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Niall Horan honored his late One Direction bandmate, Liam Payne, in his new song “End of an Era.”
“We had it, pure magic / Remembering what it was like / Time passes so fast that / I couldn’t tell you goodbye,” Horan, 32, opened the track, which he released on Friday, May 22.
In the chorus, Horan sang, “Feels like letting go of / Things we’re not supposed to / One breath and it’s over / The end of an era.”
The lyrics to the second verse read: “Twisted and terrified / How things change overnight / Footsteps we can’t rewind.”
Horan announced on Tuesday, May 19, that “End of an Era” would be the third single from his upcoming album, Dinner Party.
“Julian Bunetta, John Ryan and I started the original version of this song years and years ago,” Horan wrote via Instagram, referring to his songwriting team. “We rewrote it about four times without ever feeling it was quite right. As we were working on this album, we revisited it.”
He continued, “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’s next album, Dinner Party, will be released on June 5.
“I felt [‘End of an Era’] needed its own space before the album comes out in a few weeks,” he added. “So, here you go.”
“End of an Era” was completed in the months after Horan found out that Payne died in October 2024 after suffering a fatal fall in Argentina. He was 31.
“[We] had this idea for a song that was, like, leaving your past behind but with nostalgia while being excited for the future and not overthinking either,” Horan explained on a Tuesday, May 19, episode of the “And the Writer Is” podcast. “The more we spoke about it and the more we kept getting it wrong, Julian actually said it. He was like, ‘This song is about Liam. We just don’t know it yet.’”
Liam Payne attended former One Direction bandmate Niall Horan‘s concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina, two weeks before Payne’s death. In a Snapchat video reposted to social media earlier this month, Payne could be seen talking to the camera about hoping to reunite with Horan, 31, at his show on October 2. “I think we might […]
Horan “subconsciously” realized that Bunetta, who had written many of 1D’s biggest hits, was right and they rearranged the track.
“This song was written in five minutes,” the Irish singer said. “Now the song is a completely different thing, and it’s a song of loss and fear of loss and the end of an era. It’s sad [and] one verse is sad, and one verse is nostalgic. They’re two of the feelings I have when I think of Liam is sadness that he’s not with us anymore, but also looking back at … the good times of growing up together.”
Horan, who further gushed that he has fond memories of his time in the beloved boy band, also plans to tour his Dinner Party record in Payne’s honor.
“Obviously, it’s shocking, tough … [that] someone you know so well and that is only a couple of weeks older than you is just, like, no longer with us,” he said. “[It’s] just a surreal thing to even think about, but it fires me up because I know that Liam loved being on stage and stuff like that. That would make me excited to get on tour and do it for the fans because I know that he loved it as much as I did.”
Dinner Party will be available Friday, June 5, ahead of Horan’s Dinner Party Live On Tour from 2026 to 2027.
