‘I met Liam Payne over the years

When news broke of Liam Payne’s death broke on Wednesday night at around 11 pm, I was winding down for bed and taking part in my nightly routine of pretending not to be on my phone. But just as I really was about to put it down, my messages started blowing up like crazy.

Nothing good happens when all your group chats start firing off at the same time. What could all these disparate friend circles have in common at this exact moment? It can only ever really mean one thing, and that’s that something truly shocking has happened that means we have to word-vomit our shock out into the ether.

Even with that knee-jerk reaction that something awful must have happened, I don’t think anyone was prepared for what it was: that Liam Payne had died at the age of 31 after falling from a hotel balcony in Argentina.

The strange thing about celebrity deaths is that you have no way of easing yourself into finding out about them. What once used to be a breaking news alert on television now is a push notification from a news app or a surprise tweet while you’re doom-scrolling or a message from a friend trying to react to said tweet that they probably saw a few seconds before you. That instant gut punch plays out both in slow motion and all at once, as your brain tries to make sense of what you’re reading while your body goes through the subconscious movements of shock — the racing pulse, the shivers, the goosebumps.

Like any 32-year-old millennial girl who grew up spending far too much time on the internet, I was a One Direction fan. I wasn’t a travel-to-every-tour-stop, wait-outside-the-recording-studio, stay-up-all-night-listening-to-leaks kind of fan (although I was honestly a little jealous of my friends who were), but I was hooked instantly.

Five guys harmonising while vaguely attempting a two-step and a shuffle? I was in. Oh, they’re funny and charismatic as well? I could not have been more on board.

I was there when Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik and Liam Payne were mashed together on The X Factor and watched their bond solidify in real time on those now-iconic stairs of their shared competition house. Harry the charming one, Louis the cheeky one, Niall the bubbly one, Zayn the mysterious one and Liam the old-before-his-time responsible one. They were a perfect alchemy of characters combined in a Powerpuff Girls-style potion designed to make girls across the world swoon.

I was there for the anticipation of their first single and the explosion of their career that came immediately after. I was there for the five albums in five years that followed and the behind-the-scenes films that let us into the private turmoil of growing up against the overwhelming crush of fame. I saw Zayn leave and the group rebrand as a four, only to go their separate ways a year later to go solo. Looking back on it now, it’s almost impossible to imagine how truly bright and fast One Direction burned, though their afterglow still sparkles with a legacy that now has a tragic stain on it.

I kicked off my career as an entertainment journalist at a radio station the year that One Direction went solo. In the years after, I interviewed each member on their own (bar Zayn, who remained elusive) about their separate career ventures.

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Most frequent amongst them was Liam, whose RnB-infused work was prime radio fodder. He was always friendly, always game and always more willing to be vulnerable than you’d expect from someone who’d had their entire young adulthood up for consumption by fans and media alike.

At the time, I thought it was a sign of someone truly comfortable in their own skin. Looking back with the value of hindsight over the past couple of days, that feels like a naively misguided call.

For anyone who has been following the members of One Direction since their hiatus, it was clear that Liam was not well. He had personally documented issues of substance abuse that he had — in the past — tried to get a handle on, though it was obvious in recent months he was struggling with that battle.

The reaction to his 2019 debut solo album was brutal and became instant meme fodder, and though he was once kindly thought of as the cringe-punching bag of the group for his dad-like antics and humour, his more recent cultural legacy within the fandom was as someone altogether more concerning.

He made gaffes on red carpets and went on questionable podcasts, and recent accusations from ex-girlfriends and women online painted a private picture of someone much darker and more complicated. That his untimely death came at the peak of a current wave of discourse adds a complexity to the kind of grief we’re seeing expressed.

I think about the celebrity deaths I’ve been saddened by in the past and question why this one just feels different. Is it because he was a year younger than me, at an age I can still residually feel in my bones? Is it because I watched him grow up and navigate the same throws of adolescence that I was wrestling with at the same time?

Is it because, like so many people, I was troubled by what I’d heard about his behaviour only a few days before his death? Is it because celebrity death in 2024 means seeing their final minutes played out on Snapchat, making the immediacy of mortality feel like a rock in my stomach? Or is it because I sat opposite him for 15 minutes every year or so and that sense memory for someone who is no longer here feels like it’s burning my skin?

In reality, it’s all of those things. Death is never black and white, it is every shade of grey under the sun. I’m struck in processing my own shock about his death just simply how much of his life we can piece together purely by the amount of access we had to him. It’s something that feels incredibly personal, because that decade-long proximity is intertwined with moments of our lives, friendships made and memories forged. However, his death has highlighted the innate separation that exists between celebrity and non-celebrity, and the private battles that are being fought behind a veneer of parasocialism.

I wish that Liam Payne would have been able to get better. I wish he could have ironed out his demons, made amends and that his exes could have been spared more damage. I wish I could look forward to a nostalgia-grab One Direction tour in 15 years with the friends I made from the internet.

Mostly, I wish he could still be alive because no one should be dead at 31.

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