Niall Horan made the difficult decision to cancel his 2020 tour in support of his second album Heartbreak Weather, which he released just as the pandemic hit. “I think that was one of the harder emails I’ve had to write in my career, to be honest,” the Irish singer-songwriter and former One Direction star tells Apple Music. “I’m okay just sitting here playing music and then tour next year. Whereas the crew, it’s not like they have another tour to jump on. They live tour by tour.” Horan is keeping his spirits up by FaceTiming his grandmother, going on 30-minute runs, and doing daily songwriting challenges inspired by a conversation he had with Ed Sheeran: “If I come out with something half decent at the end of it, I’ll be happy,” he says. On this exclusive Apple Music playlist curated by Horan, he’s included tracks by Hozier, Stevie Nicks, Kacey Musgraves, and Damien Rice, whose 2002 debut album O changed Horan’s outlook on writing songs when he was 10 years old: “Sometimes the most natural little mistakes are the best parts about the song—and Rice is the absolute king of that.”