Growing Payne

One Direction Graduate Liam Payne Has Achieved The Impossible: Turning Viral Fame Into An Enduring Career. Sure, He’s Talented, Hard Working And Extremely Amicable. But The True Secret To His Success? Being Willing To Embrace The Unknown.

- Scott Henderson

When we arrive in springtime London to meet with singer Liam Payne, he’s at the centre of a heaving team of staff, fussing around a small hotel room in the heart of the city. It’s a small whirlwind overlooking a comparatively peaceful Hyde Park.

Amongst all the drama, Payne remains unruffled. He’s alert, aware of every person and conversation in the room, yet oddly at ease with the lunacy ensuing, greeting me with a traditional British bro-shake.

His calm under pressure is perhaps a product of his adolescent stint as one-fifth of the world’s biggest boy band, One Direction, an experience in which an ability to find your equilibrium amid chaos was an essential survival skill.

What’s immediately apparent is that Payne is a surprisingly self-aware and largely egoless 25-year- old, no mean feat for a man who’s helped sell over 50 million albums in the past decade.

“You’re kind of known sometimes as, ‘the guy from that band’, which is not really where you want to be at a certain point,” Payne says within minutes of our first meeting. It’s a refreshing show of vulnerability so early on, setting the tone for a poignant, sometimes emotionally raw two-day encounter with the star. “If you are what you think you are, then you don’t have to fucking prove anything.”

Delivered with a hint of defiance, it’s a sentiment that applies whether you happen to be a pop star or a product manager.

“I’ve got a lot of things wrong in my time, but they were also the moments that I’ve learned the most about myself,” Payne adds. “The moments to do with fear, patience, intelligence, all those different things.”