Liam Payne Shared A Delightful Story About Being Stuck In An Elevator With Taylor Swift & Harry Styles

It has the beginnings of a modern-day walked-into-a-bar joke. During an interview with NYC's Z100, Liam Payne explained that he, his parents, his bandmate Harry Styles, Taylor Swift, and Ed Sheeran were all in an elevator together and, well, the rest is up to the internet's meme masters to embellish.

According to Just Jared, sometime during the great Taylor-Styles pairing (about 2012), one elevator contained an almost unbearable amount of star power. But it wasn't a joke, it was real life. Payne said that when he got into the elevator, aka "lift," nobody remembered that the polite thing to do is to just stay on your respective phone and make zero eye contact with anyone else in the confined space. Instead, Sheeran dialed up the creep factor and started nonsensically reciting the word "bass" into Payne's ear. As for Swift and Styles, they didn't really play into this particular story, but they sure do add some color to the entire situation.

"I got in a lift once, my parents were there, this is a really random story," Payne said. "And Taylor Swift was in the lift. I was in the lift, Harry was in the lift, Ed Sheeran, and my parents. And the lift was going up and he just kept going turning around to me going, 'Bass.' And that’s all he was saying. 'Bass.' So, that's one of my favorite party stories."

The "bass" joke — which seemed to go right over Payne's head — didn't keep the two from working together. Sheeran helped pen Payne's current single, "Strip that Down," and even offers up some backup vocals for the tune. And while there's no actual footage of what went down during that elevator ride, fans now have even more evidence that paints Sheeran as a very lovable, very strange fellow. Hey, if weird elevator encounters are what it takes to get pop stars to collaborate, we're here for it.