Liam Payne first registered on the pop radar as a fresh-faced 14-year-old boy when he tried out for The X Factor in 2008.

“I should really be focusing on my (school) work, but I’m just thinking too much about singing,” he said before his first audition, with his Wolverhampton accent and thick bangs front and centre.

“It’s a dream and I would love to do it.”

His rendition of Fly Me To the Moon impressed the judges, as did his boyish charm: he showed a cheeky streak when he winked at Girls Aloud star Cheryl mid-song.

But Simon Cowell wasn’t quite convinced he was ready, so he said he should do his final exams and come back in two years.

When Liam did just that, when he auditioned in 2010 with another classic song, Cry Me A River, the missing pieces were now all in place.

As he began to sing, Cowell’s eyes lit up as he registered Liam’s new maturity and charisma.

Whatever the X factor is, Liam had it.

The judges still had a tough decision to make that year – so during a discussion about who to save, they decided they could keep five boys by putting them together in a group.

Liam, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Harry Styles were told they were now a boy band – and One Direction was born.

They did not win The X Factor that year, coming third behind Matt Cardle and Rebecca Ferguson in a final watched by 17 million people.

But Cowell knew a good thing when he saw it. He signed them to his label and after waiting nine months to release their debut single, they quickly surpassed their rivals.

That single was What Makes You Beautiful, an instant pop classic that went straight to number one – the first of four UK chart hits over the next four years.

Liam was cast as the sensible one, and told the Guardian in 2019 about one of the group’s early hotel stays.

“There are plates being thrown out the window, mattresses being wheeled down the stairs, and I’m getting calls from the manager saying, ‘You’ve got to figure it out.’”

Sudden fame was a lot to take in, and he told Scott Mills on BBC Radio 1 in 2020 that he was “really quite tense about a lot of everything that was going on at the time”.

“It was sometimes difficult to have fun in those conditions because there was so much pressure.”

But after about a year he learned to relax. “And the more fun we had, the more successful it became.”

One Direction inspired a full-blown pop mania: stadiums full of screaming teenage fans, thousands camped outside their hotels, 70 million records sold.

‘I was very confused about fame when it all happened’ he told the BBC in 2019“and learning to be a person outside of work was hard. But now I feel like I understand it. I’m a happy guy.”

As time went on, Liam discovered a talent for both songwriting and singing, with credits on half of the band’s last two albums, on songs such as History, Steal My Girl and Story Of My Life.

However, tensions in the band rose as the pressure returned.

In 2022, Liam told Logan Paul’s podcast that things had almost come to an end. “There was a moment where there was a fight backstage, and one member in particular threw me against a wall,” he said, without naming the bandmate in question.

It became clear that the end was near for One Direction. “It was so exciting at every show,” he said. “I slowly lost the plot.”

Liam turned to alcohol and continued drinking after the band went on hiatus in 2016.

“It was very erratic behavior on my part, I was partying too hard,” he told the BBC.

In the post-1D world, Liam launched a solo career with his 2017 debut single Strip That Down, featuring American rapper Quavo, which peaked at number three and was nominated for two Brit Awards.

His collaboration with Rita Ora on the song For You – from the Fifty Shades Freed soundtrack – reached number eight and earned another UK nomination.

And eight years after he flirted with Cheryl in the X Factor audition room as a 14-year-old, the pair began a relationship. They had a son, Bear, in 2017, but separated in 2018.

He got engaged to model Maya Henry in 2020, but they later called it off. Earlier this month, she said on social media that the singer had been repeatedly sending her unwanted messages lately.

After their relationship, he was together with the American influencer Kate Cassidy since 2022.

He has struggled with health problems in recent years and was hospitalized twice in 2023 with reportedly kidney problems.

And his solo career struggled to maintain momentum.

A comeback single Teardrops, released in March, missed the charts and there were reports that a second solo album and a documentary about his life had been put on hold.

There was more to that life story than he could have imagined in those original teenage dreams.