Liam Payne was known as ‘Daddy Direction’. He wasn’t the oldest member of the world-conquering boy band, but he took on the crucial father-figure role.
He’d be the one who’d make sure his bandmates made it to interviews on time, even when they were mischievous teenagers who’d just been suddenly handed every possible temptation on a global platter. Music industry insiders talk of Liam reminding his bandmates – at the peak of 1D mania – that this could all end tomorrow and to remember how fortunate they were.
This was, of course, long before Liam would become an actual father. But every boy band needs ‘the sensible one’ and Liam Payne knew a dream coming true when he saw it – and he was ready to seize it. While One Direction were formed on The X Factor in the UK in 2010, that wasn’t Liam’s first attempt at becoming a performer.
Born on August 29, 1993 in Wolverhampton, Liam was a fighter from the get-go. He came into the world three weeks premature, and his early years saw him in and out of hospitals.
In the band’s second official book, Dare to Dream: Life as One Direction, Liam shared his medical history. “When I was born, I was effectively dead. Weird, I know,” he wrote. “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. I was born three weeks early and I kept being ill. From the age of zero to four I was always in hospital having tests done but they couldn’t find out what was wrong. 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. 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.”
This didn’t stop a young Liam throwing himself into cross-country running and, by the age of 12, when he found himself being bullied by older schoolkids, he took up boxing. But Liam’s true love was music. At age 12, he made his stage debut as the John Travolta character Tony Manero in a local stage production of Saturday Night Fever. He had acquired the bug. Two years later, in 2008, he’d audition for The X Factor at the tender age of 14. The teenager sang Frank Sinatra’s ‘Fly Me to the Moon’. Ironically, one of the judges was UK girl band member Cheryl Cole – the woman he’d have a child with only nine years later.
It’s no accident a 14-year-old was singing a song Frank Sinatra made famous in 1964. Young Liam loved vintage crooners like Sinatra and the modern equivalent Michael Bublé, he loved people who could really sing and being able to showcase his talent in front of an audience. A teenager getting up on stage on a national TV show – which had an average of 10 million viewers a week – shows that his main character energy was there early on.
Liam would be told to come back to The X Factor in two years – and he did exactly that. This time, he updated his references – to the Michael Bublé version of another oldie, ‘Cry Me a River’. His dream of solo stardom wasn’t to be, though, with Liam put together with fellow individual auditioners Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik. Christened ‘One Direction’,
they’d go on to become one of the most successful boy bands of all time. It’s what you do with rapid success that establishes how you will survive it. And One Direction became famous at a time when fame was a whole new beast. Being young and famous sells magazines as well as records and concert tours. It may make you rich, but it won’t necessarily make you happy. But that’s a lesson you can only learn on the job.
Liam was quick to realise 1D’s level of fame was unmanageable. The fans loved them. The diehard fans really loved them. And they were sharing their location on social media in real time. They were travelling the world but were prisoners in five-star hotel rooms. They had to be\ shadowed by security guards whenever they walked outside the doors.
When I spoke to the band in 2013, Liam was already two years into fame and was well aware that social media was changing the dynamic between star and fan – and not for the better. The only time they could leave their hotel was with a police escort and that was to go to a gig or do more interviews. If they wanted to look at the Sydney Opera House, it’d have to be out of a window.
That same year, Australian fans climbed two storeys onto his hotel balcony and stole his underwear, then tried to get into his room while he was sleeping.
In his fatherly role, he was the member of the band who’d tell fans, in the most polite way, that they loved the outpouring of affection but they were struggling with being captive. “I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way,” he said, “but being famous meant something different a few years back. With Twitter, if we go to the shops now, you have one picture and it gets Tweeted, that’s you done for the day and you’re stuck with people following you around. We are normal lads, we do want our privacy sometimes, let off a bit of steam instead of being in the public eye constantly. Have the freedom to stand and pick your nose.”
Liam was smart, a student of music. He never planned to be in a boy band, but that now he was, he’d study what had gone right with their predecessors, like Take That, Westlife and Boyzone. And, more importantly, what went wrong. He knew that they had to stick together as a unit – disunity was how groups fell apart and were taken advantage of. Egos can split bands up. This was going to be a tough ride, but he’d got through worse. And they had to go the point where they’d made people so much money, they needed to have some freedom – whether that meant musical creativity or just a day off here and there.
“There’s no real handbook for this,” Liam admitted. “What happened to us is a first. With Twitter, it’s a very different environment to what a lot of bands had to put up with in the past. We just take every day as it comes. The main thing is we literally do what we want. It’s not like we’ll change or do anything different because we’re in this position now. We’re still the same lads who got on that X Factor stage – just with more facial hair now. And some tattoos.”
Liam kept the One Direction ship table during their accelerated career – five albums in as many years – and losing a member, Zayn (who pursued a solo career), before the end of the ride.
“We’re still the same lads that got on that X Factor stage – just with more facial hair now. And some tattoos.”
– Liam Payne
Like his bandmates, he too would sign a solo deal. That was the original dream. The dream took a detour, but that detour made him wildly rich and globally famous. He enjoyed the spoils of fame – spending money on his family and friends. His reputation for being sensible extended to his early girlfriends – Danielle Peazer, a dancer he’d met on The X Factor, then from 2013 to 2015 as he struggled with fame he dated a childhood friend, Sophia Smith, someone who knew the real Liam.
By 2016, he was now more famous than The X Factor judge Cheryl – they’d become a celebrity couple, with their son Bear born in March 2017. After splitting in 2018, he dated supermodel Naomi Campbell, before becoming engaged to model Maya Henry in 2020.
Liam’s solo career was christened with ‘Strip That Down’ in 2017, a song co-written for him by his long-term friend Ed Sheeran that became a global hit in the age of streaming. He went on to work with artists as diverse as EDM DJ Zedd, Latin artist J Balvin, rapper A Boogie Wit da Hoodie and pop star Rita Ora, trying to find a sound that worked for him – and the public.
However, every One Directioner was always compared to Harry Styles, who had moved into solo superstar mode. Liam admitted to self-medicating with alcohol to cope with the highs and lows of fame and its constant demands. He also embarked on periods of sobriety, knowing he needed to be present for his child. There were allegations of substance abuse as Liam struggled to find his place musically, and he wound up making headlines for all the wrong reasons. The sensible young man had seen the worst the music industry has to offer – if you’re making people money, they ignore all the problems that may be under the surface. And if your success starts to wane, you find out who your friends really are. It’s no wonder that after Liam’s tragic death, there have been more calls for the music industry to put people over profits and prioritise the mental health of the people making them millions. One of the saddest things about Liam’s death is that he’s not the first to fall into that spiral, but hopefully his legacy will be to prevent it happening to more musicians.
Kate Pattison, a One Direction fan writing a PhD on music fan studies, says Liam’s passing marks the end of innocence for millions. “Liam’s legacy extends beyond the music; he represents a pivotal chapter for a generation of young people,” she explains. “Fans are grieving their childhood and the people they were when they grew up with One Direction. The community that formed around the band was, and still is, one of the largest and most passionate fanbases. Lifelong friendships were forged in a space where they felt seen and understood, and many flocked back to Twitter [now X] in the wake of the news to mourn together. When One Direction went on hiatus nearly a decade ago, there was a prolonged sense of sorrow, but also hope for what the future might hold. With Liam’s passing, fans must now accept that this is the end of that era.”
Words by Cameron Adams.
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Remembering Liam Payne: Special Tribute Issue
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