The Untamed Heart of Liam Payne
The first night Liam Payne ever did a headlining solo show, the first One Direction song he sang was a deep cut: “History.” It’s not the most famous 1D song, but it’s one of their most direct statements about the bond they shared with their audience. Liam surprised the crowd with it on that first night, at New York’s Beacon Theatre in June 2018, complete with a video montage of One Direction over the years, as he sang, “You and me got a whole lot of history/We could be the greatest team that the world has ever seen.” For some reason, that’s the first song I turned to at the shocking news of Liam’s death on Tuesday. There are so many clips of Liam singing “History” in his solo shows, openly inviting the audience to celebrate that history with him. He always let them take over and sing the final hook by themselves: “We can live forever!”
“History” might seem like an odd way to kick-start your solo career, but it was a very Liam gesture — his way of keeping faith with everything that he, the band, and their fans built together. He honored the history they shared — but also the history everybody hoped he still had ahead of him. That open-hearted warmth was there in his songs, his voice, his effervescent onstage presence — that’s why so many people felt a deep personal connection with him, and kept rooting for him.
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And that’s why the world is grieving for Liam Payne today, after the tragic and heartbreaking news about his death, after falling from a third-floor hotel-room balcony in Buenos Aires. He was only 31. The circumstances of his death are still mysterious. He was the 1D member who seemed to struggle most after the group ended. But something about Liam made it easy to hold out hope that he’d make it. He had a lot more to give, more history to make.
One Direction were a brotherhood — even when they were a troubled and pained brotherhood — with five very different personalities and aesthetics thrown together into an accidentally perfect combination. Liam always came on like the kid brother of the group, with his boyish air of vulnerability and eager-puppy live enthusiasm. He was the one who seemed totally guileless, wearing his heart on his sleeve.
That spirit was always there when he sang — you could hear something bruised and unguarded in his voice. In the 2013 classic “Story of My Life,” a hit he co-wrote, Liam sings the most pained lines alone: “She told me in the morning she don’t feel the same about us in her bones/It seems to me that when I die these words will be written on my stone.” As in so many 1D songs, the boys tell the story together, tossing the mic back and forth. In the video, there’s a childhood photo of Liam posing with his family, then morphing into the adult Liam, gazing into the mirror before he sings the key line, “Although I am broken, my heart is untamed still.” It’s a moment that encapsulates everything people loved and connected to about him.
One Direction were never just a boy band. They were a whole new paradigm for a pop group, and Liam was a crucial reason why. Instead of doing corny choreographed steps, they gave one another room to explore their individual voices. Niall Horan had his Irish folk-music affinities; Louis Tomlinson had his Brit-pop rock-star swagger, as if he’d just stepped off the Oasis tour bus; Zayn Malik quit to pursue his hip-hop and R&B style. As for Harry Styles, he decided to turn into Stevie Nicks times Bowie times the Stones times Elton times Joni, before taking off into his own solo stratosphere.
Liam seemed like the baby of the bunch at first, yet he became an ace songwriter, from the cocky pop punk of “No Control” to the heartache of “Fireproof.” When 1D made three of the all-time great pop albums in a mad rush — Midnight Memories in 2013, Four in 2014, Made in the A.M. in 2015 — they were often singing Liam tunes. He became a major creative force, co-writing gems like “Diana,” “Little Black Dress,” “Fool’s Gold,” “Steal My Girl,” “Clouds,” and “History.”
One Direction formed on TV, on the U.K. X Factor with Simon Cowell. As everybody knows, TV singing contests are never the start of a promising group — maybe with solo artists, you might get a long shot like Kelly Clarkson or Carrie Underwood or Adam Lambert, but not groups. Nobody expected greatness from 1D — they didn’t even win X Factor. (Liam’s big solo songs on the show were the lounge standards “Fly Me to the Moon” and “Cry Me a River.”) Even people who loved their debut hit, “What Makes You Beautiful” — and everybody loved it — assumed these lads were just destined for a year or so of boy-band radio fun. But they built a unique bond with their fans. Liam always had his own exuberant charm live, a bit of a cheerleader, but intent on making a direct connection with the crowd. “You’re the greatest fans in the world because you all fell in love with a song called ‘No Control,’” Liam yelled at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, on 1D’s legendary 2015 tour, one of the best live shows I’ve ever witnessed. “You made it your own!”
Liam wasn’t the biggest One Direction fan in One Direction — that would be Niall — and admitted he often had trouble getting along with the others. But he was deeply attached to the group identity, and he was the one who had the toughest time moving on. 1D went on an alleged hiatus in 2015, a charade that dragged on for four years, until Harry finally came out and declared in Rolling Stone that the group was functionally finished. Liam, unlike the four others, seemed confused about what to do next. “How do you go from there?” Liam asked in his infamous 2022 Logan Paul interview. “I still don’t know who I am. I replicate different people on a daily basis.”
THE LAST TO test his solo wings, Liam started on the wrong foot with “Strip That Down,” his unfortunate 2017 debut single with Quavo. He tried to dismiss the group, rapping, “I used to be in 1D/Now I’m out free/People want me for one thing/That’s not me.” He sang about boozing and grinding on groupies — two months after becoming a dad — as Quavo added, “She gonna strip it down for a thug.” There are many words you could use to describe Liam, but “thug” wasn’t one of them. Yet he seemed to shrug off his debut album, with the title LP1, as if he’d already given up on it. His long-promised follow-up never happened, although he released the March 2024 single “Teardrops,” written with ‘NSync’s JC Chasez.
He had well-publicized problems with substance abuse. In 2022, he alienated fans with a disastrous (and drunken) Logan Paul interview, where he bragged that Simon Cowell built the whole group around him. “He kind of started with my face and then worked around the rest,” Liam said. “I’ve never told that story before.” He boasted that he was 1D’s most successful soloist, claiming “Strip That Down” “outsold everybody within the band.” (Harry’s “As It Was” was in the middle of a 15-week run at Number One at the time.) Liam wisely took this interview as a sign that he needed to go to rehab. But his troubles continued. He once revealed that he was terrified his son, Bear, born in 2017, might grow up to be a pop star. “Bear loves music, which kind of scares the crap out of me,” he told the U.K.’s Hits Radio Breakfast Show. “This job’s a bit scary … the amount of stuff that comes with it, you really have to be in it. So as a parent, you’re like, ‘This is a little bit scary, mate. I don’t know.’”
When he did his first solo shows as a headliner, in 2018, he was clearly touched by the affection from the crowd. “I’m so overwhelmed,” he said in New York. “I’ve missed that sound since I played with my boys.” He mostly sang cover versions, doing recent hits by Ed Sheeran, Pink, Zedd, and Charlie Puth. But the emotional payoff was “History” — the room erupted as he pleaded, “This is not the end! This is not the end!”
It was a vulnerable moment, for sure — he didn’t try to hide how much he needed those cheers. Yet it was also a profoundly generous moment — acknowledging that the fans were in the room because of their shared history, the same reason he was there. One Direction’s history is still expanding, as their music just keeps getting more influential and beloved, nearly 10 years after they split. There should have been many more chapters in Liam’s history. But that emotion he brought to “History” sums up everything people loved about him. Moments like this are the words that will be written on his stone. That’s Liam Payne as the world will remember him, and that’s the Liam Payne we’re all mourning today.
Launch Gallery: Liam Payne's Life in Photos
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