Niall Horan Talks Writing ‘End of an Era’ About Late 1D Bandmate Liam Payne: ‘Hope It Means as Much to You as It Does to Me’

Horan said he wanted to release the moving ballad a few weeks before his fourth solo album, Dinner Party (June 5), to give it "its own space."

By Gil Kaufman

When Niall Horan was working on songs for his upcoming fourth solo album, Dinner Party (June 5), he said he was “dancing around” the idea of writing a song in honor of his late One Direction bandmate Liam Payne, trying to figure out how to pay tribute to the singer who died in Oct. 2024 at age 31 after a fall from the balcony of a Buenos Aires hotel.

SEE LATEST VIDEOS, CHARTS AND NEWS

“Me and John [Ryan] had this song called ‘End of an Era’,” he told the And the Writer Is podcast this week about the track he wrote with Ryan and Julian Bunetta at the latter’s studio in Nashville. “I was just singing all these melodies and had this idea for a song that was leaving your past behind, but kind of with nostalgia while being excited for the future and not overthinking either.”