Liam Payne, former One Direction member, died aged 31 in Buenos Aires after falling from a third-floor hotel balcony.
Payne was found with substances in his bloodstream including pink cocaine, methamphetamine, ketamine, and MDMA.
Perrie Edwards of Little Mix discussed the dark side of fame, highlighting Payne’s possible loneliness.
Steve Braunias is an award-winning New Zealand journalist, author, columnist and editor.
OPINION
Liam Payne (1993-2024). Poor, broken, desperately unhappy kid – he was 31 but everyone will always want to remember him as a boy in the greatest boyband of all times. Better thanremembering him for his death, although I spend my days since his death wanting to remain in a state of crushing sadness about his death, so I read everything I can about his death at the Casa Sur hotel in Buenos Aires. “Our 61 rooms feature minimalist furniture, wooden floors and delicate textures.” His room was trashed, the smashed TV and the white powders and, that strange incongruous detail, a product on the supermarket shelves of New Zealand, a packet of Dove soap.
Liam Payne fell, fainted, collapsed, “plunged”, overdosed, something. One of the first interviews was with Alberto Crescenti, chief of the state emergency medical system, who confirmed Liam fell into an internal courtyard. And then he came up with a term which is probably a formal everyday phrase in the language of death but I had never noticed it before. “He had injuries incompatible with life as a result of his fall.” Maybe it’s a euphemism, a screen to place in front of the body. There is a decency to “incompatible with life” but its greatest impact is its finality.
Liam Payne was on drugs. We learned of a substance called pink cocaine. Apparently it contains methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA – a kind of everything drug, a combo triple-buster. There were helpful guides. “Pink cocaine is a powdered mixture of drugs that usually does not include cocaine, but a combination of other drugs. It is pink in colour due to the addition of food colouring, and sometimes strawberry or other flavouring.” It almost sounds childish, something cute and playful. Surely it’s possible to be out of it on pink cocaine in a good way, but Liam was out of it in the worst way.
Liam Payne was maybe addicted to something more powerful, more harrowing, more likely to derange and maim and kill: fame. I have zero idea what fame feels like and neither does anyone except the famous, like Perrie Edwards, from the One Direction-adjacent girl group Little Mix, who was interviewed about Liam’s death and said, “Success is completely different to fame, and I think success is lovely, it’s joyful – it’s like you’re doing what you love and you’re benefiting from it, and you get all these lovely things, and it feels great. But then the fame is like the awful side of it, it’s like the dark side of it that I think people don’t really see. I was like, ‘I want to be a famous pop star, I want to sign autographs, and everybody to know who I am, and I want to be a household name’. But you don’t think of the things that come with that, and it’s hard, and it’s really intense, but I think that’s why I try [to] surround myself with as many people as I can [who] just make me feel good when I’m feeling crap. My therapist, bless her, I bring her with me to work sometimes, because I literally can’t cope with the panic attacks and stuff.” The rest of us will never know what “and stuff” really means.
Little Mix singer Perrie Edwards was interviewed about the highs and lows of fame following Liam Payne's death. Photo / Instagram
Liam Payne had a partner, a child, parents and two sisters, friends, fans, staff, maybe a therapist, but to think of him is to think of someone in a vacuum. Headline, some awful news site: “Liam Payne’s conversations with two OnlyFans stars revealed before he died”. Someone from something called Rebel Agency said, “Liam was reaching out for friendship, not sex. His messages to our clients were pretty platonic. It’s clear he was reaching out as a cry for help, and it is very probable he was messaging a string of girls from subscription sites like OnlyFans just to make contact with people in his last day.” I think the worst thing about his death is his loneliness.
Liam Payne looks fantastic in the video for that perfect piece of pop art, Steal My Girl. It’s set in the desert. Danny de Vito plays the director. He pulls up in a limousine and greets 1D. He turns to his assistant, and says: “Apple!” She passes him an apple and he takes great juicy chomps out of it as he tells the band what quality they will represent in the video. Harry is love. Zayn is mystery, Niall is light, Louie is danger. Louis is the least dangerous pop star in the world; what terrible miscasting. “You,” he says to Liam, “are power.” It feels right. Liam is trim, handsome, confident, at ease and totally compatible with life. Best of all, he’s surrounded.
