The death of Liam Payne in Buenos Aires, its drama and its violence, will forever condition the interpretation of his career just like that of One Direction, the boy band that made the Wolverhampton singer a star. 14 years after his television debut, Payne’s first songs with his colleagues, so innocent when they appeared, become tracks that lead to the balcony of a Buenos Aires hotel.
One Direction Antes
The biographies of the members of the boy bands They are always suspected of being intervened, fictionalized to fit into the group’s story. In any case, it is known that Liam Payne was a child with poor health, that he did athletics and theater, and that he was, of all 1Dthe one who had an earlier and stronger vocation to dedicate himself to the stage. At the age of 14 he presented himself to Factor X and sang Fly Me to the Moon by Sinatra. Simon Cowell, the head of the Operation Triumph from the United Kingdom, told him he was impressed but to take it easy, to come back two years later. Payne did so. then he sang Cry Me a Rivera ballad from 1953 covered a thousand times. Cry Me a River, Fly Me to the Moon… Teenager Liam Payne seemed to boast a deeper background than is usually attributed to children his age. His interpretation served to enter Factor X but not in the soloist category. The program picked him up in the second round as a member of a band alongside the Irishman Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, from Bradford, Harry Styles, from Cheshire, and Louis Tomlinson, from Doncaster.
The five were boys from provincial cities, the five had between 16 and 19 years old. During the contest they sang songs by Elton John and Bonnie Tyler and shared a performance with Robbie Williams. One Direction finished in third place in that Factor X 2010, but it was soon evident that it was the winning bet for the music industry. Matt Cardle, the winner, would soon renounce the show and its producers. Rebecca Ferguson, the silver medalist, was heading towards a career as a prestigious author with smaller audiences.
In One Direction
The first verse of One Direction’s first song was sung by Liam Payne. The song was called What Makes You Beautiful (2011) y the verse said You’re insecure, don’t know what for. You’re insecure, I don’t know why. In the video for the song, Payne appeared with the air of a timeless teenager, as if he had stepped out of the 60s: a little Beach Boy and a little Justin Bieber, mischievous but good. His voice was the deepest of the quintet and his attitude the most serene, the least theatrical. In some way, the message he conveyed was that he was the driver of One Direction. And although that was a mistake, because the steering wheel of One Direction was carried by its employers, it was more or less true that Payne was the most determined of the singers, the one who seemed to know what was happening there.
What was happening there? A step forward in the history of boy bands. One Direction was not free from the clichés of the genre but it was a much more refined product than previous ones. Carl Falk, Rami Yacoub, Savan Kotecha, Ed Sheeran… The list of prestigious composers who helped the quintet take off is no small thing. One Direction was not a one-dimensional product, like other boy groups, but rather worked well and was highly honed on almost any record.from classic balladry to Fleetwood Mac-style sexy rock, from Mika’s imaginative pop to dance music… Payne had his share of shine on songs like Best Song Ever, Steal My Girl e History and found a role among his peers as the most musical of the fivethe one who advanced the most as a composer. Over time, Harry Styles has been the central figure of One Direction, but that has been due, above all, to his charisma and his ability to interpret the world in which he lives. It is more of a cultural influence than strictly musical.
Don’t be fooled either: One Direction was a commercial group, managed in such a way as to give a very intense performance in a short time. Up All Night, Take Me Home, Midnight Memories, Four, y Made in the A.M. There were five albums that the band published at the rate of one a year, in the midst of world tours and chronic promotional campaigns. And despite that stress, the evolution was natural and satisfactory. Made in the A.M., The band’s farewell album was not a refutation of their first songs, but the result of five years in which the One Direction product acquired layers. In their songs there were references to pop history that could be said to be cultured and that fit well into what was still a group for teenagers.
After One Direction
One Direction’s work rate was unsustainable, of course. In 2014 Zayn Malik left the band. In 2016, his colleagues followed in his footsteps. In 2017, Payne released his first single, Strip That Down, which included the inevitable verses of self-reclamation: You know, I used to be in 1D (now I’m out, free) / People want me for one thing (that’s not me) / I’m not changing, the way, that I (used to be) / I just wanna have fun and (get rowdy). You know, I used to be in 1D (now I’m out, free) / People love me for one thing (that’s not me) / I’m not going to change my vibe (that I used to have) / I just want to have fun and (make noise). Then there were songs with Rita Ora and J. Balvin, and an album that collected his harvest of singles, titled LP1 (2019). The problem of LP1 was the comparison: compared to Harry Styles, who had become the man who adapted the history of rock to the sensibility of a new generation, or Niall Horan’s success in reinventing himself as a credible singer-songwriter, Liam Payne chose the very busy border between pop dance and hip hop, where it is more difficult to distinguish yourself.