Singer and former One Direction star Liam Payne died aged 31 on 16 October 2024, after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires. Today his funeral will take place with his family, close friends and former bandmates expected to attend.
His death came as a shock to many, with Payne surviving his parents, two siblings, and seven-year-old son, Bear, whom he shares with Girls Aloud member Cheryl Tweedy.
Long before he was an actual father, Payne was jokingly referred to as “Daddy Direction” by fans and his bandmates — Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik — a label he took seriously, despite being in his teens. Taking things seriously was Liam’s “thing.”
One Direction, the boyband Payne was selected for, aged 16, while appearing on The X Factor, was built on strict roles. Zayn was the mysterious one, Niall the boyish one, Harry the star with solo appeal. Louis and Liam jostled for the leader position, which led to disagreements. People struggled to place Liam into a pre-made box. Fans remember him as the “serious” one, but in a Guardian article from 2015, he is referred to simply as “The Generic One.”
“While the Generic One is not necessarily the most impressive singer or the best looking, perhaps these unremarkable qualities make life after the band more bearable,” the article reads. “The boyband’s ultimate winner.”
Liam Payne wanted to be a singer so badly that he’d already been through various stages of The X Factor before the other boys even made their first audition. His placement in the group and sudden rise to a blistering, bonkers level of stardom meant that he grew up in the blink of a million eyes. He’s spoken of a teenage-hood spent locked in hotel rooms. “It would be car, hotel room stage, sing, locked,” Payne said on the Diary of a CEO podcast in 2021 — with the minibar as his main companion.
After the band broke up, Payne spiralled into addiction and struggled with an uneasy start to his solo career. His album, LP1, was panned by critics. In a 4.3 score review written by Pitchfork, the reviewer wrote “Payne is, at best, competent.”
Here, we look at Liam Payne’s life before the madness of the past month, back to when he was a young boy, thrust into the blinding spotlight.
An unwell baby grows into a sporty young boy
Payne was born in Wolverhampton in August 1993, to mother Karen, an infant nurse, and Geoff, a fitter. He was sick as a child, with kidney problems discovered at a young age. “When I was born I was effectively dead,” Payne wrote in One Direction’s 2011 biography Dare to Dream — Life as One Direction.
“The doctors couldn't get any reaction from me so I had to be brought round and although it seemed like I was okay, there were underlying problems.
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Payne was born prematurely, three weeks earlier than his due date. After endless tests, “They discovered that one of my kidneys wasn't working properly and it had scarred. I had to have 32 injections in my arm in the morning and evening to try and make me better,” he wrote.
“I've still got both kidneys but one doesn't work so I have to be careful not to drink too much, even water, and I have to keep myself as healthy as possible.”
By the time Payne had reached school age, he was healthy, having taken up running as a hobby. More than a hobby, in fact. For three years, Payne was ranked in the top three 1500m runners in the country for his age group.
But it was singing that had Payne’s heart. His mother Karen juggled her nursery shifts with driving Liam to auditions, including those for The X Factor back in 2008.
Two attempts at The X Factor and a promise from Simon Cowell
Payne first auditioned for The X Factor in Birmingham in 2008. “When I’m in school [...] I think about singing all the time,” 14-year-old Liam says to the camera, speaking in his West Midlands accent. “I should really be concentrating on my work but I think about singing too much. It’s the dream and I’d love to do it.”
In the audition room, a young Liam stands in front of Simon Cowell, Louis Walsh and the then Cheryl Cole (who he would go on to have a child with) and declares that he’s “here to win”, before singing Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra.
Liam made it as far as the judges houses segment in Barbados before being booted off the show that year, but it was then that Simon Cowell made him a promise. “Simon said to me, ‘You need to go and get your GCSEs,’ [before coming back]” Liam recalled in a later X Factor clip.
Sure enough, in 2010, 16-year-old Liam Payne returned to The X Factor audition room and sang the Michael Bublé version of Cry Me a River by Justin Timberlake. He received a standing ovation for his performance, but judges were privately unconvinced by his ability as a solo performer. As it turns out, they felt the same way about four other boys too.
In a clip from behind the scenes of The X Factor in 2010, Nicole Scherzinger forms the band. First comes Niall, Harry and Louis. Another judge requests that Liam be moved to a different group, but Scherzinger disagrees and says that she thinks he would "definitely shine" with the other three boys. "He could actually maybe be the leader," she says. Cowell then points out that Liam "thinks he's better than anyone else on that list," to which Louis Walsh agrees. Finally, Zayn is added to the group, and One Direction was formed.
Looking back on this moment in 2022, Liam told the Logan Paul podcast: “We got kicked off, all of us, and then me and Niall [Horan] were about to get the train in Houston and this woman came running behind us and was like, ‘Yo, please come back, the judges want to speak to you.”
