Liam Payne: His rise from teen X Factor contestant to One Direction megastar before his tragic death

Liam Payne, one of the former members of One Direction, has died in Buenos Aires. He was 31.

The singer reportedly suffered fatal injuries after a fall from the third floor of a hotel in the Argentinian capital. Investigations into his death are ongoing.

Payne rose to fame as a member of One Direction (1D), the most successful boy band of all time, alongside Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, and Louis Tomlinson.

The group rocketed to global megastardom after placing third on the British competition singing show The X Factor, where they each originally auditioned as solo artists before being grouped together by the judges — including Simon Cowell, whose record label SYCO signed the band in 2010.

They were the UK and Ireland’s modern answer to Backstreet Boys and N’SYNC, and the fan pandemonium that followed the group was the closest thing the world had seen to Beatlemania since the 1960s.

After 1D announced its hiatus in 2016, Payne rode the highs and lows of a solo career, became a father, and faced a number of professional and personal controversies.

The X Factor Days: 2008—2010

Payne first auditioned for The X Factor in 2008, when he was just 14.

He passed the first round of auditions after impressing the judges Simon Cowell, Cheryl Cole, Danni Minogue, and Louis Walsh with his rendition of Frank Sinatra’s tune Fly Me to the Moon but was eliminated in the Boot Camp stage.

Judge Simon Cowell brought him back to the Judge’s House stage, but Payne was again eliminated. Cowell said he wasn’t ready and encouraged him to return to the auditions in two years.

In 2010, 16-year-old Liam Payne returned to X Factor and blew the judges — Cowell, Cole, Walsh and guest judge Natalia Imbruglia — away singing Michael Buble’s cover of Cry Me A River by Arthur Hamilton.

He wasn’t successful that year, either. But judge Nicole Scherzinger (of the Pussycat Dolls) suggested combining five of the unsuccessful solo artists — Payne, Styles, Horan, Malik, and Tomlinson — into a boy band. And the rest, they say, is history.

The band was an instant hit with fans and the hysteria over 1D soon eclipsed The X Factor. The group finished in third place but were signed to Simon Cowell’s label Syco Entertainment.

Years later, Cowell would describe the formation of 1D as capturing “lightning in a bottle”.

One Direction: 2010-2016

For the next six years, Payne and his bandmates toured the world performing sold-out concerts to millions of fans.

The band sold more than 50 million copies of their five albums, won 177 awards — including six Billboard Music Awards, seven BRITs, seven American Music Awards, five ARIA awards and 28 Teen Choice Awards — and amassed over 3 billion YouTube views.

Payne cemented himself as one of 1D’s strongest vocalists and a key songwriter, contributing to more than half of the band’s third and fourth albums.

The band’s debut single What Makes You Beautiful was released in September 2011 and was an instant success. It was followed by the band’s album Up All Night, which topped the charges in 16 countries and sold 4.5 million copies. It was the first debut album by a UK group to reach number one in the US.

One Direction’s second album Take Me Home, released in November 2012, was even more successful, topping the charts in 35 countries. Their third album Midnight Memories was the best-selling album worldwide in 2013 and featured the critically acclaimed single Story of My Life.

One Direction’s 2014 Where We Are Tour, for album Midnight Memories, grossed $290.2 million and was the highest-grossing tour by a vocal group in history.

The band’s fourth album, Four (2014) debuted at number one in the US and made One Direction the first band in the US Billboard 200 history to have their first four albums debut at number one. It was the last album that featured Zayn Malik, who announced he was leaving the group in March 2015.

Payne took up the majority of Malik’s vocal duties after his sudden exit, which came a month into the band’s fourth world tour.

In August 2015, the band announced it would go on indefinite hiatus in 2016. In November, the band released their fifth and final studio album Made in the A.M.

Fatherhood with two-time X Factor judge Cheryl Cole

In 2016, Payne made headlines when his relationship with fellow singer Cheryl Cole went public. The pair met at his first X Factor audition in 2008, he was 14 and she was 24.

A clip of their very first meeting went viral after going public with their romance, in which the then-24-year-old Cheryl praised the teen auditionee for his charisma.

“I think you’re really cute ... you’ve got charisma,” she told Payne after his audition, during which he was captured winking at the 24-year-old mid-song.

The couple reunited in 2016 and welcomed a son together, Bear, in March 2017. They announced their breakup in 2018.

Solo career, producer ‘Big Payno’ and final song: 2017-2023

Payne was the second member of One Direction to go solo (after Zayn Malik’s early exit).

His debut single Strip That Down — with the infamous line “I used to be in 1D, now I’m out free” — was his most successful song, climbing to number three on the UK charts and 10 in the US.

He also collaborated with Rita Ora to provide the song For You for the racy movie Fifty Shades Freed in 2018.

He released his first (and only) solo album LP1 in 2019 with middling success, peaking at number 17 on UK charts.

While on hiatus, he worked as a producer for a number of projects under the moniker ‘Big Payno’ or ‘Payno’.

He announced he was working on his second album in May 2023. His first tour, of Latin America, was planned for September 2023, but had to be cancelled after Payne was hospitalised with a kidney infection in August.

Infamous tell-all interview about bandmates he “hated”: 2022

Payne made headlines for comments about his former One Direction bandmates during an interview on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast.

The first of his eyebrow-raising comments came when he claimed he was the frontman of One Direction and the band was built “around” him.

“From what I’ve heard, part of the reason One Direction was made was because of Simon’s promise to me that, ‘In two years, I’ll make this work for you’,” Payne said.

“So he started with my face and then worked around the rest... I was the honourary member of One Direction. He told me that story himself at his house.”

He also called out his former bandmates, describing how he and Louis Tomlinson used to “hate each other... like come to blows hate each other”, and calling Zayn Malik a “d**k”.

“There’s many reasons why I dislike Zayn and there’s many reasons why I’ll always, always be on his side,” Payne said.

“If I had to go through what he went through... Zayn had a different upbringing and you can’t always look at the man for where he is and say, ‘Oh, yeah, whatever that guy’s a d**k’.”

After heavy backlash for the interview, Payne said he failed to articulate himself properly and insisted that Malik was his “brother”.

“They (Logan Paul and co.) mentioned a specific incident involving Zayn which I responded to — but listening back maybe I didn’t articulate myself as well as I could have,” he wrote on social media.

“I was saying that there will always be things we disagree on but that I will always, always be on his side. That’s family. Zayn is my brother and I will stand by him forever.”

His comeback and tragic death: 2023-2024

In July 2023, Payne posted a YouTube video titled ”I’m back”, where he candidly opened up about spending 100 days at a treatment centre in Louisiana.

“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,” Payne said. He also revealed he had been sober from alcohol for six months.

“It’s good to be in this position and I definitely don’t need those things anymore,” he said. “Party’s over.”

He opened up about his relationship with his son Bear in the video and apologised to his One Direction bandmates for his comments made on the Impaulsive podcast.

He returned to music in 2024 with the single Teardrops in March 2024.

In August 2024, he was announced as the judge of a new show Building the Band on Netflix, alongside Scherzinger and Kelly Rowland.

On October 14, the Daily Mail reported that Payne’s on-again-off-again partner Maya Henry sent the One Direction singer a cease and desist letter alleging he had repeatedly tried to contact her since their split in 2021. The couple were first linked in 2018 and were engaged in 2020 but split a year later.

On October 16, the 31-year-old was found dead at a Buenos Aires hotel after falling from a third-floor balcony.

Since October 2022, Payne had been in a relationship with American model Kate Cassidy. She was with Payne in Argentina for some weeks but returned to the US just days before his death.