Louis Tomlinson no longer feels like he’s in competition with his former One Direction bandmates.
The 32-year-old singer has admitted it took him a long time to stop comparing his solo success to that of Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Liam Payne, all 30, and Zayn Malik, 31, who quit before they went on an indefinite hiatus in 2015, and admitted it became “a little bit toxic”.
Asked by Brazil’s G1 publication if he still feels competitive with his fellow 1D stars, he replied: “No, I don’t. Truthfully. But I do think that anyone — and obviously, there won’t be a lot of people who can relate to this — but anyone who has been in a similar situation of being in a band and then kind of going out on your own, there is always that element of… the only thing you have to cross reference with is other members of the band. That’s literally all you’ve got. And it took me… I think it’s a maturity thing, maybe. It took me a long time to look at it for what it was. Because that’s where petulance starts to come in. You start to think, ‘If they’re getting that, why am I not getting this?’. And it just becomes a little bit toxic.”
Louis – who has released two solo albums, 2020’s ‘Walls’ and 2022’s ‘Faith in the Future’ – has come through that now and is feeling confident in the music he’s making and insists that despite comparing himself to the other lads, he’s always been “immensely proud” of each of them.
He continued: “Unfortunately, it is the nature of the music industry. It is competitive by nature. We’re all competing for spots. But I look at it in a very different way now. But as I said, that takes maturity. And truthfully, I also needed to succeed on my own to kind of get through that. And get past that. And that kind of comes back to that confidence I feel now, to be able to say these things. Oh, and just to reiterate, because it’s important: while I felt competitive, or more competitive than I am now, that’s not to say that I wasn’t immensely proud of everything the boys were doing. It was more about reflecting on my own situation. Just about thinking: ‘Oh, I wish I had a bit of that.’
Whereas I do feel in a much, much different place now. And it’s a nicer thing to feel, it’s not always the nicest feeling to feel so competitive.”
‘As It Was’ hitmaker Harry is the most successful member of the ‘History’ group when it comes to numbers, having embarked on a career in acting as well as his chart-topping music.