationship presents.

Comparatively, the song ‘San Francisco’ shows the back half of a relationship, when things start going wrong and you think fondly of the beginning of a relationship. Lyrics like “I want to kiss you like the first time/Hold you like it's not goodbye”, show how it’s at the very end of a relationship, when you know that it’s time to end it, that you start wanting to try to go back to when it was better. The song is a bittersweet ode to the good times in a relationship that everyone wants to relive.

The album’s somber, melancholic feel juxtaposes the more folk-pop-y, upbeat feel of his last album, Flicker. Heartbreak Weather is an album made from the heart to help Horan’s fans heal from their own heartbreak and it’s no wonder it’s been well-received. Despite the wistful undertones of the album, there are some songs that almost seem like a completely different genre and belong on a different album (such as ‘Trust Fund Baby’) and because of this the album gets a solid 7/10 from us. It’s a great album with a lot of devotion to the Niall Horan fans but it lacks consistency in its tempo.

To hear the album: Heartbreak Weather

For tickets to his upcoming tour: Niall Horan Tickets