“Our friendship was a bond that was there forever”

Niall Horan has looked back on memories he shared with Liam Payne, saying grief had brought a mixture of “sadness” alongside fond reflection.

• READ MORE: Liam Payne 1993-2024: One Direction star who helped spark a pop phenomenon

Speaking to The Times, Horan looked back on the time he spent with his late One Direction bandmate, who died aged 31 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2024. Having told the publication that he’d spent time with Payne in the country just a few weeks before he died, Horan said he was “glad” to have gotten that time with him.

“It means my last memory of him was happy,” Horan explained. “It still feels surreal. On day one, I was, like, ‘Nah, it didn’t happen.’ Our friendship was a bond that was there forever, even if we hadn’t seen each other for a while, and it’s wild that one day, like the flick of a switch, he’s gone.”

Touching on his experience grieving his close friend, he went on to say that when he thought of Payne’s passing, there was “sadness”, but it also made him “laugh and smirk because of the memories we had.

“I’ll go to places and think of something stupid in a hotel or something random that makes me laugh. We always had good fun in Australia because we were able to get out and go to the beach. Liam wasn’t too bad at surfing. I can barely swim.”

Horan is currently gearing up to release of his fourth studio album, ‘Dinner Party‘, which includes a track dedicated to Payne.

Titled ‘End of an Era’, Horan was asked what he thought Payne would think of the song, to which he replied: “I think it’s his type of song, he liked Coldplay, he loved songs like ‘You & I’ by One Direction, songs that went somewhere.”

When we spoke to Horan earlier this year for our In Conversation series, he touched on the recently announced tour in support of the record, and explained the way he chose which One Direction songs would make it into the live show.

“I’ll just play my favourites, I suppose,” he told NME. “And I try and stay away from [a song] if the lads are doing it. Like, if Harry’s touring and he’s playing ‘What Makes Me Beautiful’ every night, it’d be a bit stupid for me to do the same song at the same time.

“Or Louis did ‘Drag Me Down’ on his first tour, so I kept away from that [at first], and then I did it on the next tour… Also, [it’s about] what kind of vibe matches? What’s next? What’s either side of the song? I try and think about it that way, too.”

Days after Payne’s death, Horan paid tribute to the singer on social media, writing: “I’m absolutely devastated about the passing of my amazing friend, Liam. It just doesn’t feel real.

“Liam had an energy for life and a passion for work that was infectious. He was the brightest in every room and always made everyone feel happy and secure.”

He added that he had seen Payne shortly before his death: “I feel so fortunate that I got to see him recently. I sadly didn’t know that after saying goodbye and hugging him that evening, I would be saying goodbye forever. It’s heartbreaking.”

Elsewhere, Harry Styles said the death of his former bandmate made him re-evaluate how he saw life, and vowed to live it to the fullest to honour him.

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