{"id":356348,"date":"2026-03-20T15:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T15:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/356348\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T15:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T15:55:11","slug":"i-didnt-think-it-was-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/356348\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I didn’t think it was real’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former One Direction star Niall Horan has said he did not believe his former bandmate Liam Payne’s death was real when he was first told about it.<\/p>\n

The 32-year-old also revealed the pair met shortly before Payne\u2019s death aged 31 in October 2024, at one of Horan\u2019s shows in Buenos Aires, Argentina.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nLiam Payne<\/p>\n

The Mullingar man told GQ magazine: “I just remember getting a message, and I was just like, what? I just didn\u2019t think it was real.<\/p>\n

“Someone so young, you\u2019re not expecting to hear that they\u2019ve passed, especially someone that you\u2019ve just seen. I just went back from shock to sadness to anger.”<\/p>\n

Payne died after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina, and the boyband\u2019s surviving members – Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik – reunited at his funeral alongside former manager Simon Cowell in November that year.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nMembers of One Direction reunited at Payne’s funeral<\/p>\n

Speaking about the last time he met Payne, Horan added: “It was great, (he) seemed in good form and we had a good laugh, good reminisce.<\/p>\n

“I heard Louis talking about this recently, it\u2019s so true. It\u2019s like you haven\u2019t seen each other in ages and then you just fall back in like it was 10 years ago.”<\/p>\n

He went on to say that after Payne\u2019s death, he felt nostalgic as well as feeling “fear and sadness” and added that he “went into hiding a little bit” following the funeral.<\/p>\n

Horan will release his fourth studio album, Dinner Party, in June<\/a>, and the record features a song called End Of An Era, which is reportedly about Payne.<\/p>\n

One Direction formed in 2010, when they were put together by Cowell on ITV talent show The X Factor.<\/p>\n

They are best known for songs such as Story Of My Life, What Makes You Beautiful and Best Song Ever.<\/p>\n

Horan\u2019s solo career was launched after he and his fellow One Direction band members went on hiatus in 2016, almost a year after Malik left the group.<\/p>\n

He released his debut solo album Flicker in 2017 and has gone on to release the albums Heartbreak Weather (2020) and The Show (2023).<\/p>\n

Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former One Direction star Niall Horan has said he did not believe his former bandmate Liam Payne’s death…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-356348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}