Where it all went wrong for Liam Payne

The late One Direction star was hard-working, talented, unfailingly kind – and very clearly in need of help. Why didn’t he get it?

Whenever news breaks of the heart-rendingly premature, sudden death of a young star caught in the tempest of fame, as stunned fans rake over the coals of their lives and pundits attempt to trace their final steps, the same question tends to push through the mire: “Why was no one there to help?” 
In the case of Liam Payne, the former One Direction member and solo artist, who died, aged 31, on Wednesday after falling from the third floor of a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, the question extends far beyond those tragic – and by all accounts desperate – last moments. 
Payne had been in Argentina to see Niall Horan, his old One Direction bandmate, in concert on Oct 4, then stayed in the country with his girlfriend, the American social media influencer Kate Cassidy. She returned home to Florida earlier this week; it seems as if she was the only member of his entourage.
So it was that, like so many young celebrities before him, Payne was entirely alone in a vast hotel room on the evening he died. Local reports, leaked photographs and a released 911 call all suggest he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, having openly struggled with addiction for years, before tumbling to his death in an apparent accident. 
In those final hours, Payne very clearly needed help. The greater tragedy, though, is another one all too familiar in stories like these: that to anybody who had shown even a cursory interest in his exploits over the last few years, it was clear that Liam Payne had needed help for a very long time.
“How Liam Payne’s toe-curling gaffes have shattered his charming One Direction image,” read one headline, only last week. “Fans concerned for Liam Payne after erratic behaviour in girlfriend’s TikTok video,” another reported. “Liam Payne is the UK’s biggest ick and these embarrassing moments prove it,” an online publication reckoned, in 2022.
There were gaffes, and there were embarrassing moments. Many of them. A rambling, frenetic and puzzlingly-accented interview on the Oscars red carpet when, for some reason, Payne was given the task of insta-reacting to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, for instance. A solo career and social media personality that erred on the wrong side of cool. A possible buccal fat removal procedure, which for a while altered his face to look like a cartoon character.
Above all, one fateful interview, given in 2022 to the YouTuber Logan Paul and his fellow self-proclaimed “bunch of idiots”, sent up the clearest flare that all was not well with Payne. In it, he made a series of outlandish claims about his time in One Direction that suggested not only a paranoia about his legacy, but a profound lack of clarity about his future.
Among other things, he claimed he had been the “honorary” first member of One Direction (in fact, Horan was the first person chosen for the group by judge Nicole Scherzinger on The X Factor in 2010); he criticised former bandmate Zayn Malik’s family life; he told a story about threatening to remove the hands of an unnamed bandmate who once “threw me up a wall”; and he insisted his solo debut single, Strip That Down, had outsold the first solo songs by all his other former bandmates. This was also untrue: both Harry Styles and Malik had far more successful debuts.
The internet, such is its wont, reacted with great mirth. Payne was a bitter washout, a cringe-worthy loser and music’s David Brent, it was decided. The fact he was a self-professed addict, who was admirably candid about spells in rehab and had discussed, only months before, his past experiences of suicidal ideation, was deemed immaterial. 
So too was he ignored when he went on to apologise and disavow his comments on Paul’s podcast: social media had enjoyed its meal and was busy, off looking for another victim. It has never liked the taste of humility, anyway.
“A lot of what I just said came from the wrong place. I was so angry at what was going on around me and instead of taking a look inwards, I decided to look outwards at everybody else,” Payne said of that interview. It had, he added, been a “scramble to stay relevant” that backfired.
“It came across really big-headed, huh? It was hard for me to watch back. I think in those moments when you make these videos, you don’t realise the impact that your words might have on other people.” 
Afterwards, he spent 100 days in a Louisiana rehab, returning to tell fans he “needed to take a little bit of time out for myself actually because I became somebody I didn’t really recognise any more. I’m sure you guys didn’t either.” 
Payne was never anything other than brutally honest. Many modern pop stars, especially those who’ve been media trained since they were teenagers, bare only as much of their soul as is useful to hawk whatever it is they’re promoting. Part of the PR trick is to create an illusion of intimacy and candour.
