Music: “He had the X-Factor”: One Direction’s Liam Payne dead

He should probably concentrate more on school. “But I just think about singing too much. It’s a dream and I love it.” Liam Payne was just 14 when he competed on British talent show The X Factor. His motivation, delivered in the thick dialect of his native Middle England, sounded like a teenager’s enthusiastic dream.

But it worked, with a delay of just a few years: When One Direction formed in 2010, Payne was there – and soon became world famous as part of perhaps the most popular boy band of their time. Now Liam Payne has died at the age of 31 in Buenos Aires after falling from the third floor of a hotel, as media from Great Britain, the USA and Argentina unanimously report, citing police and rescue workers.

The sensible becomes the boring

As it is with fame, it changes your life more than you would like. Because he didn’t drink alcohol as a teenager, unlike his peers, management assigned him the role of the sensible one. About a hotel stay, Payne told the Guardian newspaper in 2019: “Plates were being thrown out of the window, sliding down the stairs on mattresses, and the manager called me and said, ‘You have to sort this out.'” He was about 17 at the time , 18.

On stage, fans considered Payne to be the boring one – in contrast to the “heartbreakers” Harry Styles and Zayn Malik. That gnawed at the young singer. “When you’re in the stadium and you get the least amount of screams, you think to yourself, ‘What the heck?'”

There was hardly any space for your own exploration. In Peru, 15,000 fans once stood in front of the hotel and security advised the band to stay inside, Payne told the Guardian. Adrenaline and boredom alternated. That’s how Payne, the sensible one, got into alcohol. “Playing a show in front of however many thousands of people and then being stuck alone in a country with nowhere to go – what are you supposed to do? The minibar is always there.”

Nevertheless: With One Direction, Payne only knew one direction for years. The band sparked a new pop mania. The stadiums were full and she sold 70 million records. Payne had a talent for songwriting, writing about half the songs on the last two albums. Until there was tension in the band, something broke inside. The separation occurred in 2016. “For now,” it said. But there was no comeback. And Payne escalated.

“I behaved very erratically – I partied too much,” he once told the BBC. His solo career got off to a promising start, with his first single “Strip That Down” landing at number three in the charts and earning two Brit Award nominations. But as a result, things didn’t go so well. In March he released his first single in three years, “Teardrops”.

Personal turmoil

Privately, Payne had little luck. He has a son named Bear with Girls Aloud singer Cheryl Cole, born in 2017, but the relationship quickly fell apart. An engagement with the model Maya Henry was called off; she recently publicly accused him of bombarding her with unwanted messages. His death shocked her, her management told the Daily Mail newspaper. Most recently, Payne was with US influencer Kate Cassidy, who, according to media reports, traveled with him to Argentina.

“Whatever the X factor is, Liam had it,” commented the BBC, referring to the show that made Payne famous. It was a version of Justin Timberlake’s hit “Cry Me A River” with which he impressed the judges in 2010. Nevertheless, he quickly left at that time. It was judge and producer Simon Cowell who recognized the talent of Payne and four other guys: Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Harry Styles and Zayn Malik. He packed them up into One Direction. Nine months later, the first single “What Makes You Beautiful” was released – the star rush began. 14 years later, it ends tragically for Payne.