Liam Payne, 31, had his path set from a young age. At the age of 14, the experience of an unsuccessful participation in a talent competition did not shake his conviction that he wanted to make a living singing. Guided by Simon Cowell, he returned X factor of Britain and ended up being part of one of the most influential bands in the world. He had a meteoric rise with One Direction — and like so many stories like this, it all started with a dream. The musician died this Wednesday, in Argentina, after falling from the balcony of his hotel room.
“You know what you love to do, sing? Keep going, because when you reach the age of 14, something amazing will happen, and I’m not talking about puberty”, he recalled, in 2020, when he challenged him. Radio 1 yes BBC writing a letter to your 10 year old self. And he did not spare the young Payne spoilers: “Be ready: life will be surreal.”
Participation in a talent program is not always a guarantee of something – talent is not the same as success. For Liam Payne, born on August 29, 1993 in Wolverhampton (United Kingdom), things did not happen like that. He came on stage for the first time X factor 14 years old, with a beard voice breaking the fly me to the moon, by Frank Sinatra, during the first audition. One of the judges, Simon Cowell, saw something in him – potential, charisma –, but his time on the 2008 edition of the program would be short. It was discontinued in bootcampat a time when he was at Cowell’s house in Barbados, receiving special training.
“The first time[quefuiao[quefuiao[quefuiao[quefuiaoX Factor]I reached the last 24 [concorrentes]which is the step before you know you’ve done it, Simon [Cowell] he sent me away”, he said, in 2022, in an interview with influence Logan Paul, no podcast imperial. “After that, he had dinner with my mother and me, and the manager it was from One Direction. He apologized and said I had to finish my studies and come back in two years. At this point, I was very upset.”
He did not lower his hands and did as he was told. He studied and got his high school diploma. On the way, he was singing wherever they left him – houses, bars. Sometimes the deposit It wasn’t enough to cover the cost of gasoline to get there and back, but it didn’t hurt. At 16, he tried again X factor.
The rise
There are many videos spread across the Internet from the moment he steps back on stage and meets Simon Cowell again. A shy smile, a head shake as one does with an old acquaintance. “Simon, are you okay? I haven’t seen you in a while,” he said.
The same voice, now less childish, affected the judges Cry for me riverversion by Michael Bublé. It worked: he got the four yeses he was hoping for and moved on.
“It is very clear i X factor which will be successful because the cameras follow you. I was everyone’s enemy in the bootcamp”, he recalled, in 2022. It was a great surprise that, shortly afterwards, he received the news that he would be terminated.
“We kicked out, and Niall and I [Horan, também membro dos One Direction] We were about to get on the train when a woman stopped us and said the jurors wanted to speak to us. I’ve already been through this time, so I was like, ‘I’m bad enough already, I don’t need this,’” he told Logan Paul.
Legend has it that the band was created in “less than ten minutes”. And, contrary to what one might expect, it was not Simon Cowell, but Nicole Scherzinger, the lead singer of the Pussycat Dolls, who took the greatest responsibility for putting it together, bringing together photos of the participants who worked best together. Niall O’Uran, Harry Styles, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson and Zyan Malik were the “cutest band ever”, which “girls will love”, in the words of Scherzinger.
Thus, One Direction was born, one of the most successful bands in modern history, who would go on to sell more than 70 million records worldwide during their time together.
It was with short videos of diaries from X factor that fans began to get to know their new idols and give them characteristics. If Harry Styles was the sweetheart and Zayn Malik the bad boyLiam Payne was given the role of “responsible” and “protector”.
“At the same time we were inside X factorOne Direction was at the top of the social media trends in the UK, and that affected the rest of the world,” recalls Payne. “I think it was a perfect storm situation, with the technology.”
When the program was being recorded, fans gathered outside the building. They finished third in the competition, but with a guaranteed contract from Simon Cowell’s company. for single start, What makes you beautifulwas released in 2011 and was an instant success.
