Niall Horan has credited Olivia Rodrigo with changing the way pop music is written.
Former One Direction star Niall has lavished praise on Olivia Rodrigo – who releases her third album You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love in June – and her producing partner Dan Nigro revealing the singer’s records Sour and Guts had a “big influence” on the way other artists’ songs are put together.
In a interview with Rolling Stone, Niall explained: “It’s great to hear [bridges]. I feel like Olivia Rodrigo has been a big influence on that for pop writers.
“What I like about Olivia’s music is [that] you feel like you’re getting one song and then you get a completely different song.
“It completely flips on its head musically, goes somewhere different, brings you to a bridge, brings you to some weird musical breakdown thing.
“Whatever [she] and Dan Nigro are up to is a good little team they’ve got going there. It’s definitely influencing people, including myself.”
You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love is due for release on June 12 following the debut of the record’s first single, Drop Dead, which landed on April 17. Olivia has also announced a new tour – The Unraveled Tour – which kicks off in the US in September including four nights at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, California and another four at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York before she heads to Europe in 2027.
Slow Hands singer Niall is also releasing a new album – Dinner Party – in June and he’s revealed his influences have also included pop-punk bands such as Blink-182.
He explained: “That drum sound is something that we were trying to chase, and that comes from that late-’90s, early-2000s punk-rock era.
“Rock’s been a big influence in my life since I was a child. I write pop songs, but dressing them up in a different way sometimes is quite cool. And now, the way my career is going, I’m completely thinking about live shows all the time. I learned so much from being on the road and being out there every night.
“There’s only so much sitting on Spotify you can do and reading comments before you actually get an idea of what people actually think. You can see it in the room. The rockier stuff really goes off at the shows.”