Former One Direction singer Liam Payne has died after falling from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, The Associated Press reports. Payne was in Argentina after attending his former bandmate Niall Horan’s concert at the capital’s Movistar Arena. Liam Payne was 31 years old.
Liam James Payne was born in Wolverhampton, England. In 2008, at age 14, he auditioned for the British reality show The X Factor. He famously returned to the show in 2010 and was put together with Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson, and Zayn Malik to form One Direction. The band did not win the competition, but it did not stop the quintet from becoming a global sensation.
After The X Factor, Simon Cowell signed One Direction to his Syco label, and the group debuted, in September 2011, with the single “What Makes You Beautiful.” Later that year, the song was included on the boy band’s chart-topping debut album, Up All Night. Payne was credited as a co-writer on three of the album’s tracks, “Taken,” “Everything About You,” and “Same Mistakes.”
