“We Can Live Forever”

Part one: Fans process Liam Payne’s death, celebrate his life

October in Chicago can feel like anything from a perfect beach day to “time for Christmas music!”

On this particular Wednesday in October, 2024, it was a mild 60ish degrees and sunny. But in a small pocket of Lincoln Park surrounded by green grass and trees, it felt a lot colder.

“I was standing here and I had goosebumps,” Fatima said. “I'm just trying to process all of this.”

She was one of many visiting the fan-organized memorial for former One Direction member Liam Payne, who died just a week prior.

“It feels so unreal, like sometimes it'll just hit me that like this is really happening, and it's so hard to believe,” Lindsey Peters said. She traveled from the western suburbs, about an hour away.

Actress Cameron Olin from Ohio was in Chicago for an audition.

“I knew this was here, and I was like, we have to go,” Cameron said. “It was really important for me to see this because it's just been so obviously devastating.”

The memorial sat at the Shakespeare Monument on Stockton Drive. 

It was covered in dozens of flower bouquets, balloons, candles, photos of the late singer, posters, and hand-written letters, like one from Kelley Holland. 

“Liam, I can’t believe you’re gone,” she read. “Everyone is so heartbroken. You deserved better. Thank you for being a part of my life for so many years. We love you.”

“Thank you” and “We love you” were the messages repeated most in letters and posters from fans, many who had been revisiting their 1D days since Payne’s death.

“I think my earliest memory was probably just watching the YouTube video diaries when they were still on X Factor in 2010 around when I was about 10 or 11,” said Anaïs Turiello.

“I started listening to them when ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ came out in 2011, and my friends and I just fell in love instantly,” Lindsey Peters said. “And from then on out, we were obsessed, and every single thing that we did was One Direction focused.”

“I remember buying books with their covers on it, their albums, their CDs, folders,” Fatima said. “I used to go to the library, and I used to print their pictures, and I would use glue and just stick them all in my notebooks.”

“That's the first thing that people always tend to remember about me, is like, ‘Oh yeah, the One Direction girl,’” Pauleana Stevanovski said.

“One Direction infection,” as it was often referred to, was nearly impossible to escape between the years of about 2011, when their first single came out, and 2015, when the band announced they’d be going on an “indefinite hiatus.”

The band, made up of Harry Styles, Niall Horan, Payne, Zayn Malik, and Louis Tomlinson, was formed on British music competition TV show The X Factor.

Despite coming in third place, the five teenagers quickly propelled to global success, becoming one of the best-selling boy bands of all time during the six years they were active. 

But despite their relatively short life-span, fans said One Direction had a profound impact on their lives.

“It was my entire life,” Mary Alice Roach said. “I really dove right into it, and they were really everything to me.”

Roach became a “Directioner,” another word for a One Direction fan, early on in the band’s career.

She said they ended up being a metaphorical shoulder for her to cry on during what she said was one of the darkest moments of her life. 

“I went through a lot of mental health struggles when I was super young,” she said. “Starting around 13, 14, I was in and out of mental hospitals getting treatment for depression and self-harm, and they were my rock the whole time.”

Roach said she also had “severe body image issues,” and One Direction offered reassurance she couldn’t find within herself. 

“They were the voice that told me I should love myself,” she said.

Roach is also one of the organizers of Chicago’s Liam Payne memorial. She said it started as a way for her to work through her grieving process.  

“I felt like I had to do something, and that's why I organized the memorial,” Roach said. “Because I saw it happening outside the hotel. And then I saw it happening in Colombia, and I'm like, ‘OK, so we can all do this. Let me do this.’”

Chicago’s memorial was one of hundreds in cities around the world, including London, Glasgow, Paris, Sydney, and New York. 

It’s not clear exactly how many fans visited the memorial in Chicago for the roughly seven days it was up, but it’s safe to estimate a couple hundred, many of them reflecting on what they loved most about Payne and the critical role he played in One Direction. 

“I really saw him as somebody that was this adorable, cute personality that was always happy, always, willing to make the others laugh,” Carolina Kuhl said.

“I feel like he was the unofficial leader of the group,” Kelley Holland said. “He kind of kept everyone together, and he seemed like he was, at the time, maybe the most mature of all of them.”

“I think he was a big mentor for all of the boys,” Cameron Olin said. “I truly believe he was the glue, in a sense.”

“I think that it's a sign of a beautiful person that so many people are touched and sad when you're gone,” Mary Alice Roach said.

