Niall Horan planning country-inspired music with the help of American icon Shania Twain
The former 1D man has formed a bond with the singer and the pair have recently spent time in the studio together
The Sun - UK | May 19, 2017
ZAYN tried R&B, HARRY did rock, LIAM’s gone urban and LOUIS turned to dance.
Now the fifth and final ONE DIRECTION member, NIALL HORAN, has sussed out where to take his own solo music — and he’s got the right person to help him.
Niall has formed a bond with country music icon SHANIA TWAIN in a bid to take his music in a wild west direction.
The pair recently spent time in the studio together swapping tips after being introduced by their mutual producer Jacquire King.
Canadian Shania — regarded as the best-selling female country singer in history — taught Niall the ways of the country world.
He revealed: “I have spent a bit of time with Shania in the studio."
“The guy who produced her album, Jacquire King, is doing a lot of my album, so I spent a lot of time with her, and she’s great."
“I am learning about it and I think it’s really cool."
"The whole country singing in the States is really cool. I know these guys and I am learning about their ways."
He added: "I grew up on the likes of The Eagles and my mum had Garth Brooks and Shania in the house all the time and in the car when I was growing up."
"Country is the heart of the kind of music that I like. When you hear my album you will hear flavours of folk and country and stuff like that."
Niall recently unveiled his latest single 'Slow Hands', which definitely has some country vibes, ahead of his debut solo album.
No, all 4 producers have been mentioned in various articles. His name as well.
Shania Twain breaks down her 2017 comeback album
By Kevin O'Donnell | Entertainment Weekly | December 21, 2016 at 8:00am EST
When you’ve sold a bajillion albums and become one of the best-selling female artists in history, you can be allowed a little time off. So it’s been for country-pop queen Shania Twain. But after her successful two-year Las Vegas residency and 2015’s Rock This Country tour, she’s finally returning with a follow-up to 2002’s diamond-certified Up! “I’m so overdue!” says the 51-year-old. “I feel like I just need to keep making albums now.”
For her fifth studio LP, due in late Spring of 2017, Twain drew upon years of melodic and lyrical ideas that she had stored on various recording devices. “There’s, like, five of them,” she says with a laugh. “I’m forever backing things up. So if it’s a rainy day or I’m bored, I’ll go through my electronics and listen to things. They’ll have titles like ‘Fun beat’ or ‘Fab memory.’” Over the years, she’s laid down demos at home using GarageBand and Pro Tools. “It’s really fun to experiment with arrangements,” she says. “I did so many of my backing vocal arrangements — just being able to have all these multitracks and moving them around and experimenting that way. By the time I got into the studio, I was already quite familiar with what I wanted to do.”
Armed with those gigabytes of intel, Twain teamed up with producers Jake Gosling (Ed Sheeran, One Direction), Ron Aniello (Bruce Springsteen), Jacquire King (Kings of Leon), and songwriter-producer Matthew Koma to hone the material. “They’re all very different from each other,” she says of her collaborators. “And I’m a very focused person in the studio. It’s not like it’s not fun, but the joy comes in watching the whole thing grow and getting locked into that creative mode — that’s so indulgent for me.”
Twain says the finished album includes “painful and melancholy ballads that evolved into completely upbeat songs” to “triumphant” girl-power rockers. Although her ex-husband Mutt Lange, who produced Up! and 1997’s record-breaking Come On Over, is out of the picture, Twain is as confident as ever about her new material. “By the end [of the recording process], I felt like I had climbed a huge mountain and was standing on top of it, looking God in the eye, and saying, ‘I’m here! What do I gotta do next?’”