The news reached Horan while he was watching TV in bed at home. “I just remember getting a message,” Horan says. “And I was just like, What?... I just didn’t think it was real. Someone so young, you’re not expecting to hear that they’ve passed, especially someone that you’ve just seen. I just went back from shock to sadness to anger.”
[…] Horan found himself flooded by relics of his past, seeing “lots of photos and videos and things of us growing up together. And being nostalgic about it straight away, along with fear and sadness and all the stuff that comes with grief.”
[…] After attending Payne’s funeral, where he mourned with his fellow former bandmates and Payne’s family, Horan says he “went into hiding a little bit” to grieve. It’s an ongoing process, part of which has included writing the new song “End of an Era.” The wistful lullaby opens with a simple guitar-plucking and Horan singing in a melancholy tenor: “We had it / Pure magic / Remember what it was like / Time passes / So fast and / I couldn’t tell you goodbye.” The song builds to a chorus that, lyrically, surrenders to the finality of time while musically refusing to, evolving into an angsty guitar-heavy outro that draws out the tension between reality and memory.
Niall on Liam Payne for GQ