But the memorial wasn’t the only way people were honoring Payne.

On Halsted Street in Lakeview’s Northalsted (also known as Boystown) neighborhood sits a small queer bar called Scarlet. On Nov. 3 the bar was packed with hundreds of One Direction fans for a themed “One Direction Night.”

Friends Leslie Quintero and Amayni Salazar traveled over an hour from Woodstock for it.

“It’s just a big part of our childhood,” Quintero said. “We grew up with One Direction. It’s so nostalgic hearing and seeing people listen to One Direction.” 

“It’s kind of a hard time for all of us I feel like and it’s very comforting to all be together in one room and have a good time celebrating these boys,” Salazar said.

Scarlet hosts several themed artist nights weekly, but Scarlet general manager Angel Miranda says 1D night on that Sunday, which featured six hours of non-stop One Direction and solo Liam Payne music, was especially popular.

“The bar was packed pretty much wall to wall, so it was a great turnout,” Miranda said. “We had a line at points. I can't say specific numbers, but I will tell you, the ring compared to the previous Sunday was up 173%.”

Miranda said that just goes to show how big of an impact music and artists can have on people and how important it is to have spaces specifically tailored for certain communities, like fans of One Direction and Payne. 

“We may not know him personally, but he did affect our lives,” Miranda said. “So it's something that we all wanted to be able to celebrate and to get together like we would do any other person that we love who unfortunately passed.”

Part two: “Goodbyes are bittersweet”

That 1D night at Scarlet was one of several that bars in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs hosted following Payne’s death, and are still hosting now.  

For many fans, those celebrations have served as distractions from what is now being considered the worst day in the One Direction fandom. Payne’s death, fans say, tainted what were once perfect, cherished memories of fandom that defined much of their childhoods.

Many fans said they remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.

“I really thought it was just a fake story, and that soon we'd find out that it was just something made up,” Lindsay Peters said.

“My friends were texting me, and I was like, ‘What do you mean, he's dead?’ I just kept thinking they're gonna come out and say that it was a rumor,” Kelley Holland said.

“I sat on my couch, and I think I was in shock for a little while, and then I just looked it up, and I was looking into it, and then I just started sobbing,” Cameron Olin said.

“I sat in my car for at least an hour just in complete and utter disbelief,” Pauleana Stevanovski said.

“I'm like, ‘This is fake. This is fake, right?’ I was like, ‘This isn't happening,’ out loud,” Mary Alice Roach said.

Fans tell similar versions of their experience finding out Payne had died: shock turned to disbelief, turned to heartbreak.

It’s a reaction that might be hard to understand for people who have never been in a fandom or felt a deep connection to a celebrity the way that many 1D fans did. 

It partially stems from a term that’s been growing in popularity recently in pop culture called parasocial relationships. 

“Parasocial relationships are one-way ties, emotional ties in particular, that people have to others, usually celebrities, media figures, people that are easy to see and easy to learn about in the world a lot of the time,” said Tracy Gleason, developmental psychologist and professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. She researches young children’s relationships with imaginary companions. 

Gleason said the intensity of these parasocial relationships can vary among people. For some, it’s just a deep love for the person and pretty extensive knowledge of their work and interviews. 

“On the other hand, they might think about these pop stars and think about what would Liam do, so you tie into their persona more than just with interest and affection, but also with this kind of cognitive piece where you connect with them on an imagined but emotional and behavioral level,” Gleason said.

She said people can start forming relationships with these celebrities the way they would with people they meet in person in their own lives, leading to a one-sided relationship that can often feel very two-sided. 

“Your mind isn't spending a lot of time saying, ‘Okay, this is real and this is imaginary,’” Gleason said. “Thinking about these people, pretending or imagining that we have these interactions with them, it's all fun and it's all it's all emotionally self-serving. We are a social species, after all, and so these ties, even if they aren't real, it can give us real emotions.”

Gleason said that’s why, for many adolescents, forming parasocial relationships can offer a sense of solidity and security.  

“That person is never going to reject you,” Gleason said. “They're never going to break up with you. They're never going to stop being your friend. It's a very safe place in which to think about who you want to be and how you want to be and to not risk getting rejected.”

That’s why she said she isn’t at all surprised that fans are experiencing Payne’s death similarly to the way they would the death of someone they knew personally because even though many of these relationships are imagined, the emotions are very real. 

