Remember a time before our Irish-designed Niall Horan—anyone else convinced he was brewed up in a Mullingar lab?—seduced us by lassoing his hips to the synchronized sultry claps of ‘Slow Hands?’ Yeah, neither can we. But honestly, ‘nestled behind a guitar’ would have been a better tagline for his wanted poster, given how he’s warned us about slipping into the ether now, just as he knuckle-fisted the instrument when he first started out. Of course, we’re reminiscing about the Flicker era—or an expletive era, if you wish, considering the cheeky album cover. It’s been a whopping seven years, but that doesn’t mean his tendency for mischief started yesterday!
Produced by a whole gaggle of people, but mainly drawing our attention to Julian Bunetta—who seems to enjoy sipping on an ‘Espresso’ while hit-making—Flicker’s pop-folk sound is another example of a baby learning to walk. There’s hardly an electric guitar roaring, reaching for the sound muffs upon anything that exceeds an “Iiiiiii” in ‘Mirrors’ (…“Need love,” in case you wanted to start the streaming party early). With the plucks of his forlorn heartstrings reserved for gentler strums. And if you’re looking for a copycat of ‘On A Night Like Tonight,’ good luck—the tune has been given a Formula 1 eroticized makeover, speeding up by over one hundred. But some things haven’t required a growth spurt.
Niall, The Psychic
Try as you might, a few of his loveable quirks are just never going away, like the probability of his mug being impressed onto a foamy Guinness, his fondness for handwriting letters, and his otherworldly powers. We’re not quite dabbling into So Raven territory, but these days, his enchantments manifest themselves into lyrics about clairvoyant dreams and a heavenly muse. At other times, we borrow the lyric “We made our love out of stacks of cards” to direct you to our favorite type of cards: tarot cards!
Yep, that magical deck that whispers secrets, tugging us from different timelines and supernatural occurrences interweaving between the past, present, and future. As you most likely know, each comes with its own meaning, especially in the major arcana. So we’re doing a five-card spread by pairing some of our favorite Flicker tunes with their enchanting tarot counterparts.
The Lovers
Sure, ‘You and Me’ is probably etched into a cheesy half-heart locket, with the other half hanging around their sweetheart’s neck. It made Flicker’s official cut, so it’s got that going for it, but we lean more towards the angst—the kind where you’re tearing through airports right before your lifelong crush boards the plane. ‘So Long,’ the should’ve-could’ve of this era, is all about that type of stumbling.
The not being sure if you’ll ever make it, until, with all its heart energy, it shows up at the last moment as a big declaration: Flicker: Featuring the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. It was Niall’s first live solo album—no moody, Bruce Springsteen-esque silhouette dragging his guitar under posh theater curtains in sight. Rather, it’s just him in jeans, slinking away at the piano’s ivory keys, with what feels like London’s entire Orchestra acting as his emotional support group.
The High Priestess
The femme fatale of the deck, the High Priestess, is the one to be careful of, throwing flirty smiles and then totally putting you on read for a couple of months. What can we say other than she’s ‘On The Loose?’ The sultry purr of Niall’s guitar is precisely what she sounds like, curling herself around the beat until the lyrics act as a warning label tucked into a bar’s alcove. They’re probably casting folklorian stories about her just as he is so that no one else gets thrown into her web, gripped by her mesmerizing charm.
This bad boy—or, er, girl, in this case—has one of Niall’s favorite bands, Fleetwood Mac, heavily influencing it, telling the Herald Sun, “You can hear the ‘Mac in that.” Actively prompting every Macite who threw the feather earrings back on for Stevie Nicks’s rocking Saturday Night Live special to cup their ears to this tune, sleuthing out the crumbs of inspiration.
The Six Of Cups
Who’s straight away warping their memories back to a young, naive Niall? Songs are truly like a time capsule. No fading photos are needed (if there were any, we’d talk about the brownish-blonde ombre, but more hair-dying tips later). It’s almost as if he believed he needed to upload ‘This Town’ onto SoundCloud because it wouldn’t garner enough attention; that boy always was shy. Now, the tune is lounging in Spotify’s spanky Billions Club. Every stream is like a fan-approved nod for a local to realize this song is top-notch, the line wrapping around the block until its velvet ropings have ended us here. It’s all thanks to you incessantly hitting the loop button as if it’s some sort of listening workout.
As for the Six of Cups, it symbolizes the feelings we get from using our memory as a film reel: nostalgia. There’s nothing quite like getting flashbacks of the dye box lingering next to his overly fried hair. The song is similar in that it is like finding a glowing portal to that same era hop. Or if you’re simpler, like Niall, we’re getting into a fine art car with a bumper that reads “Mullingar,” visiting that sparsely populated town. This isn’t the only standout animation from the visual, with rolling love hearts as golf balls bravely strolling through a treacherous, winding path back to something meaningful: a hole-in-one.
The Devil
Picture Niall as a little devil—or olc, for those who know Celtic. When fed into trusty Google translate, it comes out to mean “bad,” so we should score devilish points for knowing that, right, to blink us out of hell?—and you’re probably going to get a few questioning stares. He’s not perfect by any means, but getting a cake for angelic Ari is cute (we’re just always going to peek over his shoulder to see if it’s not store-bought). So, he’s more like the Bart Simpson type of devil; he trades in a skateboard for riding around on a golf buggy, being absolutely playful, and he’s generally meaning well.
So, concerning the card’s sexual prowess, the steamy laundry soap ‘Slow Hands’ is up in the same detergent aisle. The clothes, aka the song, dried later on with this one, aka the album deadline, just behind the others, even if it’s the most known out of the lot.
The Five Of Cups
It might not’ve been due to cancellation. But the season finale of The Show: Live on Tour still stirred up a couple of regrets. Maybe we could’ve caught another replay. Another time to deck our hair in red and yellow bows, feel the googly eyes of someone lurking near us just before the curtains drape, or even sway to the carthic whistles of ‘Still.’ Well, long before our regrets doubled, we saw an expression of another one in a song: ‘Too Much to Ask.’
Perched on the end of the bed, sheets matching that same color palette stretched throughout his eras, Niall knows all about waiting for someone. Just as much probably as the figure on The Five of Cups, their head downcast—trophies that are less Triwizard Tournament, but more of a string of missed chances. With so many tunes that could quickly have someone reaching for the tissue box and phone to do a cheeky ‘butt dial’ to their ex, this one’s our favorite tear-jerker. Everyone has the experience of wondering what something could’ve been like if the other person was brave enough to shout their feelings rather than leaving them in lowercase letters.
What’s The Card On The Back Of The Deck?
Tarot finesses, we have a task for you, if you will. What meanings can you draw from the cards selected through this five-card spread? Sure, we’ve told you how they match up with the songs, but are our futures doomed when we pull them all together like a giant Pokémon GO Niall Horan edition? Or are we going to find a pot of gold? Give us a heads-up! Clueless when it comes to tarot? No worries!
Use your trusty treasure-hunting skills to find this article on X, leave another Flicker song underneath it, and we’ll give you a card! Sounds easy enough, right? It’s just about as easy as you hitting our Facebook and Instagram notification buttons.
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