Louis Tomlinson - How Did I Get Here?
How did we get here, Louis?
Louis Tomlinson’s third studio album How Did I Get Here? invites the listener on yet another journey across familiar pop-rock waves, clearly inspired by a wide range of British artists. Louis has never really been the brightest breakout star of One Direction, but that hasn’t stopped him from working steadily and taking what he was given. That is a loyal and relatively stable fanbase — not strong enough to push him to a new artistic level, but solid enough to keep him afloat, support his career, and allow him to keep releasing music and touring.
How Did I Get Here? took twice as long to make as the gap between his debut and sophomore albums. A break twice as long naturally creates hope that the time was spent on something meaningful: developing skills, sharpening instincts, and figuring out what the next real step in his career could be. So what did this album ultimately become? It’s hard to describe it as anything other than stable.
Unfortunately, the record offers no real artistic growth beyond light flirtation with other genres or surface-level experimentation. If you break the album down into atoms, you’ll find elements of Walls and Faith in the Future, all mixed together and occasionally seasoned with inspirations from other artists — Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay, Tame Impala, Oasis and even the final One Direction albums. The arrangements are instantly familiar to anyone who has followed Louis’ previous work and don’t really offer anything ear-catching. In fact, many of them overlap heavily with things he’s already done before, lacking enough variety to clearly separate his musical eras.
Lyrically, the album doesn’t bring much to the table either — which is disappointing, considering that songwriting is one of Louis Tomlinson’s strongest qualities. He is a capable writer, but this time it feels like there was an attempt to make a more toothless, less specific record. And that’s exactly what it turned out to be.
The problem isn’t a lack of talent. Louis Tomlinson can make something interesting. The issue is that artistic development doesn’t happen in a vacuum — it requires not just pals around you, but a strong creative team and clear direction. Someone who knows how to identify an artist’s strongest sides and channel them into something cohesive and concrete. At this point, Louis’ entire discography feels like it lacks direction. Maybe that ambition simply isn’t there — the kind of ambition many artists have when they plan their careers years ahead. Still, he continues to release music, give interviews, and actively promote his work. The desire to be heard is clearly present, and that makes you want to find something genuinely good here.
And to be fair, there are moments of interest. The opening track “Lemonade” is bright, fun, and pleasantly contrasting. Songs like “Sunflowers” and “Imposter” work reasonably well within the album’s context. But to find these moments, you first have to break through a wall of endless la-la-la and woah-woah-woah-woah hooks that don’t really mean much. Yes, the album doesn’t have the same obvious low points as Walls or Faith in the Future, but it’s also far less engaging, far less gripping, and ultimately very cliched. Adding a few synths to the most standardized pop-rock sound in the world simply isn’t enough to qualify as real development.
Walls was an underwhelming start to Louis’ solo career. Faith in the Future was a small step forward. And How Did I Get Here? feels like yet another tiny baby step in the same direction. And yes, a small step forward is better than a step back. Still, it’s hard not to wonder whether, at this pace, we’ll reach something truly interesting only by album number ten. And very few artists are privileged enough to try that many times and still expect people to listen.
6.1/10