“It makes perfect sense that people are just devastated by his death because they love him,” Gleason said. “And that's not like love in a fantasy zone, right? That’s just love.” 

Part three: Fans grapple with conflicting emotions following abuse allegations

For many fans, part of the grieving process also includes grappling with conflicting emotions that have come up as a result of some of the conversations and new information coming out about Payne’s character that had been swirling on social media in the weeks leading up to his death. 

“Conversation about Liam Payne and sort of the person he'd ‘become’ has been ongoing for a few years,” said Lucy Ford, London-based culture and entertainment writer and interviewer, who has been following One Direction and its members since their inception.  

She explained that over the past few years, Payne has been pretty open with many of his experiences, including struggles with substance abuse and mental health. He had also made comments in interviews in recent years about his former bandmates and his time in the band that upset a lot of fans. 

But Ford said the new wave of discourse started after Payne was spotted at former bandmate Niall Horan’s concert in Argentina two weeks before Payne died. 

“Fans just thought that he was trying really hard to take a lot of attention away from Niall,” Ford said. “He was sort of buttering up the fans who were pointing him out. He was really making a show of himself being there. And I think there was the sense that he was maybe being a bit desperate, just trying to capitalize on the proximity to Niall, that One Direction fever.”

Then, in the days following Horan’s concert, Payne’s ex-fiance Maya Henry, who he was with on and off from about 2019 to 2022, was making what Ford called “some pretty horrible allegations” about the singer on TikTok. 

“She'd released a book that was fiction, but it was pretty clearly not fiction or a lot of it wasn't, which was about a girl who ends up with a band member, and then he ends up being very physically abusive to her,” Ford said. “And then off the back of that, she had revealed that Liam used to sort of rag on the One Direction boys and was quite bitter about them.”

After that, more allegations came out against Payne on social media from former 1D fans claiming that when they were younger, Payne had taken advantage of their fandom to manipulate them into sending him explicit photos and videos.

Ford says this shifted sentiment for many fans to seeing Payne as an abuser, a stark contrast from the Liam Payne fans had described him as when he was in the band. 

For some fans, like Anaïs Turiello, this made the grieving process more difficult and confusing, especially seeing what Turiello described as fans victim blaming Maya Henry after the allegations against Payne came out. 

“It’s always just been the message of support women, support other women, support victims no matter what, and to see that as soon as it becomes the abuser is someone that you love and worshiped as a kid and idolized as a kid, then everything else goes out the window,” she said.

But at the same time, Turiello said, there’s still a part of her that can’t help but grieve the person who shaped a large part of her adolescence. 

“I'm grieving the version of him when One Direction started before he became an abuser,” Turiello said. “I'm mourning that version of him. I'm mourning the version of him that he could have become if he wasn't exploited in the way that he was, and I'm also mourning childhood me that, like, a piece of me died with him.”

Meanwhile, Amarrah, a fan, said she’s hesitant to believe everything she hears on social media. 

“It was pretty heartbreaking finding out but we don't know what his mental state was at that time, so he could have been going through so much more that she didn't understand or he didn't understand her,” she said.

Carolina Kuhl, former Directioner and current social worker and therapist, said it’s important to remember it is possible and OK to be feeling conflicting emotions at once. 

“We tend to think in black and white, a lot of the times that multiple things can't exist at once,” she said. “But I try to stray away from that. We can hold space for those that were abused, those who are survivors, and we can also space for the grief that we have surrounding his death.”

Part four: Fans, experts express concern over celebrity mental health, addiction

Liam Payne’s death has also ushered in lots of conversation about mental health and how substance abuse can impact someone and their relationships.

That discourse surged after reports came out that substances were found in Payne’s body at the time of his death. 

“Substance use often causes people to do things that are pretty heinous,” said Kevin Doyle, President and CEO of the Hazelden Betty Ford Graduate School. “Whether it's getting behind the wheel of a car under the influence, harming someone, committing crimes to get the money you need to buy substances, or being abusive.”

He said though it’s not clear what exactly Payne’s circumstances were surrounding addiction and substance use, if there were substances in his body at the time of death, that could provide some important context.

“It's still important to take responsibility for that as part of the recovery process, so it may explain, but not excuse behaviors that are inappropriate, illegal, dangerous, offensive, all of those things,” he said.

After Payne’s death, Doyle wrote an article about celebrity tragedies and what we can learn from them. In the article, he wrote about what he said was the damaging role the media played in reporting Payne’s death, specifically what he calls the “sensationalization” of it. 

