The 67th annual Grammys carried heavier emotional weight than usual, thanks to the backdrop of the Los Angeles wildfires — but the show’s most heartbreaking moment came at the start of the In Memoriam section: a carefully crafted video tribute to former One Direction member Liam Payne, who died at age 31 in October. For Grammy Awards executive producer Ben Winston, who worked closely with Payne and One Direction, the loss was personal. “I love Liam very much,” Winston says in the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now. “We worked with him for years, produced their movies, their music videos, their specials. [Liam and I] spent a lot of time together, and we were together a few weeks before he passed away.”
The tribute appeared while Chris Martin sang “All My Love,” but it could’ve taken a different form entirely. Winston originally envisioned a…
