This week, the former One Direction member Liam Payne died after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aries. Payne was just 31, and his group provided formative experiences for millions of people. After Payne’s passing, his former One Direction bandmates shared a joint statement of mourning. On Thursday night, Maggie Rogers paid her own kind of tribute, covering One Direction’s “Night Changes” in Boston.
Maggie Rogers is on an arena tour right now, and she came to Boston’s TD Garden last night. According to Billboard, Rogers told the crowd that she learned the sad news about Liam Payne while she was out getting dinner with a childhood friend: “We’re just about the same age. Any time a public figure, especially a musical peer, slips off, it’s really present, and I’ve been sending a bunch of love to my friends and my band the last couple days… I wanted to just honor anyone who has been touched by [One Direction’s] music or those songs.” She then played a sad solo-piano version of “Night Changes,” a song that was already plenty sad.
All five members of One Direction co-wrote the ballad “Night Changes,” one of the singles from their 2014 album Four. It was the last single to feature all five members of One Direction, as Zayn Malik left the group shortly after its release, and it’s all about time slipping away. Below, watch fan footage of Rogers’ cover, as well as One Direction’s “Night Changes” video.