Payne had no truck with that. To his occasional detriment, he loved to think out loud. When I interviewed him for the Telegraph Magazine in 2017, I found a man who was not only extraordinarily affable and generous to all he came across, but one who was also practically floating with a newfound lightness of being. He was no longer in One Direction, he was a new father, he’d settled down, and he felt fantastic. 
“When I left the band, I felt a bit stranded,” he said. “It took time, but I know as an artist I am starting fresh now.” Then he slapped a boardroom table in his management’s offices with ecstatic melodrama. “This is Moment One. It’s the start line.”
He was 24, and it had been a year since One Direction had commenced an indefinite hiatus. Since that breakup, in 2016, the varying fortunes of the dispersed members – Horan, Payne, Styles, Tomlinson, plus Malik, who had left a year earlier – have become a study in how to safely evacuate boy band superstardom. Payne struggled the most.
He was born and raised in Wolverhampton, and spoke with a Midlands lilt that was always gloriously thick, and tended to return, despite occasional forays into something more Transatlantic (in that Oscars reaction clip, his accent travels around the world several times in two minutes) as he grew up.
His mother, Karen, was a nursery nurse and his father, Geoff, was a fitter. With his two older sisters in a small semi, they were a close-knit family who did a lot of watching television. Payne’s place was on the floor, with the dog. “Have you seen the Royle Family? Anthony, that was me. That was my nickname,” he said. “We didn’t have much. Dad was in debt, but they did the best they could. It makes you dream a bit, you know?”
His father, a great fan of swing music, always believed his son could be a star, so encouraged any and all ambition. He first applied to The X Factor in 2008 with Fly Me To The Moon, getting as far as the “judge’s houses” before Simon Cowell told him to come back in two years and try again. 
On the day of that first audition, when a 14-year-old Payne performed in a waistcoat and from behind a curtain of brown fringe, he winked at Cheryl Tweedy, then Cole, who was a judge. She was a decade his senior, but they’d later fall in love and have a son. Bear is now seven. “It’s a ridiculous place to be in,” he said of being in a relationship with his teenage pin-up, when we met. “She’s even more amazing than I thought.”
Payne followed Cowell’s advice and returned in 2010, that time performing another of his dad’s favourite standards, Cry Me A River. Soon he found himself sewn into One Direction with four other fresh-faced boys, all of whom offered something slightly different. 
Malik was brooding and aloof; Styles was cool and flamboyant; Horan was charming and relaxed; Tomlinson was energetic. Payne, always “a bit of an older soul” and ribbed for being fogeyish, was The Responsible One. Fans called him “Daddy Directioner”. 
The band finished third on The X Factor, yet instantly signed to Cowell’s Syco Records, and became comfortably the most successful act in the show’s history, selling more than 20 million records, becoming the first band ever to have their first four albums go to number one in the US, repeatedly touring the world and earning a staggering amount of money.
He and Tomlinson, arguably the members of the band with the least devoted followings as individuals, did a lot of behind-the-scenes work, writing and producing the majority of the songs, dealing with the label, making sure people turned up on time. “I was thinking business end, he was thinking creative end. That’s how we found our feet.” 
He was always caring to fans, too. In 2013, on tour in Australia, Payne tweeted a message to warn girls waiting outside the band’s hotel of snakes living in the surrounding fields. “It’s just not worth it someone’s gunna get hurt [sic],” he pleaded. 
Those days and hours stuck inside hotels, under siege from fans who would have torn the band’s clothes off if they got even a sniff of them out in public, were as claustrophobic as they sound. “It sent me a bit AWOL at one point, if I’m honest. I can remember when there were 10,000 people outside our hotel. We couldn’t go anywhere. It was just gig to hotel, gig to hotel. And you couldn’t sleep, because they’d still be outside,” he said. 
“People were speaking to me about mental health in music the other day, and that’s a big issue. Sometimes you just need some sun, or a walk.” Out of boredom, more than anything else, the minibar became a source of solace. 
As a child, Payne was diagnosed with a scarred kidney, meaning he didn’t taste alcohol until he was given the all-clear in 2012, aged 19. Tell a teenage millionaire they can now safely drink, and they’ll go for it. The “floodgates opened” that year, he confessed.
