British pop star Liam Payne, who skyrocketed to fame as a member of the UK singing group One Direction, has passed away at age 31 after falling off the balcony of a third-floor hotel room in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Liam was only fourteen years old when he first auditioned as a solo singer for the reality competition series X factor, and though he was eventually cut from the program by Simon Cowell, he returned two years later and was grouped with fellow crooners Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan, and Zane Malik to form One Direction - the boy band that would go on to win third place overall, sign with Cowell’s record label, and take the pop world by storm.
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The hotties of One Direction had legions of fans swooning over them, and in 2013 they were featured in their first concert video One Direction: This Is Us. The music doc not only gave us a peek at what went on behind the scenes but also under the clothes: shots of Liam in his boxer briefs while dressing and another shirtless bedroom scene finally gave audiences the skin-timate look at the British hunk that they’d been waiting for.
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After the band went on hiatus in 2016, Liam pursued a solo career, releasing his debut album LP1 in 2019 and stating he was working on a second as of 2023. His last single “Teardrops” was released in March of that year, and that’s exactly what’s being shed now due to his untimely death.
