After promoting the release of his new single in collaboration with Liam Payne only a couple of days ago, producer Sam Pounds has taken to social media to announce his decision to postpone the release of the song leaving “those liberties to family members”, as he stated in his X post. The news comes after fans had attacked Pounds following the single’s announcement, speculating whether the former One Direction star’s family had been made aware of the announcement, and claiming that Pounds had decided to release it, only three weeks after Payne’s death, to profit off the passing of the singer.

The single, titled “Do No Wrong”, was supposed to come out on Friday. After Pounds’s announcement, however, it’s unclear whether the song will be released as a single in the future or whether it’ll be part of a bigger project, perhaps the album that Payne had been working on before his sudden death this October.

Today I’m deciding to hold “ Do No Wrong” and leave those liberties up to all family members. I want all proceeds go to a charity of their choosing (or however they desire). Even though we all love the song it’s not the time yet. We are all still mourning the passing of Liam and…

— Sam Pounds (@iamsampounds) October 29, 2024

Earlier this October Pounds had commemorated Payne in a now deleted Instagram post, where he stated that Payne wanted Chris Brown to work on their song, “Do No Wrong”, and shared a short video of he and Payne listening to the unreleased track. Fans weren’t happy about Payne’s wish to include Brown in the song: the latter has, in fact, often been in the spotlight due to the many accusations of alleged abuse from various music and movie stars over the years, including Rhianna. Fans didn’t take Payne’s wish to work with an alleged abuser lightly: only a couple days before his death, the singer himself was heavily discussed in the news due to his former fiancée’s, Maya Henry, claims of alleged abuse. Henry had posted a TikTok speaking about the alleged physical and psychological abuse she had suffered during her relationship with Payne. Henry recently revealed to podcast “The Internet is Dead”, that her debut novel, released in May, was inspired by her relationship with the singer.

But Henry’s revelations were not the only issue that Payne had faced in the week prior to his death: many sources have in fact confirmed that, days before his sudden passing, Payne had been dropped by his label for unknown reasons. In March, Payne had released a new single and teased a new album, which according to the singer was going to be deeper and more personal than his first solo release, LP1, but had announced the project had been put on hold shortly before passing. His career as a solo artist had failed to gain him the success he had experience during his time with One Direction, with singles failing to achieve high positions and critics even describing one his songs, “Strip That Down” as one of the worse songs of the year.