“I wasn’t happy. I went through a real drinking stage, and sometimes you take things too far. Everyone’s been that guy at the party where you’re the only one having fun, and there were points when that was me. I got to 13 stone, just eating crap. I got fat jibes, and it affects your head. I have nothing to hide about it…”
In that interview, in 2017, when he was living in a mansion in Surrey with Cheryl and Bear, he claimed he had it “out of my system” – but struggles with addiction, to both alcohol and drugs, and mental health problems persisted. 
“There was a point in the band when you play the character. I was tired of my character. It was too much. I was just very loud and bubbly, there were a lot of personalities to catch up with. It was trying to be ‘eyyy’ the rowdy lad. I spent a lot of time drinking,” he said.
Despite attempts to tackle it, he was typically honest in appraising his efforts. “I don’t know if I’ve even hit rock bottom yet. It feels like I can either pick my last moment as my rock bottom, or make a whole new low. That’s my choice,” he told Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO in 2021. 
When One Direction scattered, it was obvious what genres of music all the other members would gravitate towards as solo artists. Styles would make rock-pop and become a fashion plate, superstar and monster success; Horan would do sing-a-longs with his acoustic guitar; Tomlinson would go down an indie route; Malik would make smooth R&B. 
Payne was the odd one out. He liked both swing and rap. He had a pipe-and-slippers vibe and yet also added a new tattoo or supercar every other week. In the end, his debut single, Strip That Down, was an R&B-inflected club hit co-written with Ed Sheeran chock-full of hoary by-the-way-I’m-an-adult-now signposts, as well as references to the band. (‘You know I used to be in 1D, now I’m out, free / people want me for one thing, that’s not me’.) 
And it was indeed huge. But that, really, is where it stopped. The eventual album, LP1, followed in 2019 and contained a varied collection of singles and filler that gained weak reviews. It would be Payne’s only solo studio album. With a net worth of £47 million and homes all over the world, motivation was possibly hard to come by.
In our conversation in 2017, he was desperate to emphasise how happy he was outside of the band and yet, tellingly, also couldn’t wait for them all to get back together. “I can’t wait for us to do a comeback gig at some point… four solo artists and then a band at the end,” he said, wistfully. “We were just on the edge of becoming a really great band.” 
More than any of the others, he couldn’t help but look back, and often. After 2016, he certainly gave the impression of a man released, but also one who was unsure quite where to go next. That all his bandmates seemed so certain of their futures must have made it even harder to believe in himself.
Payne’s final years were troubled and unproductive. He and Tweedy split long ago, but remained amiable. After an on-again, off-again relationship, he became engaged to model Maya Henry, but they finally split in 2022. 
Henry later wrote a novel about a young woman in a relationship with a tattooed pop star who drifts from his clean cut image into something darker and more controlling. Just a week ago she issued Payne with a cease-and-desist order after accusing him of bombarding her with messages. 
Through it all, he always remained unfailingly generous with his fans, even when he was acting erratically and clearly struggling with addiction. All his many eccentric updates and appearances – not to mention his distinct lack of new music – made him a figure of fun to the internet, but now look like a cry for help that largely went unanswered.
At 31, he had enough time, talent and potential to start again. As is always the case, fingers will now be pointed this way and that. Katie Waissel, a friend and a former X Factor contestant, has warned Simon Cowell that if he issues “a statement on the heart-wrenching, tragic loss of my dear and darling friend Liam, he would be a fool. We all know the truth… and I’ll be sure it all comes out.” 
Social media will have other ideas. Fans, in their grief, will just want answers. Tragically, though, all that help and sincerity has come far too late for the responsible one who grew sick of playing a character. We will now never know what Payne planned to do next.
“I feel great about what’s going on in life,” he told me, reflecting on finally feeling settled, seven long years ago. He was looking forward to caring for “generations of family”, starting with Bear. 
“I’m extremely lucky. I feel like I’m in a comatose dream. I’m like, ‘when did I last bump my head?’ because I can’t believe this…”
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