From glory to tragedy

Liam Payneformer member of One Direction, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires. His life was marked by excess: fame, perhaps arrived too quickly. But also alcohol, and a series of mental health problems. Which could be the ground on which the tragedy was born.

The One Direction phenomenon on X Factor UK

At the age of 16, Liam Payne auditioned for the British reality TV show X Factor. Since then, everything has changed: he became one of the five members of One Direction with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik. Signing the group with his first recording contract with Sony Music, he fulfilled his dream of becoming a world-famous singer with five hit albums and four world tours.

Mental health problems

He never digested this lifestyle. The more fame One Direction gained, the more Liam Payne needed help with disorders such as anxiety, agoraphobia and subsequent alcoholism. After the musical group split and the birth of his son Bear in 2017 – with British singer Cheryl Tweedy – he entered rehabilitation to regain control of his life.

The family

Liam Payne was born in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, and grew up in a middle-class family consisting of two sisters and his father and mother, who were supportive when he showed interest. for music in adolescence. “Everywhere, my dad said I sang well,” Liam said in the One Direction documentary, This is Us.

The rise with X Factor

In 2008, his first appearance on X Factor, where he performed Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra. At just 14 years old, Liam surprised the jury made up of Louis Walsh, Dannii Minogue, Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell. But due to his young age, he did not continue on the show. In 2010, he returned a second time, this time with the song “Cry me a River” by Arthur Hamilton. Liam – like Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik – was, however, initially eliminated from the talent show as it first happened in 2008. But judge Nicole Scherzinger suggested that the five youngsters form a group musical to compete on X Factor. One Direction advanced to the final of the talent show, but lost to Matt Cardle, one of judge Dannii Minogue’s talents, and soon after, despite the defeat, they signed a contract with the label SYCO from Sony Music where Cowell stepped in after seeing the huge crowd of fans the group had already collected.

The high price of being a pop star

Payne thus embarked on a five-year adventure that began with the single What Makes You Beautiful and then with the publication of five One Direction albums: Up All Night (2011), Take Me Home (2012), Midnight Memories (2013), Four (2014) and Made In the AM (2015), in addition to four world tours, a documentary about the group, the filming of 13 music videos and more than 200 awards between 2011 and 2016. But he struggled to cope with fame. And this period was not easy for him. The singer revealed that the drinking problems began when the group’s management team locked them in hotel rooms to “keep them safe” due to the greatness One Direction had achieved in the world. “And what was it?” The minibar! So I thought, “I’m drinking alone.” And it accompanied me for many years of my life. We would go from the car to the hotel, go on stage to sing and then come back to isolation, and when you’re a teenager you need freedom. I drank alcohol for a long time, but it was the only way to release the frustration at the end of the day.” When One Direction broke up in 2016, Liam Payne said he felt relieved. “The day the band broke up, I thought, ‘thank God’ and I know a lot of people get mad at me for saying that, but I had to stop or I would be dead.”

The case in 2023

In early 2023, Liam worried his fans after suddenly disappearing from social media where he is usually active when promoting solo musical projects like his EP Liam Payne (2019) – which included his hits Strip That Down and For You collaborating with Rita Ora for the “Fifty Shades of Gray” soundtrack, quarantine vlogs, and virtual shows he held when Covid-19 was infesting the world.

Reappearing on YouTube, the singer – who was then 29 years old – confessed to having entered a hundred-day rehabilitation program to treat his alcoholism, because he was unable to maintain sobriety for long periods without professional help. “I needed to take some time, because I no longer recognized myself. It’s been 100 days since I had the phone and I couldn’t connect to the outside world at all – he said. The hardest part was turning the phone back on. It scared me, but it’s good to be in this position because I don’t need these things anymore.”