Liam Payne said staying in One Direction would have ‘killed’ him: ‘End up a crazy child star who dies at whatever age’

nypost.com:

Liam Payne’s tragic death at 31, the singer spoke candidly about his time in One Direction on Jessie Ware’s podcast “Table Manners” in 2019.Payne said that the boy band, which was formed during “The X Factor,” endured a “mess” of a schedule dealing with sold out tours before an album was ever recorded. “There’s no stop button,” he told Ware at the time. “You’ve got no control over your life.

That’s why I lost complete control of everything.” Payne — along with Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson — shot to superstardom in 2010 before they went their separate ways in 2016.The “Strip That Down” artist found the split “really scary at first,” but happy that it was over.“I needed to stop.

It would’ve killed me,” Payne admitted.Payne went on to have a solo career, releasing one album, “LP1,” in 2019 and said he had begun working on a follow-up.

After leaving One Direction, Payne noticed himself struggling to break the habits of partying and over-working that he developed while in the group.