By Scarlett Dargan For You Magazine Published: 09:14 EDT, 17 October 2024 | Updated: 09:14 EDT, 17 October 2024

Last night, when I saw a post on X that Liam Payne had died, I immediately texted my sister. ‘What?’ she replied. ‘Where did you hear that? Surely it’s not true?’My flatmate and I had a similar reaction. Initially thinking it was an awful hoax (god bless the social media age), as it trickled through to more news agencies, we switched on the TV and watched until midnight. While entertainment journalists recalled his rise to fame, One Direction’s successes and Liam’s subsequent battles with addiction and mental health, one thing stood out: rolling footage of the legions of fans who, less than an hour after the news broke, had already gathered outside the hotel where the tragedy unfolded. Many are still there now, 12 hours later, among the thousands who’ve turned the area into a quasi-shrine littered with pictures, flowers and candles. Like many Gen Z-ers, I find the whole thing devastatingly sad.  In part, because Liam’s family (including his seven-year-old son with Cheryl Cole) have lost a 31-year-old man who, issues aside, had his whole life ahead of him. In part, because no matter somebody’s level of fame, it’s terrible for photos of their dead body to be shared online (as I saw last night). And in part, very selfishly, because for a lot of people my age, One Direction were a pivotal part of our childhood.Teenage girls have always loved handsome singing boys: in that sense, One Direction were no different than the Beatles or Beach Boys before them. As someone who attended plenty of One Direction concerts – three in one week, much to the detriment of my dad’s bank balance – there was definitely that same hysteria. One Direction released some absolutely amazing songs (I’m not taking arguments on that point).  What Makes You Beautiful, Kiss You or Live While We’re Young provided the soundtrack to the most formative years of my life. If I listen now, I’m taken back to sneakily watching One Direction music videos in IT class, nervously chatting with boys at a friend’s house party or singing along with my friends on the school bus. Music doesn’t have to be all deep and emotional for it to conjure up memories that make you feel deep and emotional. It may seem strange to mourn a celebrity who, to put it bluntly, you don’t know at all. But compared to the untouchable and inaccessible pop stars of the twentieth century, you couldn’t help but feel like you knew the One Direction boys on a personal level.  He was 16 when he became part of One Direction on The X Factor, and while the band competed, viewers got insight into everything from the boys’ family homes to what they ate for breakfast. This became an ongoing theme for Liam, with One Direction releasing multiple behind-the-scenes documentaries and, later in his life, him recording his every move on social media, up until the hours before his death. I grew up watching him grow up.For the past few months, Liam had been ridiculed on social media for not being able to move on and desperately trying to cling on to his dwindling fame. I’m not going to turn this into a sermon on why you should ‘be kind’ because, as proved time and time again, nothing changes. But I will point out that becoming that famous at 16 rarely turns out brilliantly, and that Liam didn’t need to be humiliated online – I think he needed real help, probably for a long time. I worry that at 31, one of the world’s most loved celebrities died feeling that much of the public disliked him. Whether or not he messed up, it’s heartbreaking that anyone, especially someone responsible for so much of a generation’s collective joy, should leave this world feeling that way. 

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Why Gen Z-ers like me are heartbroken by Liam Payne’s untimely death