After One Direction, Liam Payne was just getting started. His death is a heartbreaking ending | Liam Payne

IA quarter-century of reality TV talent shows has taught us one thing: Success on them is rarely a guarantee of lasting fame: In most cases, fame is fleeting and limited to the show's country of origin.

You may have predicted this outcome for One Direction. Simon Cowell claimed to have put the band together “in 10 minutes” from solo contestants who hadn't progressed past the boot camp stage of the 2010 UK X Factor – although one of them, Wolverhampton-born Liam Payne, was once tipped off won the series for his first audition: a version of the old standard “Cry Me a River”. One Direction finished the series in third place, and one might have guessed so – after all, the boy band's stock was hopelessly low at the time.

But it didn't work out that way at all. One Direction became one of the most important pop bands of their time, achieving 70 million hit records and becoming the first band in the history of the US Billboard charts to have their first four albums reach number 1. Basically, they were successful because they were talented, charismatic, good looking and, more importantly, because a little more effort seemed to be put into their singles from the start. Their debut “What Makes You Beautiful” was catchy as hell; It appealed to its female fans with charming positivity and was based on a polished take on power pop rather than the standard boy band approach of ballad or pop R&B. “When we heard it,” Payne noted, “it wasn't what we expected…so it was kind of a perfect fit.”

If they obviously never got to the pages of Kerrang! Magazine, they maintained a distinctly rock edge to their sound – 2012's “Live While We're Young” opened with a pretty obvious homage to The Clash's “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?”, which really doesn't cut it was what you would expect from a TV talent show band. This must have pleased Payne, a fan of nu-metal band Linkin Park, who called their 2001 single “In The End” one of his favorite songs of all time.

The sound was one of the ways in which Payne and company were able to reinvent the boy band, taking them away from the mother-friendly, mediocre approach of Westlife and Boyzone back to their natural, youth-friendly state. They also seemed significantly more characterful and irreverent than their immediate predecessors: When they covered Wheatus' “Teenage Dirtbag” live, Payne sang the female part of the song in a stirring falsetto. They also seemed to have a little more freedom than usual when it came to their careers. From the start, Payne seemed particularly keen to establish himself as a songwriter, forming a “small partnership” with his colleague Louis Tomlinson: he co-wrote songs on all One Direction albums and on Four In 2014, his name also appeared in the credits of eight of the album's twelve tracks, including the lead single “Steal My Girl”.

But the enormous success wasn't enough to prevent the usual downfall of a boy band: the departure of a dissatisfied member. The band made a brief attempt to continue without Zayn Malik – Payne stepped in to cover Malik's high-pitched vocals on stage – but then came the inevitable “indefinite hiatus” in 2016. The band's breakup seemed to leave Payne unsure of what to do next. He had attempted to produce house tracks, which elicited a grudgingly positive response from a wary dance press (“surprisingly good,” one track said). He toyed with the idea of ​​becoming a full-time songwriter. For his solo career, he attracted an impressive array of high-profile collaborators: Quavo of Migos, Pharrell Williams, J Balvin, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, Ed Sheeran, Fred Again.

He also struggled with alcohol and turmoil in his personal life. His debut album LP1 was released to mostly indifferent or negative reviews and was a commercial disappointment: it was only released three years after One Direction's breakup, when the momentum had already evaporated. He discussed a sequel “with more creative control,” and it's heartbreaking that he never got the chance to make it – or actually return to join his One Direction bandmates in the reunion that once seemed inevitable.