During the series, the singer and songwriter performed “You Could Start a Cult,” “Meltdown,” and “On a Night Like Tonight” from his latest album The Show
Welcome to the final show. For the past three weeks, Niall Horan has been bringing songs from his third studio album, The Show, to life in intimate live performance settings as part of Vevo’s newly-launched Extended Play series. He started with fan-favorite “You Could Start a Cult” before working his way through “Meltdown” and “On a Night Like Tonight.” For a fitting end to his quartet of performances, Horan sat down at the piano and closed the curtains with “The Show.”
“Performing live is my favorite thing to do,” Horan shared in a statement at the start of the series. “To bring the songs I’ve spent so much time with, seen through from start to finish is an amazing feeling. Shooting these performances with Vevo was a really special experience. I was able to go back to the place where I made the music, an area of California I adore and have spent a lot of time in over my career. To have these big songs played in an intimate setting is beautiful to me.”
“The Show” appears at the album’s halfway point, interrupting the flow of sticky love songs and upbeat pop entries with a mid-tempo rumination on taking the good with the bad. “If everythin’ was easy, nothin’ ever broke/If everythin’ was simple, how would we know? How to fix your tears, how to fake a show/How to paint a smile, yeah, how would we know?/How good we have it, though?” he sings. “How good we have it, no? So, hold tight, get ready for the ride.”
Horan will have another chance to perform songs from The Show early next year with the addition of his favorite part of performing: a live audience. The tour, titled The Show: Live on Tour, will stop in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand in 2024.
“There’s nothing better than watching the crowd sing back to you with all that emotion on their faces and knowing that they’re attaching the song to something meaningful in their own lives,” Horan shared in a statement. “To me, that’s always the greatest thing that can ever come from songwriting.”