“And they’d already done this to me once, so I was like, ‘What the… are you gonna mess with my emotions some more? I’m already crazy enough, thank you very much.”
“The middle child” of One Direction
One Direction was formed on July 23, 2010. All of the boys were aged between 16 and 18 at the time, with Liam being both the third eldest and third youngest. He became known as “daddy direction” for being the sensible, “mature” one and acting older than the others. It was a nickname partly coined by Louis Tomlinson, who explained: “I like kind of just sitting down and chatting with Liam about more serious stuff, like if you're feeling a bit down, come and talk to daddy Liam.”
The band’s fame was almost instant. Even though One Direction only placed as runners up (Matt Cardle was named as winner, Rebecca Ferguson second place) in December 2010, the fledgling boy band quickly eclipsed the success of anyone else who had preceded them on the UK version of the show.
One Direction released their first single, What Makes You Beautiful, in August 2011. It debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart and stayed there for a whopping 78 weeks. America got on board too, a rare occurrence for a UK boy band straight out of a talent show, with the single reaching number four on the Billboard Hot 100. From there, it only got bigger.
Fans followed them in cars, slept outside their hotels and hid in bins for a chance to get a glimpse of the One Direction boys. They were put to work making their first album, Up All Night, then immediately sent on tour, during which Payne has said they’d be “locked” in their hotel rooms to keep them out of trouble.
A strange teen upbringing of hotel rooms and mini bars
This is where Payne reckoned his issues with alcohol began. Speaking on the Diary of a CEO podcast, he recalled: “[...] when we were in the band the best way to secure us because of how big it got was just to lock us in our rooms and of course what’s in the room, minibar.
“So, at a certain point, I thought ‘Well I’m going to have a party for one’ and that just seemed to carry on through many years of my life’. And then you look back at how long you’ve been drinking and you think ‘Jesus Christ that’s a long time’, even for someone as young as I was. It was wild but it was the only way you could get frustration out in the day.”
“I spoke to somebody about this and in child development, as a teen, the one thing you need is freedom to make choices and freedom to do stuff and it was the one thing, although we could do anything we wanted it seemed from the outside, that we were always locked in a room at night and then it would be car, hotel room stage, sing, locked. So, it was like they pulled the dust cloth off, let us out for a minute and then [put us] back underneath.”
At this point, One Direction were rarely seeing their families. In a clip from the 2013 film One Direction: This Is Us, Liam’s mum, Karen, breaks down as she purchases a Liam Payne cardboard cutout, saying: “That's my favourite hair on Liam [on the cutout], I love that one. I just shed tears just looking at him. You've only got the images. They become someone in like a newspaper or a magazine to you [...] I always believed that Liam would make it, but never this big. Never in my wildest dreams this big.'
In 2014, while interviewing his bandmates at the Brits, Payne asks Louis Tomlinson how they’re all feeling, to which he replies: “Quite different to you Liam Payne because you’ve consumed a lot of alcohol, potentially too much,” to which Liam replies, “This is true, I won’t name any good brands but I’ve had a very good time.”
Then, later that year, the band were publicly shamed after a picture appeared to show them smoking a joint, marking the first time any of the 1D boys had been linked to drugs. Speaking for the group, Liam wrote on social media: "I love my boys and maybe things have gone a little sideways. I apologise for that. We are only in our 20s, we all do stupid things at this age.
"We all have a lot of growing up to do in an extreme circumstance. I'm not making excuse[s] but it's fact we are gunna fall short somewhere.”
The band’s indefinite hiatus
In March 2015, Zayn Malik decided to leave the group, marking the beginning of the end for One Direction. They released one album as a four-piece, Made in the A.M., before announcing an “indefinite hiatus” in December 2015.
The breakup led to another dip in Payne’s mental health, which he later admitted “nearly killed him”.
“There have been some tough times,” he told KISS FM in 2018. “When the band started our break I struggled with the idea of becoming famous again, it scared the living daylights out of me. Because the last time it nearly killed me, frankly [...] So I had to figure out a way to make it work for me — rather than me work for it.”
A boyband member falls for a girlband member 10 years his senior
In December 2015, when One Direction performed for the last time as part of The X Factor final, Payne was reunited with Cheryl Tweedy. At the time, Tweedy’s marriage with her second husband, Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini, was on the rocks. By February 2016, the couple had split.
It was around this time that many suspected Payne and Tweedy were secretly dating. This was confirmed in May of 2016, when they appeared arm-in-arm at the Global Gift Gala in Paris. At this point, Liam Payne was 22 years old, and Cheryl Tweedy was 32 years old, a ten year age difference.
