The evening of Oct. 16 created shockwaves internationally when it was announced that Liam Payne, a former member of One Direction, had passed away at 31.
The cause? Falling from a three-story balcony in Argentina.
Regardless of where and when fans found out, the consensus was devastation.
Sarah Tapley is a fourth-year student who was a major One Direction fan in their prime. The celebrity death hit her harder than others, because Payne was such a huge part of her childhood.
“My walls were covered in One Direction posters,” she said. “Like, legitimately covered.”
At the young age of eight, she became a ‘Directioner’ and each person in her friend group had a designated favourite band member. Tapley said hers was Harry.
When the new music videos came out, she would watch them once she got home.
“Watching on my parent’s computer because I didn’t have a laptop or phone,” she said. “I was like ‘this is so cool.’”
Many fans online are upset that there is no chance of the band reuniting, but for Tapley that wasn’t her focus. For her, it was strange to see the four other members posting tributes to Liam, united for the first time in years.
It was a way of them interacting in the weirdest, least expected and sad kind of way, she said.
She heard the news while sitting in class, surrounded by people her age, but she was expecting to be a lot older when the news broke.
Tapley said she looked forward to listening to One Direction’s music with her kids.
“[I thought] when I’m a mom and my kid tells me one of the members of One Direction died, I’ll be like, ‘this is so sad,’” she said. “And that is when I expected that to happen.”
Tapley still lives at home, which brings an added feeling of nostalgia as she lives between those same four walls that used to be plastered with One Direction posters.
“Now I’m doing schoolwork at my desk and Liam Payne is dead,” she said. “It’s so weird.”
According to BBC, all five of One Direction’s albums had returned to the music charts as fans re-listened to their favourite albums.
Their 2013 album Midnight Memories led the pack in the UK Top 100, which was fourth-year English student Cassidy Gordon’s favourite album.
Gordon heard the news right on campus, in James Dunn Hall. The room went silent, she said, with a bit of awkward laughter before someone broke the news.
“I was like, ‘this is a prank, this is a joke.’”
One Direction was a big part of her childhood and like Tapley, her friend group each had designated favourite band members. They would bring the teen magazines to school and take turns doing quizzes or finding posters of each member.
She said Payne’s death was like “[losing] a part of that childhood.”
Gordon had the opportunity to go to a One Direction concert in Montréal with her dad. As part of the On the Road Again Tour in 2015, she got the tickets for Christmas and was devastated when Zayn Malik left the band before the concert.
Gordon had no phone and was unaware he had left the band, so her dad picked her up from school, with Starbucks in hand and said, “Hey buddy, Zayn left the band.”
After the initial shock of Payne’s death, Gordon was reminded that there would be no reunion tour.
“The way you look at NSYNC and how they just keep doing reunion tours together,” she said. “I thought that One Direction would eventually get there when their solo careers died down.”
With circulating rumours of the cause of death, hotel video footage, the coroner’s report and a supposed 9-1-1 call from the hotel minutes prior to his death, Gordon said her feed has been filled with videos about Payne. One that struck her was a video of Payne’s Dad visiting one of the memorials started by fans.
“I feel like it was our generation’s losing a Beatle,” said Gordon. “Because that’s how big they were.”
