Liam Payne in 2012 performing with One Direction (Picture: Brian Rasic/Getty Images)
There’s nothing like an unexpected celebrity death to stop an evening’s plans in their tracks.
And on Wednesday, my nightly habit of scrolling TikTok was sharply interrupted by the shocking news that Liam Payne, formerly one-fifth of boyband One Direction, had died.
At only 31 years old, local police confirmed the singer-songwriter and father-of-one had succumbed to his injuries after falling from the third-floor balcony at a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Mere weeks before, he’d been watching his former bandmate Niall Horan perform in the city, and had been pictured singing along happily with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy.
Watching the confirmation of Payne’s death roll out across the news channels and social media, I felt stunned and deeply sad at this turn of events for someone so young, so talented and with so much to live for.
And it made me all the more certain that we don’t need any more child stars.
We first met Payne as an ambitious 14-year-old in 2008, singing a jazzy rendition of Fly Me to the Moon in his first X Factor audition.
Though he charmed the likes of judges Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole, it wasn’t until 2010 and his second attempt on the TV singing competition that everything started falling into place.
We first met Payne as an ambitious 14-year-old in 2008 (Picture: Yui Mok/PA Wire)
Along with auditionees Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan, 16-year-old Payne was placed into the new group One Direction, which would soon be the UK’s most successful boy band since The Beatles.
In just a few short months, Payne and the 1D boys were shot into superstardom with legions of fans, paparazzi documenting their every move and the media clamouring for as much of their personal information as possible.
Though becoming a famous singer was a dream come true, particularly for Payne, the harsh sides of global notoriety quickly made themselves clear.
After the band went on an indefinite hiatus in 2016, all members became more vocal about the impact of their fame and gruelling work schedules.
The harsh sides of global notoriety quickly made themselves clear (Photo by Marc Piasecki/GC Images)
‘It would be car, hotel room, stage, sing, locked,’ Payne said on the Diary of a CEO podcast in 2021, claiming there was a strict routine that left him locked in his hotel room whenever he wasn’t performing. Left alone with minimal supervision and the minibar, it was his way of having a ‘party for one’.
Elsewhere, the singer had also discussed his struggles with anxiety and having experienced suicidal thoughts, telling broadcaster Ant Middleton in 2019: ‘Every so often, you’re like, “When will this end?” That’s almost nearly killed me a couple of times.’
While the circumstances surrounding Payne’s death are still emerging, reports have noted that emergency services were called to the hotel before his death after staff …read more
Source:: Metro
