Louis Tomlinson’s new song ‘Walls’ is the title track of his latest album out next week.

It’s scary to think that Tomlinson first hit our TV screens on the X Factor 10 years ago as a fresh faced 18 year old, and the rest, as they say, became the One Direction phenomenon. Since then he has hardly spent anytime away from the public eye, with charity football, his own philanthropic projects and some guest appearances on The X Factor, not to mention his own artwork. Walls is not just a single release, but also the album title of his first solo offering and it gives us a fabulous glimpse into his ability, not just as a singer, but as a writer too. 

Walls is going to be a hit, probably the biggest off the album, you can already see that from the number of streams it’s attracting on various platforms - it’s getting more than most releases this week. When the song starts you get a classic feeling of piano and guitar working together to provide a really well crafted introduction then the vocal has a retro EQ on it to give atmosphere to the lyrics. The song talks about high walls being put in place as barriers, but actually personality can break these walls down, being strong to power through. As the chorus comes in, the sound builds, the guitars get bigger and strings sit behind to give it a rich and very memorable turn. As the song progresses into the next verse and chorus, more instrumentation builds and creates a song that has some real class about it. There’s bits of Indie in it, there are elements of traditional ballads and pop too. What really stands out though, is the fact that this is an original and has been written by someone who’s not only a singer and performer, but also a very talented songwriter who writes catchy melodies and supports that with lyrics that go a bit deeper than your average pop song and make you really think about the meaning. 

If Louis Tomlinson continues to write and create songs like this, I don’t think it will be long until music fans who’d prefer to put the manufactured pop bands to one side will forget that he was ever a part of that culture and start to listen to the accomplished song-writing, mature vocal and smart production of his solo work. I think Walls is a very good song, with all the components that will appeal to a wide demographic and if the early comments are anything to go by, I’m not the only one who thinks that. Louis Tomlinson is certainly breaking down walls! 

 Pop     Singer-songwriter 

Author: Phil Arnold

Phil Arnold is a musician, producer and music reviewer from Devon, in the South West of England. Whilst not writing music reviews, Phil also writes and records under the name of Ugbrooke.