While writing lullabies isn’t on the first-time father’s to-do list at the moment, he admits he has exposed his son to a little bit of his musical prowess.
“I’ve sang to him a couple of times,” Tomlinson says. “They are nice lullabies.”
Speaking of new music, the singer says he thinks “it’s nice” when he hears the solo work of former bandmate Zayn Malik, whose collaborative single “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” with Taylor Swift is currently heating up the airwaves.
“I think we’ve got to a point now where you can just really be happy for each other,” he shares. “Things have happened in the past, of course … [But] it’s great. And his first song is an absolute smash.”
Tomlinson says he considered taking a break from music after his mother Johannah Deakin‘s tragic death from leukemia in December. And though he admits he isn’t comfortable talking too in depth about it, he does recount his mother’s wish for her son before she died.
“When I first found out about the news, I did want to throw the towel in,” he shares. “But it was [my] mum that said to me that I just gotta keep going. She told me very sternly that she wanted me to.”
“So I’m not doing it for her, but we’re doing it for each other,” Tomlinson continues. “It was tough, but I felt like it was nice for me to have a little send-off.”
Though Tomlinson — whose first solo song “Just Hold On” with DJ Steve Aoki was released in December — is open to the idea of one day expanding his family, he is content focusing on the present for now.
“Definitely, in the future, yeah,” he says of whether he wants more children. “But at the moment … I’ve got Freddie and I’m trying to stay career-driven.”