One Direction didn’t win The X Factor 15 years ago. It’s easy to forget that. They came in third place, One Direction member Liam Payne reminds the third place Building the Band contestants, Iconyx (a.k.a. Soulidified). They didn’t win, but they also won.
Payne’s frequent invocation of his time in One Direction is pertinent and tragic in Netflix’s Building the Band. He is one of the last vestiges of a certain era of producer-manipulated band development. Each One Direction member auditioned individually only to be put together in a group by judge Simon Cowell and/or guest judge Nicole Scherzinger (the lore here is too complicated to dig into). Part of what Building the Band seeks in its mission is relinquishing control over who is in which band — letting people decide for themselves the future group in which they want to stake their future. Using a Love is Blind-method of auditioning, contestants were able to hear the voices of their peers before deciding who they wanted to work with on their own terms. As a judge on Building the Band, Payne spoke highly of cohesiveness and loyalty, keen to identify when it felt like the show’s bands were really there for each other. He’s tender — jumping up out of his chair to hug a participant’s mom — and funny. His dry, English sense of humor is a welcome bit of wryness in an otherwise painfully earnest show. He plays expert with aplomb, developing an easy rapport with the contestants.
Being in One Direction did not kill Payne, but he was open about the ways in which the pressures of the lifestyle contributed to his addictions to the drugs and alcohol that led to his untimely death this past October. “I don’t blame anyone for this, but the best way to secure us in the band was to lock us in our rooms. And, of course, what’s in the room? Minibar,” he said on the Diary of a CEO podcast in 2021. Building the Band never explicitly tried to unpack that which could be toxic about the reality competition show or music industries, but featuring only adult contestants and granting those singers some agency in who they sing with gave some power over to those who often become vulnerable in the aftermath of the showcases and voting. There is an undeniably gentle quality to Building the Band — a continued assertion that these groups are keen to work together and care for each other. There is drama, but it’s minimal and it’s certainly not the appeal of the show (in fact, it’s quite distracting and out of place). It’s possible that was always part of the show’s ethos, but in light of Payne’s death, there’s a sense that maybe this world has the potential to be softer and more caring.
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More than anything, what feels most moving watching Payne in Building the Band is how much fun he’s having. He’s dancing and grooving when the bands perform. He riffs with fellow judge Scherzinger, perched up on her arm rest whenever they and third judge Kelly Rowland have to make a decision about whom to move forward. “I don’t like this part, Nicole,” Payne complains in the final episode, the sentiment drawn from a place of experience (to which Scherzinger punts it back with, “We’re gonna blame you”). “We’re so proud of him. We had so much fun doing the show together. He has such a beautiful, kind soul and heart,” Scherzinger told Seth Meyers last week. Part of what felt so heartbreaking about Payne’s death was the complicated legacy he left behind — he was allegedly both a victim and perpetrator of toxic behavior. It’s tricky in the aftermath of such a situation to separate the art from the artist, but Building the Band is such a graceful final showcase because it reunites Payne with the art that he loved. Up on that stage, he’s just as Payno as ever. In the season’s final minutes, after the winners have been announced, they show a clip of Payne getting up onstage to sing “What Makes You Beautiful” with the audience.
It’s hard to watch the show and not imagine a future of Payne here — one where he works to better a system he emerged from confused and uncertain of himself. It is a shattering portrayal, all considered, of someone with so much potential who suffered so much. As a judge, Payne doesn’t purport to know everything, but he knows this world — pop music, band dynamics, whether or not a group should try to learn how to dance. What Payne leaves behind in these episodes is a wealth of charisma and care and the sense that he knew what he was worth.
