Harry Styles has reflected on the death of his One Direction bandmate Liam Payne in a new interview with Zane Lowe.
“It’s so difficult to lose a friend,” Styles said. “It’s difficult to lose any friend, but it’s so difficult to lose a friend who is so like you in so many ways.”
Styles was talking with Lowe as part of an Apple Music interview to promote his new album Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally, which releases this week. Payne died in October 2024 after falling from a third-floor balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“I think there was a period when he passed away where I really struggled with acknowledging how strange it is to have people own part of your grief in a way,” Styles said.
“I have such strong feelings around my friend passing away. And then suddenly being aware of a desire from other people of you to convey that in some way, or it means you’re not feeling what you’re feeling, you know?”
As a member of the chart-dominating boyband One Direction, Payne was part of a five-piece that sold 70m records and sold out stadiums worldwide. After the group disbanded, his solo music leaned towards R&B and he notched a Top 10 hit in the UK and US with the single Strip That Down.
“I saw someone with the kindest heart who just wanted to be great,” Styles said of Payne.
Styles continued that his former bandmate’s death was “a really important moment for me in terms of taking a look at my life and being able to say to myself, ‘OK, what do I want to do with my life? How do I want to live my life?’ And I think the greatest way you can honor your friends who pass away is by living your life to the fullest. Like, super special person and really sad.”
After Payne’s death, One Direction band members remembered him as a positive presence with a cheeky sense of humour. “Liam had an energy for life and a passion for work that was infectious,” Niall Horan said. “He was the brightest in every room and always made everyone feel happy and secure.”
“It was really, really impossibly difficult for me to deal with losing Liam,” Louis Tomlinson said last year. He added of his fellow One Direction members: “None of us would have admitted it at the time, because you have a lot of pride as a young lad, but we all looked up to him.”
This year, Styles will take his new album on the road with live dates including a record-breaking 30 nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden. On Friday, he will perform Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally in full at Manchester’s Co-op Live arena, with the performance streaming on Netflix this Sunday.
In a review, the Guardian’s Alexis Petridis described Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally as “music made in the small hours, with the curtains drawn against the dawn”, adding that the new album is “devoid of unequivocal pop bangers along the lines of As It Was or Watermelon Sugar”.
