liam payne was the glue of one direction
A Directioner navigates the complexity of grief and pays tribute to the fandom that raised her.
March 25, 2015 — just uttering the date immediately takes me back to exactly where I was that day. A senior in high school, I was eating lunch in the cafeteria. We sat in alphabetical order; so as the lucky girl at the top of the list, I was wedged between the cold thickly painted white brick wall and classmate “C”. Never was there much to kiki about with him - or the others at my immediate table, so lunch time often doubled as a mid-day Twitter digest.
"My life with One Direction has been more than I could ever have imagined. But, after five years, I feel like it is now the right time for me to leave the band…”
The cafeteria’s chatter pitched to a mind-numbing ring. I could feel my heart in my throat. Zayn Malik left One Direction.
Last Wednesday will occupy the same earth shattering, gravity halting space. Liam Payne died after a fall from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires. The whole of his Argentine trip was captured on TikTok and Snapchat by his girlfriend, influencer Kate Cassidy. Horseback rides, palm trees, delicious meals, catching Niall Horan on the South American leg of his tour. According to Cassidy, five days turned into two weeks.
I learned about his passing first from the stupidest TikTok live chat, where viewers were spamming his name, then in a heart-pounding daze from the disgusting fuckers at TMZ. A couple of clicks through to TMZ’s website revealed cropped photos of Liam’s tattooed body on the pavement outside the hotel. I was sick. I was shocked. It didn’t feel real.
I called my little sister — the only one who would really understand the weight of this loss. I broke the news to her and we sat on the line in disbelief.
I fell in love with five boys horsing around on a staircase when I was 13 years old. It was the fall of 2010 and I somehow managed to get access to The X Factor’s seventh season on the little flat screen television mounted under my bunk bed in rural southern Illinois. It felt like a sacred lifeline. At the time, I was desperate for anything that could mentally take me out of my little town. Damn, that little girl wanted to be in London so bad. From shaky solo renditions of songs like “Isn’t She Lovely?”, “Hey There Delilah”, and “Cry Me A River”, to even shakier choreography skills at bootcamp, I watched along with thousands of others as Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, and Liam Payne became One Direction right before our eyes.
No one around me loved One Direction the way I loved One Direction. While others were deeply down with Bieber Fever, I was watching every video diary, reblogging and pinning all the memes or one shots I could find, and feening for every morning show or radio interview. They’re charm, cheekiness, and magnetism had me hooked. They became everything to me.
The fans became a community of Directioners — sisters in Christ. We trades inside jokes like a secret language. Looking back, the lore was crazy (the fanfic even crazier). Like Liam’s fear of spoons. Niall’s Nando’s order. Zayn’s “Vas Happenin!”. Or Harry’s four nipples.
They were only three to five years older than me. We were young together. We grew up together. And they felt so attainable and accessible — Twitter Q&As, hours-long livestreams, hotel meet ups. Directioners, we were the girls coming home from school and immediately clocking in the hours. The connection that the internet provided allowed fans to engage with the boys in an incredibly authentic (albeit parasocial) way. I was a fangirl. Unapologetically. Unconditionally. Hell, I still am.
It can be really difficult to understand or see the beauty in being a fangirl when you’ve never experienced it. Objectively, it is kind of crazy. But at a time in my life when I felt so weird, so lonely, so invisible, out of place, and undesirable, these five guys made feel... well… everything.
Liam was the glue of One Direction. The ambitious one of the five — it was always apparent that the success, the acclaim, the adoring fanbase was vital to him. Musically, he entered the band as the most gifted and attuned. In his touching tribute, Louis said, “Liam was in my opinion the most vital part of One Direction. His experience from a young age, his perfect pitch, his stage presence, his gift for writing. The list goes on.”
His pen game really began to shine on their later albums – notably their last two, FOUR and Made in the AM. On FOUR, in my personal opinion their Magnum opus, Liam is credited as co-writer on “Steal My Girl,” “Ready to Run,” “Girl Almighty,” “Fool’s Gold,” “Night Changes,” “Fireproof,” “Spaces,” “Clouds,” “Change Your Ticket,” and “Illusion.” He then lent his pen to “End of the Day,” “Long Way Down,” “History,” and arguably Made in the A.M.’s strongest tracks “What A Feeling,” “Wolves,” and “A.M.” Zayn added in his statement, “I knew nothing in comparison. I was a novice child with no experience and you [Liam] were already a professional.”
To us, he was “Daddy Direction”. Always keeping the boys on the rails, the first to chime in with thoughtful and measured answers in interviews. While the other boys exuded various levels of unbridled spontaneity, Liam — it seemed — wanted to be taken seriously. Lest not forget, 2010 was Liam’s second go at X Factor. He made it to the judges’ house two years prior, where he made a promise with Simon Cowell that he’d be back. He meant business.
Liam’s post-One Direction story is a complicated and flawed one. Substance abuse, rehab, video avalanches of being “cringe” and “corny,” relationship tumult, throwing massive amounts of bandmate shade to *gulp* Logan Paul. In the past couple of weeks alone, deeply serious allegations of abuse from his ex-girlfriend Maya Henry have surfaced along with drops from his record label and management.
There are deaths that rearrange everything, losses that change the way we see it all. Grief — I’ve come to learn — has the ability to tear down invisible walls. Last December, I lost a childhood friend to suicide. We had known each other since we were four and five years old, were classmates from pre-K to 12th grade, and he was next door neighbors of my grandparents for the longest time. My peak service as a Directioner is deeply interwoven with my memories of our times in high school.
He was gentle, kind, could make anyone laugh, a collector of arrowheads, a deeply talented drummer, but held a lot of sorrow in his heart. We lost touch after he dropped out senior year, but I tried to keep up with him via social media. He met a girl, became a young dad to the cutest little boy, but he became entangled with addiction. Allegations of abuse and run ins with law enforcement ultimately led to him taking his own life.
This was the first time I experienced the complex reckoning of grief. In understanding my mourning of Liam Payne, I found these moments of heartache for my childhood friend creeping through. Invisible strings wove them together — two boys whom I held so dear as a girl, young fathers, kind souls, talented musicians, taken by their addictions far, far too soon. “It is OK – a normal response, in fact – to feel nostalgia and pain and anger simultaneously,” writes Riann Phillip perfectly for British VOGUE.
“[It’s OK] to realise that we will never get that 5/5 reunion after all, to hear Liam’s voice on a forgotten 1D track and feel sorrow… And, it’s OK to simultaneously support Maya Henry, as a victim in his alleged abuse, and to applaud her difficult decision to speak out.”
To see the ones we grow up beside leave us before their time, it’s a dissociative pain that transports us to an entirely different plane. We were young together. We held memories and inside jokes and precious glimmers of innocence for each other. Now, we must find them in what’s left behind. The music. The memories. And I’m learning it is loss that truly makes us understand just how much we loved.
If you’re reading this, thank you so much for sticking around this long. It’s taken me a week to try and somewhat properly articulate my feelings over this extraordinary loss. To my fellow One Direction girlies, I hope that you are taking care of yourself. Please know that this is a loving space to share memories, love, and everything in between. Love you endlessly. Until we chat again.
Autumn