Niall Horan went from "shock to sadness to anger" when he heard Liam Payne had died.

The Dinner Party singer had met up with his former One Direction bandmate when his The Show tour hit Argentina in early October 2024, and he couldn't believe it when his pal fell to his death from his hotel balcony just a few weeks later.

Niall recalled to GQ Hype: "I just remember getting a message. 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."

And as fans went online to mourn Liam, their memories also had an emotional impact on Niall.

He added: "[I was 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."

When it comes to his own biggest memories of Liam, Niall remembers them going to the beach and his friend's underwear going missing, racing around stadiums on a Segway, "random nights playing FIFA on the bus and just messing backstage", and, most fondly, sharing a room with the Strip That Down singer during the bootcamp stages of X Factor before finding global stardom after the show.

He said: "I just got to know him a little bit and then we ended up doing what we did together.

"Memories that only he and I can share 'cause you have a team and you have people around all the time, but we always said that only us have that experience, no one else has that."

Of his final meeting with Liam - who was in Argentina for a routine visa renewal - Niall remembered his pal being on "good form".

He said: "It was great. Seemed in good form and we had a good laugh, good reminisce.

"I heard Louis [Tomlinson] talking about this recently, it's so true. It's like you haven't seen each other in ages and then you just fall back in like it was 10 years ago."

After attending Liam's funeral, the 32-year-old singer "went into hiding a little bit" to grieve and he channelled his feelings into a new song, End of an Era.

His collaborator Julian Bunetta said: "We rewrote it two, three times maybe, just trying to just get the essence of the feeling. We just kept working on it until we felt it was right. And I love it. It could be easy to not write about it because it's a hard subject. It's a hard thing to do. So I'm proud of him for doing it."