Liam Payne, a former member of the popular British group One Direction, was found dead after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires.

The police said that personnel from the 14B Police Station visited the hotel on Wednesday afternoon after receiving a 911 call about an “aggressive man who could be under the influence of drugs or alcohol”.

Payne had been struggling with alcoholism and said fame took a toll on his mental health in a video posted last year on his YouTube channel. “I kind of became somebody who I didn’t really recognise anymore. And I’m sure you guys didn’t either,” he said.

A couple of years prior to the video, he said in a podcast: “It feels to me like when we were in the band the best way to secure us, because of how big it got, was just lock us in our rooms. Of course, what’s in the room? Mini bar. So at a certain point, I thought well I’m going to have a party for one.”

Payne sang in One Direction alongside Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson. Together, they became a best-selling boy band — like Backstreet Boys, NSYNC and Take That before them — with millions of fans worldwide.

He first auditioned — at the age of 14 with the song Fly Me To The Moon — as a solo artiste for the British reality TV music competition The X Factor in 2008. Though he made some progress, success was elusive. He returned to the show two years later with a jazzy rendition of Ella Fitzgerald’s Cry Me a River. TV personality and music executive Simon Cowell and X-Factor judge Nicole Scherzinger decided to make a band comprising him and four other X Factor contestants.

File picture of One Direction, comprising Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik and Louis Tomlinson, performing in New York in 2012

Fab Five

The quintet, which drew comparisons to the Beatles among teenagers, was known for hits such as What Makes You Beautiful and Story of My Life. When the band was at its peak, Payne appeared to be the group’s quieter member. He had the opportunity to write songs for the band and lead songs, including early tracks Gotta Be You and Stole My Heart. Some even compared him to Gary Barlow, one of the UK’s most successful singer-songwriters and a member of Take That.

“Boy bands have always created sparks. They would always continue to do so. We don’t think that this boy band is fragile. We are really close mates and have fun working with one another,” One Direction told t2 in 2013.

The group collected awards like the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards and Brit Awards. “We are crazy for fashion and music, we set trends and it’s really awesome to be followed and loved by our fans,” Payne told t2 in 2015.

He was most proud of his contribution to the song What a Feeling, which came with a Fleetwood Mac-inspired groove.

Popular among younger listeners, One Direction released five albums in five years, went on four world tours and received the documentary treatment with the 2013 concert film One Direction: This Is Us. Ultimately, Zayn Malik left the group in March 2015 and the band went on indefinite hiatus starting in 2016.

All of the group’s albums have been hits, starting with Up All Night in 2011. When t2 asked the group in 2013 about the artistes who influenced them, Payne said for him it was Justin Timberlake while the group’s “all-time favourite remains Take That”.

Going solo

His solo career took off with the single Strip That Down with rapper Quavo in 2017. It was also the time when he worked with artistes including French Montana, Ed Sheeran and Charlie Puth. “Liam was always so kind to me,” Puth said in an Instagram tribute shared on Wednesday.

In 2019, he put out his solo album LP1 on Capitol Records, which was packed with collaborations across the musical spectrum. In 2020, he teamed up with the Swedish producer Alesso for an EP titled Midnight Hour.

Last year he said he was working on a follow-up album to LP1 and earlier this year he released a single called Teardrops. In 2023, the singer was hospitalised for a “serious kidney infection” that interrupted his South American tour.

Payne was born August 29, 1993, in Wolverhampton. He had a seven-year-old son, Bear Grey Payne, with his former girlfriend, the musician Cheryl. He is also survived by his parents, Geoff and Karen Payne, and his two older sisters, Ruth and Nicola.