Harry Styles debuts “What Is Enough,” a song he wrote for Liam Payne, on the anniversary of his death
The unreleased song was played for the first time on Friday, October 16, at Madison Square Garden, during the singer's 30-night New York residency.
Foto: Leticia Moraes / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0). Harry Styles na Jeunesse Arena, no Rio de Janeiro, em dezembro de 2022
Harry Styles played a song he wrote for his former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne live for the first time on Friday night, October 16. The song is called “What Is Enough” and has not been released. The debut came at Madison Square Garden in New York, exactly two years after Payne's death, according to Rolling Stone and Billboard, which both reported on the show.
Before playing it, Styles spoke to the crowd. He said he felt lucky to play those shows in New York, that there were many people in his life he could not have done it without, and added: “two years ago today, I lost one of those friends.” He asked people to look after each other and introduced the track as a song he wrote “for my friend about two years ago.”
What we know about the song
So far, only the title and where it came from: Styles wrote “What Is Enough” around the time of Payne's death, and it had never been performed in public. There is no announcement of a release as a single or on an album. For now, the only way to hear it is through fan videos filmed at the show.
How we got here
Liam Payne died on October 16, 2024, at 31, after falling from the balcony of his hotel room in Buenos Aires. Since then, the four remaining members of One Direction (Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik) have all returned to releasing music. The group, formed in 2010 and on hiatus since 2016, scored four consecutive No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200.
The tribute came in the middle of the biggest tour of Styles' solo career. Together, Together supports his fourth album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., released in March, and is built as a residency: few cities, many nights in each. It includes 30 shows at Madison Square Garden, the tour's only US stop. The run opened in May in Amsterdam, went through London, São Paulo and Mexico City, and ends in December in Australia, with Melbourne and Sydney.
It is not the first time Styles has spoken publicly about grief. In an interview with Apple Music's Zane Lowe, quoted by Rolling Stone, he said it felt strange to have people “own part of your grief,” and that the best way to honor friends who have died is to live life to the fullest.
