Bruce Springsteen on Liam Payne: Music industry puts enormous pressure on youth

By Charlotte McLaughlin, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter

US singer Bruce Springsteen has said the music industry “puts enormous pressures on young people” after Liam Payne’s death in Argentina.

Payne died aged 31 after a fall from a third-floor balcony at the Casa Sur Hotel in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.

Speaking to the Telegraph, Springsteen said: “That’s not an unusual thing in my business.

“It’s a normal thing. It’s a business that puts enormous pressures on young people.

“Young people don’t have the inner facility or the inner self yet to be able to protect themselves from a lot of the things that come with success and fame.

“So they get lost in a lot of the difficult and often pain-inducing (things)… whether it’s drugs or alcohol to take some of that pressure off.”

He added that he understands this “very well” from his own experience, as he has done his “own wrestling with different things”.

Springsteen detailed his depression in the memoir Born To Run, and has said he came “close to the abyss”.

Payne had been outspoken about his sobriety, and revealed that he went through a mental health crisis in 2019, while speaking to Ant Middleton on his Straight Talking programme.

He said he was “quite lucky to be here still”, and added: “There’s times where that level of loneliness and people getting into you every day every so often… it’s like, ‘When will this end?’… that’s almost nearly killed me a couple of times.”

Argentinian prosecutors said investigations into Payne’s fall are so far “inconclusive”.

He died of multiple traumas and “internal and external haemorrhage”, a post-mortem examination found.