One Direction’s Harry Styles Reacts to Liam Payne’s Death: ‘I Will Miss Him Always’

Harry Styles broke his silence about the death of his former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne.

“I am truly devastated by Liam’s passing,” Harry, 30, wrote in a statement via Instagram on Thursday, October 17. “His greatest joy was making other people happy, and it was an honour to be alongside him as he did it.”

Harry went on to share how Liam “lived wide open, with his heart on his sleeve” and had quite an “infectious” energy.

“He was warm, supportive and incredibly loving,” the “As It Was” singer continued. “The years we spent together will forever remain among the most cherished years of my life. I will miss him always, my lovely friend.”

Harry’s tribute to Liam was the first post he shared on the app since November 2023.

Liam was 31 years old when he died after falling off a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on October 16. The injuries he sustained in the fall were “incompatible with life,” Buenos Aires emergency services chief Alberto Crescenti confirmed, adding that Liam had a “fracture in the base of his skull [and] extremely serious injuries.” The singer’s initial autopsy report revealed that he died from multiple injuries that led to “internal and external hemmorhaging,” according to forensic pathologists Santiago Maffia Bizzozero and Victor Roberto Cohen.

Harry, 30, and Liam met as contestants on The X-Factor in 2010. Although they auditioned for the show as solo artists, they were put into the same group – which eventually became One Direction – during the process. The boys, along with Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson, released five albums as part of 1D from 2011 until 2015 (Zayn, 31, left the group before the release of 2015’s Made in the A.M.) The band went on an indefinite hiatus in 2016 and the men began pursuing their individual solo careers.

Although Liam and Harry didn’t remain particularly close after One Direction disbanded, they continued to support each other and reunited when possible. That included the CapitalFM Jingle Ball in 2019 when they were both on the bill as performers.

“We spoke about a number of things,” Liam said on Watch What Happens Live after the concert. “It was good to see him. He was pretty much the same boy that I left him.”

Liam also revealed that Harry called him up for a chat in 2021. “He called me because he has a sixth sense for if I’m struggling or if one of us is in trouble, I feel like,” the “Strip That Down” singer shared on Instagram Live. “I spoke to him and it was a really lovely catch up, actually. And I’ve got a lot of love for the man. He’s great. He’s really, really great.”

Liam also congratulated Harry after he won Album of the Year at the Grammys in 2023. “This image is really something to wake up to and when you write music like you do Harry you deserve every millisecond of that moment looking down smiling at the trophy you’ve earned,” he gushed. “God bless you brother congratulations.”

Meanwhile, in a 2022 interview, Harry opened up about his forever bond with Liam and the rest of One Direction. “I feel really lucky that we always had each other to be this unit that felt like you could keep each other in check and have someone else who gets it,” he told Zane Lowe. “I feel like there’s very much a respect between all of us. We did something together and that is something that you can’t really undo. It’s a very deep love for each other, I think.”

Less than two weeks before his death, Liam attended Niall’s concert in Argentina on October 2. At the time, he was in South America with his girlfriend, Kate Cassidy, who returned to the United States on October 14.