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We watched Liam Payne on Logan Paul so you don’t have to


By IMAGE
02nd Jun 2022
We watched Liam Payne on Logan Paul so you don’t have to

Harry Styles and Niall Horan once ate a scorpion and a salmon smoothie rather than reveal their true feelings toward their former bandmates, and here’s Liam Payne letting it all out for that Paxman of YouTube, Logan Paul. Let us Strip That Down for you.

It’s safe to say that we are more likely to see Freddie Mercury perform again with Queen than One Direction reunite. The remaining members of the One Direction online community are up in arms (and Niall Horan apparently, who has unfollowed Liam Payne on Instagram) because Liam Payne has taken the unconventional route of taking the heat off him very publicly cheating on his 20-year-old fiancée by appearing on Logan Paul’s podcast vlog channel Impaulsive.

In a decidedly great outfit – camel suit trousers, a tan short-sleeved polo, combat boots, a gold Rolex and arms full of tattoos that look like he walked into a tattoo parlour and said “I want tattoos, please” – Liam Payne discussed everything you might imagine a man discusses on Logan Paul’s podcast: his NFTs, Gary Vee, fighting Justin Bieber, creating dance music made with his mouth and his impressions of Captain Jack Sparrow, Bane and the Joker.

We’ll save you the pain of watching Liam Payne with a whiskey in hand talking about his beautiful NFT community, ironically wearing gold chains and doing a Bane voice and break down for you what you’re really here for – Liam Payne trash talking One Direction.

On hating Louis Tomlinson
“I wasn’t used to rowdy guys. Louis was wild. He wanted to be wild, that’s his spirit. He is my best mate now but in the band we hated each other. Like, come-to-blows-hated each other.”

On arguments with the band
“It was well-known within the band that I don’t like taking shit. There was one moment where there was an argument backstage and one member, in particular, threw me up a wall. So I said to him, ‘If you don’t remove those hands there’s a high likelihood you’ll never use them again’.”

On Gigi Hadid and the alleged altercation when Zayn Malik was accused of “striking” Hadid’s mother, Yolanda Hadid
“She tweeted something about ‘get yourself a respectful man’ or something. That one didn’t age very well.”

On Zayn
“There’s many reasons why I dislike Zayn and there’s many reasons why I’ll always, always be on his side. If I had had to go through what he went through — with his growth and whatever else… My parents are overly supportive to the point where it’s annoying at times. Zayn had a different upbringing in that sense.

“You can always look at the man for where he is and say, ‘Oh yeah, whatever, that guy’s a dick’, but at the end of the day, once you understand what he’s been through to get to the point, and whether or not he actually even wanted to be there… Listen, I don’t agree with any of his actions. I can’t commend some of the things that he’s done. I can’t be on his side for that. What I can say is I understand and your only hope is that at some point in their life the person on the other end of the phone wants to receive the help that you’re willing to give them.”

On One Direction’s “beef” with Justin Bieber
“So one night I was on Instagram Live… and like I was drunk at the time when I said it, and someone said something about Justin Bieber to me or whatever and I wasn’t even meaning to offend him, I wanted to offend them, and this is where this can go wrong if you start fighting people online for no reason.

“I was like well, I mean, the only thing between me and him is I haven’t been arrested. So then it started some beef thing about whatever. You see each other at award shows and obviously, we’re boys in a band and you’re a boy not in a band, so it makes sense that we should hate each other, right?

“Our fanbases cross-generate, so it’s actually as much the fans pushing this boundary as you are, so I thought you know what, screw it, we’re at this show, the boys in my trailer are getting a bit rowdy, I don’t want to see any violence, man. I thought I’ll just go and say hello to him. So, I knocked on his door and went in and had a chat with him. We started talking and it was a different place in Bieber’s head at this point. He’d come through all the skirting around in Lamborghinis, he’d grown as a person.

“And literally, we were sitting with him and having that conversation. And I was like, dude, I’ve always felt for you. I said, number one, I’ve done all the things that you’ve done and I’ve never been caught for any of them. So that’s number one. Number two, I’ve always really felt for you might and I think in our situation, we all suffer from the same disease.

“When I look at my boys and I turn left and right, I’ve got someone who’s going through exactly what I’ve gone through. I know in your camp, you’re you and there’s no one like you so you can’t turn around and have that shoulder and he was like, bro, that’s giving me chills. And we became friends from that day.”

On One Direction and girls
“Did we ever have an argument over a girl? No, I don’t believe so. I don’t believe that ever happened. Was anybody ever with another girl that someone else was with? I definitely think that might have happened. It wasn’t me.”

On meeting Cheryl on The X Factor
“When I was 14, I was hot.”

On Cheryl and their son
“She is the best mum in the world. I couldn’t ask for someone better… I get to take my son to school one or two times a week and it’s the best thing. The relationship we have now as friends has only grown more…

“We broke up for a reason and now she gives me full autonomy of my life and to do what I do and I know he’s taken care of. He is all she cares about and I couldn’t ask for more. They live like three minutes from my house… I always glue myself to where he is. My life now is his. My money is his. I have several companies he can run if he wants one day or he can sell… but right now he’s only five so we have a long way to go… I like to talk to other new dads.

“You don’t know what is coming and it’s different. And to be honest with you, it ruined a relationship for me at that point but for all the right reasons. I was so excited for him to be born that I was actually worried if I wouldn’t love him enough.”

On his music career post-1D
Discussing his solo career, Liam Payne says his 2017 debut solo single, Strip That Down had “a billion streams,” and “outsold everybody within the band”. The One Direction fans of the Internet were quick to remind us that Harry Styles’ Watermelon Sugar and Zayn Malik’s I Don’t Wanna Live Forever beat Strip That Down by over a billion streams each, that Strip That Down has not in fact had “a billion streams”, and that he hasn’t had a No. 1 on the Billboard 200 like Zayn Malik and Niall Horan, and the closest he came to it was his 2019 album, LP1, which peaked at No. 111 on the Billboard 200. Anyway, let’s round this trainwreck off by reminiscing on the lyrics of Strip That Down – never forget “F1 type Ferrari (six gear speed).”

You know, I used to be in 1D (Now I’m out, free)
People want me for one thing (That’s not me)
I’m not changing the way that I (Used to be)
I just wanna have fun and (Get rowdy, ooh)
One Coke and Bacardi (Sippin’ lightly)
When I walk inside the party (Girls on me)
F1 type Ferrari (Six gear speed)
Girl, I love it when your body (Grinds on me, baby)
You know, I love it, when the music’s loud
But c’mon, strip that down for me, baby
Now there’s a lot of people in the crowd
But only you can dance with me
So put your hands on my body
And swing that round for me, baby (Swing)
You know, I love it when the music’s loud
But c’mon, strip that down for me (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Oh, strip that down, girl
Love when you hit the ground, girl (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah)
Oh, strip that down, girl
Love, when you hit the ground, girl

Watch the interview in full below.

Photography via YouTube.