Ahead of Niall Horan‘s much-anticipated release of his second solo single “Slow Hands” on Thursday, the former One Direction singer revealed some very interesting information about the new track in an interview with Siriux XM Hits 1. Not only does the song have a funkier feel to it than his acoustic debut “This Town,” but Horan admits that there’s a pretty sexy vibe involved with it as well.
“The whole song was pretty off-the-cuff. I wanted it to be a little bit cheeky with the lyric,” Horan told Hits 1’s Mikey Piff. “We wrote this concept about being in the bar. The first line of the song is ‘We should take this back to my place’ — usually that’s what the guy would say, but we flipped it that the girl would say that, and that’s what she said right to my face. With the song, before we even wrote lyrics, we had this big track and it sounded quite sexy. So we thought that this concept would match the vibe of the song, and I think we might have been right.”
Horan also detailed his album creation process in the interview, saying that he wrote about 70 songs for his forthcoming LP, narrowing it down to about 16 for the final track list. Even with all of those tracks to choose from, he said “Slow Hands” was actually one of the last to be written.
“I wrote this one, probably, in February. I just thought, ‘You know what? I’m missing a bit of grit. Something a bit more funky, something with a bit heavier bass.’ That’s what I set out to do,” he explained. “And then I was listening to a lot of late ’70s, early ’80s people like Don Henley. When he went solo in the early ’80s, he just had this funky kind of feel to it — heavy bass, heavy guitar. So I thought, ‘Let’s give this a crack.’ And then it just kind of happened, within a few hours, it was brilliant.”
Although Horan has yet to reveal the release date for his solo album, it shouldn’t be too long before fans at least find out when they can expect it. With just two more songs to be recorded — which he plans to do the weekend after the release of “Slow Hands” — the album is in the final stages.
As for whether his Irish roots will be presented on the album? Don’t worry, Horan promises there’s one track that even he “blew myself away with Irishness.” Between sexiness and Irishness, it sounds like Niall fans have a lot to look forward to.