“We weren’t very good, we got very good,” describes Payne. “Would you like to be a boy bandbut not in one that is lame.”
As for the good memories, he remembers how fun it was to compose: “In the band, it was a lot of fun (…). Once you understood what people wanted, it was very easy.” As for the bad memories, he remembers that the climate between them was not always the healthiest: “Louis and I hated each other, to the point of hitting each other.”
A complicated relationship
It was a very sheltered life. They filled stadiums, but at the cost of freedom – hysterical fans chased him everywhere, in pure Beatlemania style. About to turn 30, Liam Payne reflected on his adolescence in an interview with Logan Paul: “It’s still very difficult to write for my project. I’ve been locked in hotel rooms since I was 15. I don’t know what I like. What do I write music about?”
It was also in One Direction that he started drinking, when the team he managed locked them in hotel rooms to “ensure their safety”.
“Give a show to thousands of people and then be locked in a room, in a country where you can’t see anything – what else are you going to do? The minibar is always there,” he said Guardian in 2019. At that point, he became “very good” at hiding his face from those under the influence of alcohol or drugs, in his own words.
While together, they released five albums and completed four trips – all passing through at least Europe and North America, the latter going to Oceania, Asia and Africa.
In August 2015, and after Zayn left to devote himself to other solo projects, the group announced that they would take a break so that everyone could work on their own projects. At the time, the break had an end date: it would last only one year and the promise that the group would return to “work together in the future”.
However, this never happened.
No podcast by Logan Paul – which begins when the two order a glass of it whisky with the presenter apologizing “it’s 5pm somewhere in the world” -, Payne admitted that despite being one of the most successful bands in the world, there was not much time to celebrate the achievements: “Until we’ll be done… We don’t’. You respect what they were made of.”
After the end of One Direction, his personal life became increasingly troubled. A year after the end of the band, in 2016, he started dating singer Cheryl Cole, whom he met backstage at the X factor. In 2017, they had a son, Bear Gray Payne; in 2018, they ended.
An open book
After the band, he tried a solo career, which, despite some success, for example Strip that downit never really happened.
“I think I reached the top too soon, will I be able to go back there?”, he asked, in the letter he wrote to himself. “Looking back, I’m so grateful.”
Over time, he became an open book: he talked about his problems with alcohol and his struggles with depression and suicidal ideation. In 2023, he admitted he wanted to get sober: “I’ve been sober for 100 days,” he told IFL TV. “I feel really good.”
Liam Payne died last Wednesday, in Buenos Aires, in a hotel in the neighborhood of Palermo. He fell from the third floor and suffered a fatal head injury. He was pronounced dead at the scene and the cause of the fall is still unknown. Before the accident, the police were called to the scene to detain an “aggressive man” who was suspected to be “under the influence of drugs or alcohol”.
According to some photos that are circulating in the social mediaapparently drug residue was found in several areas of Payne’s hotel room, where his television was also destroyed. Some fans shared on social media that they were with the a musician during the last hours of his life and that he would be under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
Payne was in Argentina from the beginning of October, to see Niall Horan’s former band on stage. “It’s been a while since Niall and I spoke. There is a lot to talk about,” he said, in a video posted on Snapchat.
During the show, Payne was seen singing and dancing effectively and with erratic behavior, and was even stopped by a security guard at the Movistar Arena in Argentina, who urged him to stop.
A few weeks ago, excerpts from an interview with Maya Henry, with whom he was engaged from 2020 to 2022, began to appear, together with podcast The Internet is Dead, but a youtuber some detailed the troubled relationship that was the book’s motto Looking Ahead. During the interview, he revealed that Payne had talked about his own death several times.
It also revealed that the details of the book, which was sold as a work of fiction, were true. In the book, the main character says that she is forced to have an abortion (“Tobort you or you lose me”, says the protagonist). “What I went through in real life is very similar to Mallory’s experience. I had to go to the hospital alone after having complications”, she revealed, in TikTok, which returned to social media this week.