Niall Horan on His Tribute to Liam Payne: “Hope It Means as Much to You as It Does to Me”

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.

“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.”

The trio worked on the song, talked about it and, in Horan’s telling, “kept getting it wrong,” until Bunetta finally said, “‘This song is about Liam, we just don’t know it yet.'” So after “dancing around it subconsciously” for a while, they finally agreed that Horan was paying tribute to his mate, at which point he said they finished writing it in five minutes.

In an Instagram post earlier this week , Horan further described the origins of the midtempo tune with lyrics about letting go of things we’re not supposed to. He said he, Bunetta and Ryan started working on the song several years ago and rewrote it four times without ever getting it quite right.

“As we were working on this album, we revisited it,” he wrote. “Some songs take a minute to get to what you’re actually trying to say. This one was one of those. I hope it means as much to you as it does to me.” Horan said he felt the song needed “its own space” to breathe before the album drops.

Over gentle acoustic guitar and keyboards, Horan sings, “We had it, pure magic/ Remembering what it was like/ Time passes so fast that I couldn’t tell you goodbye,” in a whispery voice. The pace picks up for the wistful chorus, “Feels like letting go of/ Things we’re not supposed to/ One breath and it’s over/ The end of an era/ Feels like letting go of/ Someone I want more of/ One breath and it’s over/ The end of an era.”

“It’s a song of loss and fear of loss and the end of an era,” Horan told the podcast, describing the verses as alternating between sad and nostalgic. “And they are two of the feelings that I have when I think of Liam, the sadness that he’s not with us anymore,” he added, describing getting goose bumps as he discussed his friend. “But also looking back at the good times and growing up together and doing all the things we’ve spoke about for the last hour … making records together and growing up together in a mad industry.”

Horan is gearing up to play at the BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend show in Houghton Le Spring, U.K. on Sunday (May 24). He’ll play the Capital’s Summertime Ball in London on June 6 before taking the stage for a pair of stadium shows in Tennessee and Pennsylvania on July 9 and 18, respectively, with his pal Thomas Rhett. His North American tour in support of the album will kick off on March 17, 2027 in St. Paul, Minn.

“End of an Era” is the third single from the upcoming album, following on the heels of the title track and “Little More Time.”

Watch Horan on And the Writer Is and watch the lyric video for “End of an Era” below.

_Originally reported by [Billboard](https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/niall-horan-talks-writing-end-of-an-era-about-liam-payne-1236255015/)._