Liam Payne Determined to Ruin His Own Career

Photo: JC Olivera/Getty Images

Singer-songwriter Liam Payne of One Direction outed himself as a self-saboteur in the latest episode of controversial YouTuber Logan Paul’s podcast, Impaulsive. Payne spilled decade-old tea about the five-member group and falsely claimed that he is the most successful soloist following 1D’s 2015 hiatus, and fans of the band promptly dragged him on Twitter with some cold hard facts. All he had to do was keep his mouth shut and count his millions of British pounds.

One quick Google search clears up claims of being the most successful member of the band. His 2017 debut single with Quavo, “Strip That Down,” has been streamed on Spotify over 800 million times, but it hasn’t “sold a billion records,” as Payne claims to Paul. He also says he “outsold everybody within the band,” though he hasn’t yet sold out Wembley like Harry Styles or had a No. 1 on the Billboard 200 like Zayn Malik and Niall Horan. The closest he came to “outselling” or whatever was his 2019 album, LP1, which peaked at No. 111 on the Billboard 200. Not to sound like a stan or anything, but according to memory, his latest music ventures have made zero noise.

So what was the reason? We’ll never know why Payne decided to air 1D’s dirty laundry on a podcast made by someone who filmed tragedies in Japan for his own amusement, or why the “Strip That Down” singer seems to live in a world devoid of easily accessed chart data. But we do know that last week a Liam Instagram stan account accidentally put him on the spot by posting photos of him with a woman other than his ex-fiancée Maya Henry. “I love all of the fans so much but please stop sending me these pictures of my fiancé wrapped around another woman,” Henry commented on the stan account’s post. “This is not me and it’s hard enough knowing this has happened without seeing it. Enough now.” Perhaps all this self-sabotage and foolishness is a PR move to deflect from the reality of his cheating. Or, more likely, Payne just doesn’t know any better. “Watch this space,” he told Logan Paul. Sweetie, the only thing there is to watch is mess.