Less than a year later, the pair welcomed a son named Bear together in March 2017. “My close friends and family know there are very few times when I’m left speechless… wow,” wrote Liam, announcing Bear’s birth on Instagram. “I’m incredibly happy to welcome our new baby boy into the world.”
“It’s a moment that I will never forget for the rest of my life and my favourite memory I have so far. I’m completely in awe of his incredible mother and how she has been the whole way through this, she’s really made my dreams come true.”
The pair stayed together for just over a year following Bear’s birth. Payne later divulged becoming a parent is what caused the breakdown of his relationship with Tweedy, telling the Logan Paul podcast: “You don't know what is coming and it's different. And to be honest with you, it ruined a relationship for me at that point but for all the right reasons. I was so excited for him to be born that I was actually worried if I wouldn't love him enough."
In this interview, he also praised Tweedy’s parenting skills, saying: “She is the best mum in the world. I couldn't ask for someone better [...] We broke up for a reason and now she gives me full autonomy of my life and to do what I do and I know he's taken care of.
"He is all she cares about and I couldn't ask for more. They live like three minutes from my house. I always glue myself to where he is. My life now is his. My money is his. He's a lovely, lovely boy. We've been blessed."
Cole has also made comments about their successful co-parenting situation, telling The Telegraph in 2019: “[Liam is] much softer than me. But it is what it is, and I’m OK about it [...] When you have a baby, you are not consumed with just thinking about yourself. It’s your responsibility to keep things settled and happy, so you make the best of everything. And we have."
Payne has been in two serious relationships since he and Tweedy split in 2018. He dated model and author Maya Henry on and off from 2018 to 2022, with the pair even getting engaged in 2020. The couple split in 2022 after Henry accused him of cheating.
But their fractious relationship didn’t end there. Henry openly accused Payne of harassment earlier this month, saying he had taken extreme measures to attempt to contact her following their breakup. “Ever since we broke up, he messages me, will blow up my phone, not only from his phone number, it’s always from different phone numbers, so I never know where it’s going to come from,” she said in a TikTok video.
In mid October, Henry was said to have appointed lawyers and issued a cease and desist notice to Payne to stop his contact.
At the time of his death, Payne was in a long-term relationship with Kate Cassidy, a 25-year-old model and social media influencer from New Jersey. Cassidy and Payne had been dating since 2022, after he and Henry called it quits.
Payne was staying with Cassidy in the Buenos Aires hotel where he died, but she left days before his death. “I was so ready to leave,” she said on social media before his death. “Love South America, but I hate staying in one place for too long and we were supposed to be there for five days, turned into two weeks and I was just like, 'I need to go home.’”
Payne’s battle with addiction comes to a head
Liam Payne officially launched his solo career in 2021, when he released his first single, Strip That Down, followed by an album, LP1. The single was commercially successful, reaching number three on the UK Singles Chart and number ten on the US Billboard Hot 100, as well as becoming certified platinum in both countries.
But LP1 was heavily critiqued with music journalists giving one-star reviews and offering biting condemnation of the album’s “rowdy”, “catty” lyrics.
While on the promo trail for LP1, Payne opened up about his struggles with addiction for the first time during an interview with The Diary of a CEO podcast, hosted by Steven Bartlett. As well as the comments about his One Direction days, drinking in hotel rooms and raiding the mini bar, he referenced being at “rock bottom”.
“I don’t even know if I’ve hit it yet,” he says, “it feels like I can either make that choice now and pick that last moment as my rock [...] or I can make a whole new one. It’s my choice.”
Then, in July 2023, Payne shared that he was on a journey towards sobriety after spending 100 days in a rehab facility in Louisiana. “I just kind of feel like I've got more of a grip on life and everything that was getting away from me, I just feel like I've got more of a handle on it.
“I just needed to take a little bit of time out for myself actually because I kind of became somebody who I didn't really recognise anymore and I'm sure you guys didn't either. I was in bad shape up until that point and I was really happy to kind of put a stopper to life and work.”
Payne also referenced Louis Tomlinson’s part in his mental health struggles in 2023, writing in an Instagram caption: “I’m so thankful to have you in my life mate I feel so lucky and I know you know this but you were part of a small group of people that literally saved my life, you dragged me out of something so dark I’ve never shared it but your approach is something I admire and aspire to, so I can one day do the same.”
Payne’s sobriety came into question earlier this month when he was filmed dancing and playing up to the cameras at fellow One Direction star Niall Horan’s concert in Argentina. Payne decided to continue his stay in Buenos Aires, but fell to his death from a hotel balcony last night, on October 16.
Numerous people have paid tribute, including Harry Styles’ mother, who wrote a post online that read simply: “Just a boy.” Payne’s own family said they were “heartbroken,” and that “Liam will forever live in our hearts and we’ll [remember] him for his kind, funny and brave soul. We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time.”
