Famed British singer Liam Payne has died at the age of 31 after falling from his hotel balcony in Argentina.
According to Argentinian outlets, the British singer, best-known as one-fifth of One Direction, fell from the balcony of his third-storey room at the Casa Sur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires.
Grieving fans have gathered outside the hotel, sharing their shock and sorrow while lighting candles in tribute to the singer, who rose to global fame on The X Factor.
During the height of their boy band fame, One Direction visited Australia four times in a string of highly-talked about visits and Payne even considered moving there.
One Direction – made up of Payne, Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik – first visited Australia in 2012, when they notably attended the Logies.
They returned to the country again in 2013 and 2014, when they performed at the ARIA awards, before returning for a final tour in 2015 months before the band went on hiatus in January 2016.
Payne last visited Australia in 2018 and appeared to have forgotten his previous trips Down Under at the time as he claimed he had never visited before.
The global pop star, who once said ‘geography was never my strongest subject’, made the remarkable comment after completing a solo performance at the Everest horse race in Sydney.
Famed British singer Liam Payne (pictured in Sydney in 2018) has died at the age of 31 after falling from his hotel balcony in Argentina
‘I’m sorry the weather has been so bad… I’ve never been to Australia before,’ he told fans.
Australia wasn’t the only country Payne forgot he visited, claiming in an online stream that he had never stepped foot in the Philippines despite performing in the country’s capital Manila in 2015.
Following outcry from his fans, Payne later corrected himself: ‘Wow apologies to the Philippines my geography was never my strongest subject. How could I forget beautiful Manila!!’
Reflecting on that gaffe in 2019, Payne told the London Evening Standard: ‘My dad often jokes that I’ve been around the world and I don’t know what the f*** anywhere looks like.’
Payne’s final Australian performance was solo at The Everest carnival in 2018, but he previously took to the stage Down Under a number of times with One Direction.
However, the band’s visits to Australia were not without their controversies and made headlines at the time for their comments about the famous local wildlife.
Payne and his band One Direction visited Australia four times in a string of highly-talked about visits and Payne even considered moving there (he is pictured in Sydney in 2018)
Payne first made an awkward comment in 2012 when he visited a sanctuary in Brisbane and claimed to be ‘genuinely scared’ while holding a koala out of fears he’d catch chlamydia.
‘This is worrying. I’d have never picked the thing up if I’d known,’ he told The Sun at the time.
He once again made headlines in 2013, during the Adelaide leg of the band’s Take Me Home tour, when Payne spotted a flurry of fans standing outside the band’s hotel.
He sent a tweet and warned them to keep away from the grass, which he described as a ‘snake habitat’.
‘It’s not worth it someone’s gunna get hurt,’ he wrote.
When fans failed to move out of the way, the frustrated singer sent a follow-up tweet: ‘Are u not reading what I’m saying its a SNAKE HABITAT TURN AROUND.’
He had already had a run-in with his Aussie fans on the same tour after some fans shockingly broke into the band’s luxury oceanfront accommodation.
During their Sydney leg of the tour, a group of fans went too far by breaking into the property and taking off with a pair of Payne’s underwear.
A witness told the Daily Telegraph at the time that she watched six girls and an eight-year-old boy jump over a door to get into Payne’s Palm Beach apartment.
‘They are Calvin Klein underwear. They only took the underwear. They wanted to take a wetsuit but someone bought it inside,’ she said.
Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles, Liam Payne and Louis Tomlinson of One Direction arrive at the 2012 Logie Awards in Melbourne
Asked about his craziest fan experiences on Fitzy and Wippa’s NOVA radio show in 2014, Liam revealed that trip was ‘the worst one to Australia’ as he cited the break-in.
The UK-born star said the experience changed his view on the country, somewhere he once considered buying a permanent home.
‘I always had Australia in mind as somewhere I would want to move if stuff got too crazy,’ he told hosts Ryan Fitzgerald and Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli.
‘But then when we first came to Australia I didn’t it expect it to be as crazy as it was.’
‘I love Australia to pieces, I love the vibe of it, so chilled out, I really like it, but it’s just too crazy over there for us now,’ he added.
Payne’s rise to fame first began in 2008 with an ‘extraordinary’ X-Factor audition that has been circulating on social media after his tragic death.
Payne last visited Australia in 2018 for the Royal Randwick Races (pictured) and appeared to have forgotten his previous trips Down Under as he claimed he had never visited before
Fans flocked to YouTube to watch a 14-year-old Payne audition for the UK talent show.
After failing to win the competition, he was told to come back two years later and returned to the reality TV show at the age of 16.
He was then placed in a band alongside fellow contestants Styles, Malik, Horan and Tomlinson in what would become One Direction, one of the most successful boy bands in music history.
The band shot to fame in 2010 and won the hearts of thousands of adoring teenage fans, selling more than 70million records worldwide.