He said he was particularly “offended” by how both tabloid and mainstream media publications released photos of the inside of the hotel room Payne fell from. At one point, there were reportedly even photos of the singer’s body circulating on social media.

“I just really felt like the intrusiveness was really inappropriate, and there was no watchdog containing any of that, like just because he was a celebrity, then, therefore, we have the right to that information. We do not,” he said.

That idea that celebrities, in a sense, “sign up” to have their privacy invaded once they become famous is something fans say needs to end. 

“They were just kids, and they went to audition for a show, and they were all just like from working-class families in towns, and none of their parents really expected this to happen,” Turiello said. “They went to audition for a talent show and never came home and then became the biggest pop stars in the entire world.”

Fans said the band members had little protection from some of the common consequences of rapid fame at such a young age in an industry where young people are often exploited. 

“The people that suffer the most in this world are children,” Kuhl said. “And you see that very plain and clear in Hollywood, in the music industry, that children are usually the ones that suffer the most.”

Following Payne’s death, fans even started a petition for the creation of “Liam's Law” to bring attention to the issue.

The petition, which has over 150,000 signatures on Change.org, calls on U.K. lawmakers to enact legislation that would require artists to have access to mental health professionals, be given regular mental health checks, and have adequate rest periods.

That’s a call for change on a policy level, though Doyle said he believes Payne’s death has revealed a need to create change in our own everyday lives, too. 

“Who in your life maybe needs that phone call, or that text saying ‘Checking in with you, how are you doing?’” he said. “Those things make a difference. So, I think we can all aspire to that so some of these tragedies might be prevented.”

Part five: “We can live forever”

Back at Payne’s memorial in Chicago, fans are finding comfort in the 1D fandom community, which, at least for a few weeks, experienced a resurgence to levels that hadn’t been seen in nearly 10 years. 

On Nov. 2, 2024, about two weeks after Payne’s death, all five of One Direction’s studio albums, released between 2012 to 2015, re-entered the Billboard 200, the first time any One Direction titles had ranked on the chart in over two years.

Fans say returning to 1D’s music has helped them acknowledge and process their grief.

“‘Walking in the Wind’ is one that has been upsetting for me, but still very cathartic to listen to,” Anaïs Turiello said.

“I was listening to ‘Love You Goodbye’ and also ‘I Want to Write You a Song,’” Cameron Olin said.

“‘Ready to Run,’ I think, has been my biggest one so far,” Pauleana Stevanovski said. “And ‘Spaces,’ obviously. I think that's the one that's getting everybody.”

“[I’ve been listening to] ‘Don’t Forget Where You Belong,’” Lindsay Peters said. “That whole song has always resonated with me, and I remember feeling that energy with each other when we’d sing it to them and to each other in the concerts. I think it’s really coming back of ‘you were never on your own.’”

“I think ‘Walking in the Wind’ has been beautiful in a much different way. Also ‘History,’” Roach said.

She said returning to 1D’s songs is just a reminder, not that fans needed it, that the One Direction fandom never really went away.

“I think a lot of people still had that love before he passed, and it was just something that maybe they weren't actively putting their time into, but they still had that passion for One Direction,” she said.

After Payne’s death, many 1D fans even reactivated their old social media accounts, more casually known as “stan accounts,” to express their grief and let old followers know they’re still there and are going through the same thing.  

“It's interesting to see [how] some people have kids or different jobs, and it was like we were just kids one day on the internet or at shows and now we're all here in different ways, but we still have that one thing to bring us together,” Turiello said.

And though it’s not the reunion anyone expected or wanted, fans said the One Direction community coming together again reminds them of what made the fandom so special in the first place.

“Liam would be so happy to see all of this,” Amarrah said. “All of us together, all over again, all the Directioners.”

“I just wish it was under better circumstances, but there's also that part of me that's been grateful that I've found the community that I felt like I've been missing for a really long time,” Stevanovski said.

“It’s so important what we created,” Peters said. “And if we can remember what it's like to be with each other and feel this sense of community with each other again, that's what we need to hold on to and take away from all this.”

Special thanks to all the Directioners: Fatima, Amarrah, Lindsay Stevens, Pauleana Stevanovski, Mary Alice Roach, Carolina Kuhl, Anaïs Turiello, Amayni Salazar, Leslie Quintero, Cameron Olin, and Kelley Holland