Last night, it was announced that former One Direction singer Liam Payne had died.
The 31-year-old singer fell from his third floor hotel balcony in Argentina and was pronounced dead at the scene by emergency services. Earlier, hotel workers had called the police, asking for help dealing with a guest who had had “too many drugs and alcohol and, well, when he is conscious he is trashing the entire room.”
Payne had been open about his mental health struggles and issues with substance abuse – even going so far as to talk about the impact it had on his relationships with his bandmates.
"It literally was the perfect storm," he told Men's Health magazine in 2019, adding that a lot of the band’s success was down to “dumb luck.”
"When you're doing hundreds and hundreds of [concerts] and it's the same 22 songs at the same time every single day, even if you're not happy, you've got to go out there," he said.
"It's almost like putting the Disney costume on before you step up on stage and underneath the Disney costume I was pissed (drunk) quite a lot of the time because there was no other way to get your head around what was going on."
He later added that parts of being on tour “just got a little bit toxic.”
One of his more fractious relationships was with Harry Styles – and while the pair were never as outspoken about each other as Payne was about his dislike for Zayn Malik, there’s still plenty to unpack.
As One Direction fell apart in 2016, many of the band decided to pursue solo careers, and Styles quickly became a breakout star in his own right, racking up hit singles and award nominations.
In 2017, Liam appeared in a video for Music Choice to subtly diss his bandmate Harry Styles’ solo track Sign of the Times. He replied that it was not his “sort of music” and not something he’d listen to, but that Styles "did a great job of doing what he wanted to do."
"He'd say the same thing about me," he added.
Payne followed this up in 2019 in an interview with The Face magazine, discussing whether he was in touch with his former bandmates.
"I speak to Louis quite regularly," he said. "And I feel like I know where I stand with Niall."
"But with Harry, there's so much mystery around who he's become. I was looking at some pictures of him the other day, and I just thought: 'I don't know what more I'd say to him other than, 'Hello' and 'How are you?’ I mean, look at the stuff I put out and the stuff Harry puts out. Polar opposite," he said.
"I'm like the anti-christ version of what Harry is.”
In another 2019 interview with Sunday Brunch, he mentioned that he’d seen Styles for the first time in three years and that it was “lovely.”
"We literally for five years we were in each other's pockets," he said. "The thing I always describe it as is if you imagine an office — and One Direction was my office — there's one person you don't really get along with, one person you don't know very much about, one person you hang out with all the time, and someone you're sort of friends with."
Later on, he told Seth Cohen that prior to meeting, “we hadn't seen each other for three years. Literally I hadn't seen him once, we hadn't spoken or anything. He was pretty much the same boy that I left him.”
In 2022, Payne dished some dirt on his bandmates in an infamous interview with YouTuber Logan Paul. Not only did he say that he was the most talented member of One Direction, but he suggested that he had almost come to blows with a former bandmate backstage at a show.
Speaking about it later in a video titled ‘I’m Back’, he apologised.
"A lot of what I 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,” he said.
“I took it out on everybody else, which is just wrong, really… my own frustrations with my own career and where I kind of landed, I took shots at everybody else, which is wrong.”
He also admitted that he had compared himself to his bandmates, and that the comments had come from a place of “self protection.”
Despite that, “the rest of the boys really stuck by me, and when I needed them the most, they kind of came to the rescue. Even Zayn as well, which is why I did send him a little thank you online, actually."
