Liam Payne and One Direction Changed Pop. Solo Success Was Harder.

• Liam Payne, the singer who was part of One Direction, died Wednesday at the age of 31.
• One Direction was one of the most successful pop acts of the 2010s, before they went on hiatus.
• The band never reformed, and Payne struggled to break out as a solo artist.

The death of Liam Payne, once part of One Direction, was a dark and abrupt turn for a person in a boyband that reinvigorated the pop music industry.

On Wednesday, multiple outlets reported that Payne died in a fall from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was 31.

Payne spent his adult life in the spotlight after he, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, and Zayn Malik became One Direction in 2010 as part of the UK talent show “The X Factor.”

They didn’t win. But Simon Cowell, one of the show’s judges, signed them to his label. They became international stars, filling a gap in the market for a new type of boyband.

They were one of the first acts to harness the power of then-burgeoning social media platforms, cultivating a loyal, vocal, and lucrative online fandom.

Stephen Graham, a senior music lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, told Business Insider that there was a market in the 2010s for “young, attractive, gentle male pop artists.”

“What gave them longevity was the particular personal charm of the members, and the band and their team’s canny positioning of their music somewhere between the bubblegum pop of previous boybands and loose notions of indie credibility and authenticity,” he said.

Releasing an album a year from 2011 to 2015, One Direction became the first act to have all of their first four albums top the Billboard 200 chart. They sold over 70 million records worldwide, and wracked up more than 21 billion streams.

In 2015, One Direction’s members were the highest-paid entertainers under 30 Forbes reported, earning a combined $130 million.

Taylor Swift, with $80 million that year, earned more per person but was still second fiddle.

Savan Kotecha, a producer who worked on One Direction’s first single, “What Makes You Beautiful,” spoke about it to Rolling Stone in 2020.

He said the band used social media to build hype and form a thriving fan community in the US before their first single was released there.

“They instinctively had this — and it might just be a generational thing — they just knew how to speak to their fans,” Kotecha said.

Pop critic Alexis Petridis wrote in the Guardian on Thursday that the band’s rocky sound helped them stand out from previous boy bands who released ballads, R&B, and songs tinged with hip-hop.

Payne was a core member of One Direction

Payne’s role in the band was the sensible, de facto lead. He had songwriting credits on some of their biggest hits, including “Story of My Life” and “Night Changes.”

Cowell told Rolling Stone in 2012 that he recognized Payne’s talent when he auditioned for “The X Factor” and thought he would work in the band.

“I always knew that with confidence he would be a valuable member of this band, so I had no hesitation in bringing him back,” Cowell said.

One Direction announced an indefinite hiatus in 2016 following Malik’s departure, prompting each member to go solo.

Styles has so far been the only member to find global success, though.

Payne’s first solo single, 2017’s “Strip That Down,” entered the Billboard 100 top 10, but his 2018 EP “First Time” and his 2019 album “LP1” didn’t match it.

He was open about dealing with alcohol and drug addiction, which he said began at the height of One Direction’s success. In May 2023, Payne said in an interview with the boxing YouTube channel iFL TV that he was 100 days sober and making a second album.

“I definitely want to tour this time. This is unusual because I wasn’t sure I was going to tour for a long time. I was kind of over it a little bit but I’m really excited to get back out on the road and go and see all the fans,” he said.

But in August 2023, Payne announced in a since-deleted Instagram post that he was cancelling his first solo tour, saying he had been admitted to a hospital with a kidney infection.

In March 2024, Payne’s comeback single “Teardrops” generated little buzz, and his second album remains without a release date.

Fans may now never know if it could have been the project to revive Payne’s music career.