Liam Payne, One Direction Member, Dead at 31
Liam Payne, who came to fame as a member of One Direction, has died. He was 31. On Wednesday, Secretario de Seguridad de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires David Kraventz (the Security Secretary of Buenos Aires) confirmed to Rolling Stone that the British singer died after falling from the third floor of CasaSur Palmero Hotel in Buenos Aires. A cause of death has not yet been confirmed.
The city’s medical emergency agency, SAME, also confirmed Payne’s death to Rolling Stone’s Argentina bureau. SAME’s director Alberto Crescenti told the local press that the artist fell from “about 13 or 14 meters,” and that Payne “suffered severe injuries incompatible with life.”
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Earlier this month, Payne was spotted taking photos with fans at Movistar Arena in Buenos Aires, where his One Direction bandmate Niall Horan was performing. Payne and Horan reunited there as well. “It’s been a while since me and Niall have spoken. We’ve got a lot to talk about,” he said in a Snapchat video before going to Argentina. “And I would like to square up a couple of things with the boy. No bad vibes or anything like that. But just, um, we need to talk.”
Payne was born in Wolverhampton, England, on Aug. 29, 1993. He auditioned for The X-Factor in 2008 at the age of 14, where he performed a cover of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” as a soloist. He would be placed into a group with Horan, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik when the X-Factor aired in 2010.
The five-piece would compete as a group after being formed by Simon Cowell and X-Factor judge Nicole Scherzinger. In a video released in 2022 of the group’s formation, Scherzinger suggested that Payne could “actually maybe be the leader of the group,” she said. “They’re like little stars. You can’t get rid of little stars, so you put them all together.”
One Direction would become one of the bestselling boy bands of all time, releasing albums Up All Night in 2011, Take Me Home in 2012, Midnight Memories in 2013, Four in 2014 (as a five-piece), and Made in the A.M. in 2015 following Malik’s departure. Among the band’s greatest hits are 2011’s “What Makes You Beautiful,” 2013’s “Story of My Life,” and 2014’s “Night Changes” and “Steal My Girl.”
The band headlined four massive tours, including their final run as a four-piece called On the Road Again, which saw Styles, Horan, Payne, and Tomlinson perform 77 stadium shows, and they sold more than 2 million tickets.
After the release of Made in the A.M., One Direction went on hiatus in 2016, with each member launching solo careers. In 2017, Payne released his Ed Sheeran-penned single “Strip That Down,” which reached Number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was featured on his debut solo album, LP1, in 2019. Throughout his solo career, he also released collaborations with J Balvin, French Montana, Dixie D’Amelio, and A Boogie Wit da Hoodie.
Payne marked his return to solo releases earlier this year when he dropped “Teardrops,” co-written with ‘NSync’s JC Chasez, in March. “’Teardrops’ is about the vulnerability of heartbreak and the challenge of overcoming those moments,” he said in a statement at the time, saying there was “more to come” this year.
Payne shares a seven-year-old son named Bear Gray with fellow singer Cheryl Cole, with whom he split in 2018. He told People in 2020 that he always wanted to “be a young dad” and that it “took a lot to find my footing” as a father.
Payne had previously opened up about his struggles with substance abuse. Last year, he went on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast and revealed that he checked into a sobriety treatment program for 100 days following backlash to some comments he made about One Direction being formed around him.
“My own frustrations with my own career and where I kind of landed, I took shots at everybody else which is wrong. Obviously, I want to apologize for that, in the first instance, because that’s definitely not me,” he shared in the eight-minute video. “One of the biggest remarks I made was about the One Direction thing … and a lot of self-protection, I suppose, in that moment, more than anything. The rest of the boys really stuck by me when I needed them most, they kinda came to the rescue.“
This is a developing story …
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