There’s nothing like an unexpected celebrity death to stop an evening’s plans in their tracks.
And on Wednesday, my nightly habit of scrolling TikTok was sharply interrupted by the shocking news that Liam Payne, formerly one-fifth of boyband One Direction, had died.
At only 31 years old, local police confirmed the singer-songwriter and father-of-one had succumbed to his injuries after falling from the third-floor balcony at a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Mere weeks before, he’d been watching his former bandmate Niall Horan perform in the city, and had been pictured singing along happily with his girlfriend Kate Cassidy.
Watching the confirmation of Payne’s death roll out across the news channels and social media, I felt stunned and deeply sad at this turn of events for someone so young, so talented and with so much to live for.
And it made me all the more certain that we don’t need any more child stars.
We first met Payne as an ambitious 14-year-old in 2008, singing a jazzy rendition of Fly Me to the Moon in his first X Factor audition.
Though he charmed the likes of judges Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole, it wasn’t until 2010 and his second attempt on the TV singing competition that everything started falling into place.
Along with auditionees Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan, 16-year-old Payne was placed into the new group One Direction, which would soon be the UK’s most successful boy band since The Beatles.
In just a few short months, Payne and the 1D boys were shot into superstardom with legions of fans, paparazzi documenting their every move and the media clamouring for as much of their personal information as possible.
Though becoming a famous singer was a dream come true, particularly for Payne, the harsh sides of global notoriety quickly made themselves clear.
After the band went on an indefinite hiatus in 2016, all members became more vocal about the impact of their fame and gruelling work schedules.
‘It would be car, hotel room, stage, sing, locked,’ Payne said on the Diary of a CEO podcast in 2021, claiming there was a strict routine that left him locked in his hotel room whenever he wasn’t performing. Left alone with minimal supervision and the minibar, it was his way of having a ‘party for one’.
Elsewhere, the singer had also discussed his struggles with anxiety and having experienced suicidal thoughts, telling broadcaster Ant Middleton in 2019: ‘Every so often, you’re like, “When will this end?” That’s almost nearly killed me a couple of times.’
While the circumstances surrounding Payne’s death are still emerging, reports have noted that emergency services were called to the hotel before his death after staff were concerned about his erratic behaviour.
A transcript of the call notes that he was thought to be intoxicated with drugs and alcohol and had been destroying his room.
While famous stars having substance abuse issues and mental health struggles is no new phenomenon, the tragic end of Liam Payne’s life should be as much reason as any to rethink putting people in the spotlight before they’ve had the chance to grow up.
We’ve had too many instances of child stars suffering into their adult lives and engaging in harmful behaviours to wave it off as a coincidence.
Even before zooming to the top of the charts with Baby One More Time, Britney Spears had had her first taste of fame as a cast member on The Mickey Mouse Club. Despite an incredibly successful pop career, Spears struggled with tabloid attention and had a public breakdown, leading to years of a conservatorship and mental health issues.
In her 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me, she wrote about how early fame meant she had to deal with being sexualised at a young age, and how the attention severely affected her self-esteem.
Michael Jackson was yet another celebrity who became famous young and was considered ‘troubled’ before his 2009 death. And even earlier than this, Judy Garland was only 16 when she starred in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz – but was nearly as famous for her struggles with fame as she was for her talent.
Though there are examples of child fame producing adults who’ve had good experiences, the concept of having money and fame with no real experience of the world has repeatedly been a recipe for trouble.
In 2019, Justin Bieber opened up about how having access to ‘whatever he wanted’ before learning real world skills and responsibility set him up for poor decision-making as an adult, including the use of ‘heavy drugs’.
‘By 20, I made every bad decision you could have thought of and went from one of the most loved and adored people in the world to the most ridiculed, judged, and hated person in the world,’ he wrote in a lengthy Instagram caption.
Fame can be tough at any age, but at least when a person is thrust in front of the world as an adult, they’ve had more years of life experience, and perspective to balance the absurdities of the entertainment industry against.
Payne was exposed to several experiences that you can’t expect most people to handle well, especially at an age where you’re still growing and figuring out your place in the world.
For everyday people, going to school can be enough of a minefield – let alone the pressure of being valued for your talent, looks and bankability before you’re even allowed to drive.
It can’t be easy to have access to thousands of opinions about you at once, but being a fully realised adult before that happens surely gives you a better chance at coming out of it unscathed.
We’ll never know whether Liam Payne and the boys of One Direction would have enjoyed the same career success if they’d become famous a little later. And as the news about Payne’s death settles, we’ll surely learn even more about his inner life and the road that led him to his final days.
However, this should surely be a moment where we reconsider how appropriate it is for children to enter this world before they can properly conceive of what fame means.
Perhaps he could have been better equipped to handle the weight of the world’s attention if he’d been allowed to grow up in private.