A collective gasp echoed like a thunderclap in a valley in our Daily Beast newsroom late Wednesday afternoon at the news that singer Liam Payne, who became famous as a member of the group One Direction, died at age 31.
TMZ reports that Payne fell from a hotel balcony in Argentina, where he had reunited with bandmates at 1D-er Niall Horan’s concert. He had, according to the site, been behaving “erratically,” earlier in the day, and was spotted smashing a laptop in the hotel lobby and having to be carried back to his room. He had been in headlines on gossip blogs over tension with his ex-fiancée Maya Henry, who, TMZ says, alleged “he’d left her after asking her to get an abortion.”
In the shock of his death, fans couldn’t ignore the eerie nature that Payne had just connected with his One Direction bandmates. Dark questions emerge when a celebrity dies so young: What role did the often horrific toll of fame have on a person like Payne, who has been open about addiction and suicidal ideation? But there’s also an impulse to go back to the roots of a person’s talent, to revisit what it was that we all fell in love with—and was their passion—in the first place.
Payne auditioned twice for The X Factor, the U.K. reality series that formed One Direction in 2010. His second audition, at age 16, is available in full on the show’s YouTube page and is an endearing reminder of his gifts—even at such a young age.
Cheryl Cole, one the judges, remarks about how much he looks like Justin Bieber, with his shag haircut, swooped bangs, and v-neck t-shirt. He had initially auditioned for the show in 2008, making it as far as the judges’ camp with Simon Cowell. He was cut then, and admits that he think Cowell did the right thing. “I was really young then and I wasn’t ready,” he says. “Now I’m 16 and I’m back and I’m ready to give it another shot.”
He sings Michael Bublé’s version of “Cry Me a River,” a big-band take on the 1950s standard.
The crowd is instantly in his corner. Cowell gives him the side-eye smirk that X Factor viewers know means his radar is pinging that he’s watching a star. At the end of the performance, Cowell gives Payne a standing ovation.
“Liam, by the way,” Cowell says, “right now I wouldn’t want to be in Michael Bublé’s shoes watching this back…That was extraordinary. The confidence, the swagger, the charisma, the believability, the voice, how you look: on the money.”
In a difficult moment, the pure joy and celebration of Payne’s talent at the very beginning of his career 15 years ago is a cathartic pleasure to revisit.
