Former One Direction singer Niall Horan has said his last memory with late former bandmate Liam Payne was “happy”.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old met Payne shortly before his death in October 2024, at one of his shows in Buenos Aires, Argentina.<\/p>\n
Payne died after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina, and the boyband’s surviving members: Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik; reunited at his funeral alongside their former manager, Simon Cowell, in November that year.<\/p>\n
Speaking about their meeting, Horan told The Sunday Times: “I\u2019m glad of that, it means my last memory of him was happy, it still feels surreal.<\/p>\n
“On day one I was, like, ‘nah, it didn\u2019t happen\u2019, our friendship was a bond that was there for ever even if we hadn\u2019t seen each other for a while and it\u2019s wild that one day, like the flick of a switch, he\u2019s gone.”<\/p>\n
The singer went on to say that he is in touch with Payne\u2019s family as they shared grief.<\/p>\n
He added: “All our families are in touch, they shared those experiences, too.”<\/p>\n
Horan will release his fourth studio album, Dinner Party, next week, and the record features a song called End Of An Era, which he says is about Payne.<\/p>\n
Asked what Payne would have thought of the song, Horan said: “I think it\u2019s his type of song, he liked Coldplay, he loved songs like You & I by One Direction, songs that went somewhere.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s funny, actually, now you say that, thinking about the stuff he liked.<\/p>\n
“When I think of Liam\u2019s passing, there is sadness, but it also makes me laugh and smirk because of the memories we had.<\/p>\n
“I\u2019ll go to places and think of something stupid in a hotel or something random that makes me laugh.<\/p>\n
“We always had good fun in Australia because we were able to get out and go to the beach. Liam wasn\u2019t too bad at surfing. I can barely swim.”<\/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 singer Niall Horan has said his last memory with late former bandmate Liam Payne was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-477633","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\/477633","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=477633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}