Louis Tomlinson on Tour
"I like the idea of finally finding my lane and feeling comfortable and confident about what I'm doing," Louis Tomlinson said in a 2019 interview, and seeing him in concert shows that he's traveling at full speed. Wielding the charm and onstage presence that he honed as a member of mega-selling boy band One Direction, the British singer and TV personality puts on a high-energy live show that spans his whole career — all the way back to the days when he auditioned for The X Factor with The Killers' newer-wave smash "Mr. Brightside."
Louis Tomlinson in Concert
Born in 1991 in Doncaster, England, Louis Tomlinson trained as an actor in his early years, and landing the role of Danny Zuko in a school production of Grease gave him enough confidence to try out for the Simon Cowell-helmed British singing competition The X Factor in 2010. He didn't place as a solo singer, but decided to enter with four other contestants as a group that was dubbed One Direction. They came in third during the show's seventh season, but they wound up being first in fans' hearts, creating a Beatlemania-level frenzy as they headlined stadiums around the world, released chart-topping songs and repeatedly broke the internet until they went on hiatus in 2016.
At the end of that year, Tomlinson released his first post-One Direction song, a collaboration with EDM festival floor-filler Steve Aoki called "Just Hold On." In 2017, he collaborated with pop belter Bebe Rexha and British DJ Digital Farm Animals on "Back to You." Later that year, he released two solo singles, "Just Like You" and "Miss You," that were marked by introspective lyrics. In 2018, Tomlinson returned to The X Factor as a judge, mentoring Jamaican-born singer Dalton Harris to victory. He resumed his own musical career in 2019, co-writing Blackbear's "Changes" and releasing three singles in the run-up to the January 2020 release of his first solo album, Walls, and the Louis Tomlinson World Tour in support of it in the spring and summer of 2020.