In 2010, a 16-year-old Liam Payne auditioned for The X Factor for the second time. He’d made it on the show few years prior before going home. His second appearance was far more successful. Judges placed him with the other members of One Direction and, while they did not win, they went on to become a global sensation. Making it on to the show had been Payne’s dream, but another contestant said the reality of it wasn’t everything he’d hoped it would be.

Liam Payne seemed to grow weary of ‘The X Factor’

Payne was passionate about singing throughout his childhood, and he spent time training with songwriters, producers, and vocal coaches before auditioning for the show in 2010.

“[Payne] was playing in old people’s homes or singing around, same as what I was doing,” One Direction’s music director Jon Shone told Rolling Stone. “It’s a work-hard-from-the-­bottom-up [mentality] in the Midlands. A lot of our parents — I know Liam’s parents were the same — didn’t come from money. So you’re taught to get out there and earn your crust.”

He’d proven he could handle hard work with his preparation for the show, but he hadn’t anticipated the grind of the experience. Fellow contestant Katie Waissel bonded with Payne through the long days; they often awoke before the sun and worked until after midnight. She believes this began to wear on Payne. 

Waissel said the show turned contestants’ dreams of singing into “a blank space and routine, and that’s not what anybody envisions when they get into music.” She noticed the pressure getting to Payne, saying that he became “more and more vacant” throughout the competition.

Liam Payne appeared on ‘The X Factor’ two years before this

Payne first auditioned for the The X Factor when he was 14.

“When I’m at school, in general, I think about singing all the time,” he said before his audition (per Entertainment Weekly). “I should really be concentrating on my work but I think about singing too much. It’s a dream, I’d love to do it.”

Judge Simon Cowell told Payne at his audition that he showed potential, but lacked the “grit” and “emotion” necessary for stardom. He was cut, then saved by Cowell, before being cut again.

“I know what it’s like to be thrown out, and I don’t want to have that feeling again. I just want to get through,” he said ahead of his audition in 2010. “Simon said to me, ‘You need to go and get your GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education], and that’s what I’ve been doing.”

He said that being in One Direction began to wear him down

After The X Factor, Payne jumped into six years with One Direction. They rocketed to fame and success. It was a dream job, but it also took up the entirety of his life.

“There’s no stop button,” he said, per Rolling Stone. “You’ve got no control over your life. That’s why I lost complete control of everything.”

When asked by a therapist what he liked to do outside of work, Payne said it came as a shock to him that he couldn’t answer. It all became too much. When the band broke up in 2015, he felt some measure of relief.

“I needed to stop,” he said. “It would’ve killed me.”