Nice to Meet Ya

“Nice to Meet Ya” is the first single from previous One Direction member Niall Horan, and his upcoming second studio album as a solo artist. The track was released on the 4th October 2019, and performed well on the global charts.

“Nice to Meet Ya” was written by Niall Horan and Ruth-Anne Cunningham, and produced by Tobias Jesso Jr and Julian Bunetta. The track consists of Horan explaining how much he’s interested in his current partner, and how he wants her to be with him more often as he does not see her as often as he likes. Horan spoke to Genius.com about the history behind the track:

Genius: What inspired the song?

Niall Horan: It was a riff that I played. Yeah, I guess the inspiration and where it came from was, it was a riff that I play: a guitar riff. I played about I’d say July, August last year when I was on tour and then kind of just play something that I liked or sing a melody into a phone. But it came from the riff and I would just record it on my voice notes and then when it came to go into the show, I was kind of like in the studio and we’re having one of those days where nothing was actually coming together at all, couldn’t think of anything. On one of those writer’s block days, tried about five different ideas and nothing really was happening. And then I kind of had to listen through some bits and pieces and then I just start playing that riff then came it hard, came across that riff, played the main riff in the song and it kind of kicked off from there really.

G: How did you link up with Julian Bunetta?

NH: I met Julian where I was pretty young, he was involved early doors maybe from the second album of 1D. He and a guy called John Ryan, they were like pretty in the 1D process from start and we became really good friends with him straight away and we’re just like really chill, just living out in Calabasas and California, real like local Californians, really chilled out, easy to become friends with and that’s sometimes the hardest part about going into the room with a producer. You don’t know if you’re going to click and then if you don’t click then the music probably won’t be as tasteful because you’ve already got bad vibes about it and Julian is just the best. If I had ever had a problem with my life, he’d be one of the first people that I’d ever call, just like good friend and then after that we just, the way Julia Marxists, we just jam a lot at a time. A lot of it comes from just moments like that where you’re just sitting there playing rifts and his first instrument is drums. So he’ll always have some sort of a sick groove going on and I can play around with, get on the mic something over it and it’s never really, we always put enough time in the diary to make sure that we can have days where we can write terrible songs or have days where nothing really happens. And yeah, we just, we have always written quite diverse songs together. Like we wrote “Slow Hands” together. We also wrote songs on my last album called ‘Flicker’ together, which is a complete opposite. He’s kind of rock pop song, the other one’s like a straight up ballot. When we write together, it doesn’t feel like we’re working, we’re just having a jam out. And that’s where some of our best moments of calmness from jamming sessions.

G: Is this song about a specific person?

NH: I do write a lot of deep songs where the lyrics, every lyric means something, and when you hear some of the album you’ll understand that. A song like “Nice to Meet Ya” kind of is just more about the vibe, and it’s not crazy thought over. It’s clearly thought about, but not thought over. What’s the best way of describing it? It’s more about the attitude of the song, and then the lyrics kind of follow after. It obviously has to tell a story, but I like to write songs, these fun ones, based on a true story, kind of elaborate on what actually happened to make it a little bit more interesting. Because really what happened was I walk into a bar with my friends, we’re chatting away, there’s a group of girls, and one of them I just kind of lock eyes with. Then kind of chatting, then you go off with your group of friends and she goes off to hers, and then you chat a little bit more. But every time, as I say in the song, every time you turn around it feels like she kind of disappeared on you. With the area that we were in the night of this, there’s loads of little bars in a small area, and we kept, when we thought we’d kind of like lost each other, we were like, “Ah, there ya are,” from both sides. When I go sit and write the song, you can try and make it a little bit more interesting and elaborate a little bit more.

The music video for “Nice to Meet Ya” was released as the same day as the track, and was directed by The Yung Astronauts. The video starts with a woman leaving Horan’s apartment, and then to 25 hours later where the audience are shown how they met and Horan’s day from start to finish. Since its upload in October 2019, the video has over 32.4 million views and almost 900 thousand likes.

Release Date: 4th October 2019

Songwriter/s: Niall Horan & Ruth-Anne Cunningham

Producer/s: Tobias Jesso Jr & Julian Bunetta

Label: Capitol

Music Video Release Date: 4th October 2019

Music Video Director/s: The Young Astronauts

Chart Rankings & Certifications: “Nice to Meet Ya” hit the following peak chart positions in these locations: #60 in Australia, #30 & #3 on various charts in Belgium, #55 in Canada, #99 in Croatia, #10 & #48 on various charts in the Czech Republic, #7 in Ireland, #25 in Lithuania, #25 and #34 on various charts in the Netherlands, #7 in New Zealand, #51 in Romania, #9 in Scotland, #75 and #40 on various charts in Slovakia; #20 in Sweden, #95 in Switzerland, #22 in the UK, and lastly, #63, #26, #14, #38 and #19 on various Billboard charts in the US. “Nice to Meet Ya” is certified Gold in Australia and Silver in the UK.

The lyrics to “Nice to Meet Ya” can be viewed here: LINK