by Penny Borinstein ’28
December 17, 2024
The music industry is a harsh place. Many bands and artists have had their lives ruined by the extreme popularity and pressure brought on by the media, fans, or the music. These things are always left behind after someone’s career has come and gone, but the world never exactly sees the full picture until the extreme happens.
Especially when it comes and goes at a young age, fame can be the thing that makes or breaks one’s life. One Direction, the popular 2010s boy band, lost one of their members on October 16.
Liam Payne, a 31-year old ex-member of the beloved group, was found dead after supposedly falling off of the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was said to be in Argentina to see the concert of his friend and past bandmate, Niall Horan. Payne left behind his seven year old son, Bear Payne, as well as the rest of the band.
The autopsy showed multiple substances, including alcohol, prescription antidepressant, and “pink cocaine,” known to be a mix of multiple different drugs such as drugs including methamphetamine, ketamine, MDMA, cocaine, and crack. Authorities additionally found a cracked tv screen and aluminum pipe used for ingesting the drugs in the room. The hotel staff had noticed earlier that day that Payne seemed to have not been acting right on that particular day, noting that he was probably “not fully conscious” when he fell from the balcony.
Though the tragedy was deemed non-suicidal, Payne was definitely not in his best state of mind at the time. Payne had a multitude of conflicts in and outside the band that led many of the people in his life to wonder if the death was truly an accident. Even the beginnings of the adored quintet were a bit unstable, including how the One Direction was started in the first place.
Unlike other famous boy bands such as The Beatles or The Backstreet Boys, which were formed by themselves, One Direction was actually assembled by a third party, without the boys knowing each other originally. Each of the members, Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Harry Styles, and Zayn Malik auditioned individually on The X-factor, a British television series in 2010. The judges put them all on a team together, and by 2013, they broke the Billboard Top 100 and were one of the world’s best selling artists. The group quickly gained an unbreakable bond and developed millions of dedicated fans, called ‘Directioners,” that followed the group closely.
Within the 1D fan base, Payne was commonly seen as the “middle child” of the band. This nickname was coined by some fans, who realized that he never tended to steal the spotlight. Payne never took the role of a leader like Tomlinson, nor the charismatic role of the younger members of the group, like Styles and Malik. Instead, he always seemed to be the one to mediate situations and rivalries between band members, feeling the pressure of keeping conflicts between bandmates at bay.
Some conflicts in the band were spilled years after the band’s split. For example, in 2022, Payne said in an interview that he had some backstage drama with one of the members. “There was one moment where there was an argument backstage, and one member in particular threw me up a wall,” Payne said. At another point in the interview, he described the bands’ relationships with one another. “In the band we hated each other. Like, come to blows, hate each other, it was close.”
The band officially broke up in January of 2016, caused by internal tensions. Each of the members wanted to split off and pursue their own individual ambitions in the music industry. Malik was the first in the group to fall out.
“I just saw it [coming] and I completely selfishly wanted to be the first person to go and make my own record,” said Malik after leaving One Direction. “If I’m being completely honest with you, I was like, ‘I’m going to jump the gun here.” Malik and Payne were known to have a couple of feuds throughout their careers in the band, and Payne even claimed later on that he had small ‘love hate’ relationships with the members of the band.
“There are many reasons I dislike Zayn, and there are many reasons why I’ll always be on his side,” Payne said in 2014.
On a more personal level, Maya Henry, Payne’s ex-fiancée, opened up her relationship with the star, particularly on the subject of abuse. In May 2024, only five months prior to Payne’s death, Henry published a novel, Looking Forward, that she said to be “inspired by true events.” The plot included the story of a girl falling in love with a musician, and their relationship ending on a particularly rough note. Due to this novel, many fans have blamed the death of their loved superstar on Henry, claiming that it was the novel that led Payne to begin his long lasting relationship with drug and alcohol abuse.
On a recent episode of podcast The Internet is Dead, Brittany Deitch & Sameera Rachakonda interviewed Henry on the death of her ex. At multiple points throughout the relationship, Henry said she experienced mental abuse from Payne, claiming that he “wasn’t doing well” when they were together and “played with [the idea of] death.” She says he commonly inflicted this pain onto her, and a year after he proposed, Henry accused him of cheating, and they separated for good.
Another suspicion about the tragedy was that Payne just wasn’t happy with where his life was going in the first place. After the band broke up, Payne didn’t have the incredible line of fame that many of his band mates did. As a solo artist, he only ended up making one studio album, and never reached the extreme level of fame as Styles, Horan, or Malik did.
Cheryl Cole, an English singer and television personality, dated Payne from 2016 to 2018, and became the mother of their son, Bear Grey Payne, in 2017. She and Payne remained as co-parents after the break up.
After the tragedy, Cole spoke about Payne’s death.
As I try to navigate this earth-shattering event and work through my own grief at this indescribably painful time, I’d like to kindly remind everyone that we have lost a human being.” wrote Cole on Instagram. “Liam was not only a pop star and celebrity, he was a son, a brother, an uncle, a dear friend and a father to our 7 year old son. A son that now has to face the reality of never seeing his father again.”
