When Liam Payne was found dead last Wednesday after falling from a third-floor balcony at his hotel in Buenos Aires, fans around the world were left shocked.
As the Guardian’s head rock and pop critic Alexis Petridis explains to Helen Pidd, the 31-year-old Payne had had a career of extraordinary success as part of the boyband One Direction, selling more than 70m records worldwide.
But it was a fame that was hard to deal with, too. The members of One Direction were only teenagers when they formed – strangers reportedly thrown together in 10 minutes as they competed on reality TV show The X Factor – and they would have to spend much of their youth under an almost unprecedented global glare.
Given Payne’s subsequent struggles with alcohol and depression, his early death has raised questions within the entertainment industry about whether it should do more to protect its young stars.
Oritse Williams of the band JLS – who first met Liam on the set of The X Factor when he was just 14 – says of the pressures of early fame: “There are a lot of vultures out there. A lot of people that want to take advantage of you.”
Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters
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