Liam Payne Dies: Former One Direction Singer Was 31
Liam Payne, a founding member of the popular British-Irish boy band One Direction, died Wednesday in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after falling off a balcony from the hotel’s third floor. He was 31.
La Nación reports that before the incident, police were called by Hotel Casa Sur staff to report “an aggressive man that could’ve been under the influence of drugs or alcohol.”
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“We were alerted about a person who was in an internal courtyard of Casa Sur Hotel. [First responders] arrived and confirmed the man’s death. We later learned that he was a singer in a musical group. Unfortunately, he had injuries incompatible with life as a result of his fall, so we had to confirm his death. There was no possibility of resuscitation,” Alberto Crescenti, head of the state emergency medical system, said.
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Although they were going to await an autopsy report, Crescenti noted that Payne “apparently had a skull fracture, a very serious injury.”
Payne rose to fame as part of One Direction, the pop group formed by Simon Cowell on The X-Factor UK Season 7 in 2010 that also featured Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik. The group released five studio albums from 2011-15, all of which went platinum in the U.S. and hit No. 1 or No. 2 stateside and in the and UK and were Top 10 around the world.
It scored four No. 1 singles in Great Britain: debut “What Makes You Beautiful,” “Little Things,” “One Way or Another (Teenage Kicks)” — whose video Payne directed — and “Drag Me Down.” Five others reached No. 2 in the country as One Direction became one of the top-selling boy bands ever.
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One Direction saw less chart dominance in the U.S. but had a half-dozen Top 10 singles and seven million-sellers stateside. Three other singles went gold in America.
The band was featured in the 2013 documentary One Direction: This Is Us, which was billed as “intimate all-access look at life on the road for the global music phenomenon.” Released by Sony Pictures, it looked at its meteoric rise to fame from humble hometown beginnings to The X Factor to conquering the world and performing at London’s famed O2 Arena. This Is Us grossed more than $68 million worldwide.
One Direction also had two platinum-selling longform videos in the U.S. with Up All Night: The Live Tour (2012), which got a brief overseas theatrical release, and Where We Are: Live in San Remo (2014).
Payne also had two Top 10 solo singles in the UK with “Strip That Down” and “For You,” the latter from the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack.
He postponed a South American solo tour last year to recover from a kidney infection.
Payne played himself in a 2012 episode of iCarly and did the same in a voice role for Family Guy four years later.
He had been the subject of tabloid headlines recently after his ex-fiancée, the model and social media content creator Maya Henry, went public with details about their turbulent relationship. She had reportedly sought a cease-and-desist order to stop him from contacting her.
Information on survivors wasn’t immediately available, but Payne had a son with singer Cheryl Cole in 2017.
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