Liam Payne: 'One Direction's success was dumb luck'

3 June 2019

Liam Payne credits One Direction's success to "dumb luck".

Liam Payne

The 25-year-old star shot to fame in 2010 after the band - comprised of Liam, Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson - was formed on Simon Cowell's TV show 'The X Factor' and Liam says their achievements can never be recreated.

He told Men's Health Australia: "It literally was the perfect storm. There were so many scenarios that had to fall into line for that to happen. It's not something that can easily be recreated or probably ever will be because of the way the Internet was kicking off, the way 'The X Factor' kicked off. I just think it was just dumb luck."

Liam recently admitted that the music industry has vastly changed since One Direction went on an indefinite hiatus in 2016 so that the members could focus on their solo careers.

He told Esquire Middle East: "The way that the industry kind of works now is kind of a difficult one because of the way albums are and the introduction of Spotify. When I was in the band, Spotify wasn't really a thing for us, we didn't really care. We used to sell a lot of albums and physical copies, so it was different for us. As I got more into the solo stuff it was a kind of, like, a bit f**king confusing."

And he admitted that One Direction's music is "not something that I would listen to".

He said: "When we did the band stuff it was very--not exactly scripted--but let's just say you kind of knew your audience very well. We'd usually sell a tour out before we'd even done an album. And then they [the record producers] would go: 'Right, you're doing stadiums'. And then you'd go: 'Okay, so we need longer choruses--the kind of songs that people can chant in a stadium'. You had to kind of write around the tour."

"It's a very backwards way to do it, obviously people don't really tend to write like that. But we just had no time, so it was like: 'Quick! We need another hit and another and another!' It was actually easier to write in that scenario because there were so many hoops you had to jump through. It wouldn't necessarily be my choice of music now--it wasn't something that I would listen to--but I just knew how to make it, if that makes sense?"