The sad tale of Liam Payne is as old as showbiz itself. A fresh-faced youngster, full of dreams of stardom and riches, whose meteoric rise is matched only by his fall from grace.
Someone who seemed to have it all – talent, good looks, money, a son, loyal friends, armies of adoring fans – but who ultimately had a void in his life he simply couldn’t fill.
For whatever reason, poor Liam was in pain: the kind of pain that drives a person to self-medicate to the point of oblivion and in his case, a gruesome and tragic death, after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires.
I can’t help thinking about that song by Justin Bieber, Lonely: ‘What if you had it all, but nobody to call? Maybe then you’d know me, ’cause I’ve had everything, but no one’s listening, and that’s just lonely.’
Bieber, of course, was a youthful collaborator with Sean Combs, aka P Diddy – who is now mired in one of the biggest scandals ever to have engulfed the pop music industry. But there is a terrible symmetry here. A similar age to Payne (30 to the late Payne’s 31), Bieber also rose to fame at a tender age.
Liam Payne died on Wednesday evening after falling from a third-floor balcony at the CasaSur hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina
While Liam was making his way with One Direction, Bieber was breaking teenage hearts as a pop sensation in America.
He first encountered Diddy, in many ways his mentor, when he was 14 – the same age at which Payne first auditioned for The X Factor, delivering a silky-smooth rendition of Fly Me To The Moon which impressed the judges, not least Liam’s future girlfriend, Cheryl Cole, ten years his senior.
Footage has recently resurfaced of the teenage Bieber making plans to ‘go get some girls’ with Diddy, who is accused of sex-trafficking, sexual assault and other crimes. Bieber is said to be ‘disturbed by the Diddy allegations and is unwilling to process it or discuss it’.
No child could possibly have emerged unscathed from any association with such a man, and indeed Bieber has made no secret of his psychological struggles with depression and anxiety.
But unlike Liam in his last days, Bieber has good people around him, namely his wife, Hailey, 27, daughter of the actor Stephen Baldwin, whom the star routinely credits with saving his life.
Sadly for Payne, his support system seems to have failed him in the weeks leading to his death. His girlfriend, Kate Cassidy, had initially been on the trip to Argentina with him, but left early, telling her social media followers she just needed ‘to go home’.
Hours before he fell to his death, he posted a picture of the pair of them together, she in a bikini, him showing off an impressive six-pack. He doesn’t look like someone whose life is unravelling.
And yet only days before, he had been dropped by his record label, Universal, after the release of his second solo album was put on hold. His publicist had also left him.
Even worse perhaps, his ex-fiancee Maya Henry had, earlier this month, begun legal proceedings against him, accusing him of repeatedly contacting her against her wishes. In short, his whole world had come crashing down.
The knowledge of all this only makes his last few sightings, generously posing for selfies with fans, all the more heartbreaking. The pop star until the very end: taking comfort, perhaps, in that unconditional adulation.
Of course, ultimately no one is directly to blame for such a tragedy. If someone wants to destroy themselves, it’s almost impossible to stop them. Situations like this are all too common, where one person finds themselves in terrible emotional and psychological pain, and those close to them try, time and again, to help – only to end up getting hurt themselves.
Liam with Simon Cowell and former One Direction group mates Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, Harry Styles and Zayn Malik
When that happens, often the only thing to do is walk away, especially if there are children involved or other vulnerable people. Ask the family of any addict: it’s not just themselves they hurt, but those around them. When someone has as many demons as poor Liam, it’s hard.
That said, there is such a thing as a duty of care, and that is what no one in the music industry seems to have thought about. How a young man catapulted into the public eye at a tender age, showered with money and adulation, might have felt unable to cope at the prospect of losing it all.
How, having never really known anything else, he might have succumbed to self-loathing and desperation. It’s telling that one of the last coherent things he said, to a fan just minutes before he died, was: ‘I used to be in a boy band – that’s why I’m so f***** up.’
That is a question of responsibility, and in that respect the burden rests squarely on the shoulders of a music industry whose bosses, in their desire to make money, have no compunction in exploiting vulnerable young men and women like Payne, demanding ever more of them, exposing them to all sorts of potential dangers and risks without, it would seem, giving sufficient thought to the safeguarding risks involved.
Pop music especially is guilty of this. Manufactured acts such as One Direction, put together by moguls for the express purpose of making money, are notorious for pushing naive youngsters over the edge.
It’s especially hard when the individuals involved come from troubled or difficult backgrounds and where the pressure comes not only from the industry and the fans, but also from their families. In this respect, Liam was different: he was close to his family, who are now said to be numb with grief.
But in the case of Bieber, for example, his mother grew up in abject poverty and was abandoned by Justin’s father when the child was still very young. The boy’s talent was a ticket out of Nowheresville; an opportunity for a better life.
It explains, perhaps, why she allowed her 15-year-old son to spend a weekend unsupervised with Diddy, already a man with a reputation for violence and debauchery. The same could be said for Britney Spears, whose very public breakdown in 2007/08 was in no small part a result of the enormous pressure placed upon her by fame.
And this, I think, lies at the heart of the problem for these very young stars. Because of their success, and the financial imperatives of their situation, they skip the important process of growing up.
They find fame at the age of 14 or 15, often after years of hard graft. They are then highly sexualised by the industry, which exposes them to an adult world they’re not mature enough to handle.
Instead of forming normal, healthy friendships, they either spend their time with other people in the same situation or find themselves isolated, never really knowing what’s real and what’s not. They become emotionally atrophied, experiencing love in the form of fame, itself the most fickle of currencies. Chained to a conveyor belt, their entire life is decided for them.
And then, when the dew on their cheek has faded and the next fad has taken hold, they find themselves on the scrapheap. Physically, Payne may have been a man of 31; but emotionally part of him was still a vulnerable teenager.
You might well say, the rewards are great and that’s just the price you pay. But can any 15-year-old truly understand the consequences of starting down that path?
Besides, the essence of being a teenager is to want the whole world to notice you. You can’t expect young stars like Payne to understand what they’re getting themselves into. That’s the job of the adults around them and those who run the industry. Or, at least, it should be.
Of course, not every former pop sensation ends up dead. But many end up damaged. The list is endless, from Miley Cyrus to Billie Piper to Robbie Williams to Charlotte Church.
I remember once meeting a very young Selena Gomez at an industry event. She was so fragile, so vulnerable, sitting there surrounded by leering executives three times her age. She reminded me of a fawn among a pack of wolves.
If they’re lucky, and they allow themselves to get help, they find strong partners who nurture and heal them. Bieber has Hailey, Williams has Ayda Field, who many credit with saving him from his worst excesses. But many, like Liam, don’t. Spears is still dancing in her underwear on Instagram, poor child.
The death of Payne is a personal tragedy for all those who knew and loved him and wanted so much better for him.
For the music industry, it should be a wake-up call. To be better, to do better. And to treat people like Liam as humans, not money-making machines.
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