At 14 years old, Liam Payne got his first taste of the brutality of the entertainment industry.
Despite getting through several audition rounds with X Factor, he was sent home before the live shows. He would return two years later in 2010 and blow the judges away with a rendition of 'Cry Me A River'.
"Based on talent, [you're] absolutely incredible," judge Simon Cowell told the hopeful Liam, now a slightly more mature 16-year-old boy.
"I never expected in my wildest dreams for that to happen," Liam beamed afterward with a naive grin spread across his face.
Watch the audition. Post continues after video.
This is a different, lighter Liam Payne than who we've known in the past decade. But it's the same Liam who was found dead this week at a hotel in Argentina.
14 years after he got through X Factor and started One Direction and half his lifetime since he first auditioned, Buenos Aires Security Ministry communications director, Pablo Policicchio, said in a statement that the singer "had jumped from the balcony of his room".
"There was nothing we could do," Alberto Crescenti, the head of Buenos Aires' SAME emergency services body, told local media at the time. "His injuries were incompatible with life."
Before his death, Payne was said to be "intoxicated", potentially under the influence of drugs and alcohol, as per the 911 call to the scene.
As friends and family are left to pick up the pieces and One Direction fans mourn around the world, the years leading up to Liam's death are now the last remnants of a troubled man who long struggled with the global fame he was flung into when he was still just a boy.
From the moment One Direction released 'What Makes You Beautiful' to their final album before their indefinite hiatus in 2015, this boy band inspired an almost unprecedented level of hysteria among their fandom of predominantly teen girls.
But despite their record-breaking success, there was a sadness lingering in Liam. Within the fandom (aka the Directioners), Liam didn't quite inspire the fanfare the other boys received.
He lacked the mystique of Zayn Malik, the boyish charms of Niall Horan, the cheeky nature of Louis Tomlinson, and the undefinable star power of Harry Styles.
For many, he became the One Direction member who everyone forgot. This was despite him writing the majority of the group's songs, including their biggest hits. Aside from Harry, Liam sang the most on their tracks too, as one of the more trained vocalists in the group.
This feeling of being the least popular member of One Direction is one the singer was still clearly grappling with in his later years.
Liam told The Guardian in 2019 that his standing within the group was something he was acutely aware of. "When you're at the stadium, and if you get the least screams, it's like: 'For f**k's sake'," he recalled.
It's an identity crisis that stayed with him.
Once he forged his own solo career, he wanted to ensure his brand was a stark departure from the 'Mr Vanilla' he said he was known as in One Direction, when "no one wanted to know a thing."
But not enough is said about the toll that not being the most popular member of the group can take of these artists.
It happened decades back with Michelle Williams, who was mocked by the public for her inferior ranking within Destiny's Child behind Beyonce and Kelly Rowland.
In 2017, Williams shared on The Talk that during the peak of Destiny Child's success in the early '00s, she was grappling with depression and thoughts of suicide.
At the time, she claims she confided in the group's manager, Beyoncé's father Mathew Knowles, that she was depressed. In response, he told her "You all just signed a multi-million dollar deal. You're about to go on tour. What do you have to be depressed about?"
Little Mix's Jesy Nelson was another group member who had to deal with a lot of abuse from fans comparing her talent and looks to her fellow group members.
Little Mix won X Factor the year after One Direction placed third.
Jesy has since been open about how she experienced depression and suicidal thoughts in the years leading up to her departing the group in 2020.
In 2012, Jesy attempted to take her own life during her height of fame. "I went into hospital and then I had a music video like a week after," she told the Happy Place podcast.
Liam admitted that to deal with the mounting pressures of fame, he turned to alcohol early on.
"Doing a show to however many thousands of people, then being stuck by yourself in a country where you can't go out anywhere – what else are you going to do? The minibar is always there," he told The Guardian.
He first began taking drugs with a mood-stabilising epilepsy drug, which he says affected his cognitive functioning. "Under certain lights on stage or during interviews, I wouldn't be able to tell them my name," he said.
