After former One Direction member Liam Payne’s death was announced on Wednesday, October 16, the first the One Direction fans did was get together and mourn.
People posted about calling their childhood friends, reconnecting with people they’d gone to concerts with, and sharing their favorite songs of his.
Payne’s impact, and One Direction’s, was so large that the fans listening to their old songs in mourning managed to chart four of them on Spotify’s Global Top 50.
And it’s both unifying and heartbreaking to see that fans all over the world are honoring his memory to the same tune.
#33: Perfect
The lowest on the Top 50 chart, sitting at number 33 is the band’s 2016 hit “Perfect” off of their fifth album Made in the AM. Many fans online have noticed that the song was released on the exact day of Liam’s death eight years ago. The song is about finding love freely and without a care in the world, but that sense of living and loving with wreckless abandon has taken on a deeper meaning for many Liam Payne and One Direction fans this week.
This album was also their last one before they took an indefinite hiatus in 2016. A hiatus that many fans hoped would end with a reunion in the near future.
#29: What Makes You Beautiful
Sitting at number 29 on the Spotify Top 50 is One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful,” arguably one of their most popular songs. The 2011 hit was their first-ever single and marked the release of their first album as a band, Up All Night, which came out in November of 2011. The song went quadruple platinum in the United States.
The lat Liam Payne sings the iconic opening chorus “You’re insecure don’t, know what for” and was only 18 when the album was released.
#11: Story of My Life
“Story of My Life” was released in 2013 on the band’s third album Midnight Memories. It’s sitting at number 11 on the Top 50 chart.
The song is about chasing a girl who is hard to get, but a particular set of lyrics is weighing heavy on the hearts of One Direction fans this week for an entirely different reason.
In the first verse, Liam Payne sings “It seems to me when I die, these words will be written on my stone.”
The clip of him singing those words in the music video has been circulating around the internet as fans come to terms with the gravity that those lyrics hold now that he is gone.
#6: Night Changes
Coming in at #6 is the band’s melancholy ballad about the passage of time, taking life as it comes, and seizing the moment. “Night Changes” came out in 2014 with their fourth studio album Four and fans and celebrities all over the world have dedicated it to Liam Payne.
Musician Maggie Rogers sang it on stage at her concert in his honor, influencer Chris Olsen took to his TikTok page to sing a few verses in mourning of Liam Payne, and fans everywhere have taken to the internet to grieve to the tune of “Does it ever drive you crazy / Just how fast the night changes/ Everything that you’ve ever dreamed of / Disappearing when you wake up.”
Other songs that have charted from the 2010s boy band include “Steal My Girl,” “You & I,” “Drag Me Down,” and “18.”
The impact of the fans demonstrates just how touched so many people were by Liam Payne, this band, and what his death represents. For many people they’re not just morning a singer they loved, or a band they admired, but the clear marking of the end of a childhood dream they were holding out hope for. That One Direction would one day reunite. But Payne’s death marks the end of that hope and the end, to many fans, of their childhoods.
