"Life influences are really influences for the album, and just stuff that I've been through, especially in the last five years with being in the band and everything," he said in a preview video. "Yeah, it's quite a personal album."

"It's a nice feeling to come out of a place where you are being told what to do, and, you know, to behave a certain way because of certain expectations or certain things that people want to see," he said about his time in One Direction. Speaking about this new project, he admitted, "It is just my perspective, and that is fully liberating."