Listen to The Spill's hosts discuss Liam Payne's sudden death. Post continues after podcast.
In his most candid interview to date in 2019, Payne spoke openly about how fame had impacted his mental health on Straight Talking with Ant Middleton.
"Fame is like having a weird midlife crisis. I am lucky to be here still," he said. "There's times where that level of loneliness and people getting into you every day, every so often… that's almost nearly killed me a couple of times."
Three years later on The Diary of a CEO, Liam shared some more worrying remarks about his mental state after his days with One Direction.
"I was worried how far my rock bottom was going to be. Where's rock bottom for me? And you would never have seen it. I'm very good at hiding it," he admitted.
"I don't even know if I've hit it yet."
In the same chat, Liam was vocal about not wanting his son Bear to be famous when he grows up.
"I would never stop him but I would let him know the risks," he told the podcast. "My parents did not experience what I had."
Rebecca Ferguson met Payne on X Factor, with both stars finding instant fame at the same time, but to varying degrees.
Ferguson has long been critical of how the entertainment industry exploits its stars and she didn't hold back when talking about Liam's death.
"We both met at Euston station and shared the taxi together to X Factor. I can't help but think of that boy who was hopeful and looking forward to his bright future ahead," Ferguson wrote on social media.
"If he hadn't jumped on that train and jumped in that taxi I believe he would be alive today."
Payne follows a long line of young famous male artists who died tragically before their time, most recently including Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington and Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell.
Avicii's story is starkly similar to Liam's, who got his first record deal at 16 before experiencing a meteoritic rise that would have him playing over 800 shows in the space of six years.
Before his untimely death at the age of 28 in 2018 while on holiday in Oman, Avicii spoke openly about the negative impact fame had on his life.
"I was a lot happier before I was famous than after I was famous. I started feeling very unhappy," Avicii reflects in his posthumous documentary Avicii: I'm Tim.
Avicii retired two years before his death after years of battling an addiction to painkillers and mental illness.
When Avicii wanted to stop performing to help ease his anxiety, he worried about letting his fans down. "I was nervous when I made the announcement, mainly that I would look ungrateful," Avicii told the Hollywood Reporter at the time.
There is this expectation, for music acts in particular, that they should be 'grateful' to not just the entertainment industry but to their fans, and forsake their own mental health needs.
Despite the steps being made in bringing awareness to the seriousness of people's mental health in the past decade, when it comes to our favourite artist's mental wellbeing, the public response is still often one that lacks any compassion or empathy.
While pop stars like Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato have been praised for putting their mental health first in the past, the public still doesn't always practice what they preach.
In the case of Chapell Roan, from the moment she became famous she has been transparent about how much she considers fame a burden on her life.
Last month, Chapell cancelled a handful of shows off the back of an interview she gave with The Guardian where she shared she had been diagnosed with "severe depression… I have every symptom of someone who's severely depressed."
Chappell blames fame for her changing mental health.
"I think it's because my whole life has changed," she said. "Everything that I really love to do now comes with baggage.
The singer has received an onslaught of hateful rhetoric since she started cancelling shows, despite her transparency around her depression.
For every Chapell being shunned, there's a Taylor Swift being championed for the way she will perform in rain, hail or heartbreak.
Another slave to her fans, Lady Gaga vomited several times during a show in Barcelona in 2012.
Performers are praised for grinning and baring it, or as Swift parodied in a recent song, "lights, camera, b*tch smile, even when you want to die."
The public's perception is often that since these famous people are showered with money, accolades and power — in return, they must 'sing for their supper', quite literally, and any tangible autonomy over their lives is the cost they must pay.
For Liam Payne, he suffered through years of inner pain after experiencing a level of fame most will never know again.
For this 31-year-old young man at the beginning of his life, the cost of fame was too much.
If you think you may be experiencing depression or another mental health problem, please contact your general practitioner or in Australia, contact Lifeline 13 11 14 for support or beyondblue at 1300 22 4636.
Feature image: Getty.
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