Ordinary Boys singer Preston has opened up about working with Liam Payne, saying he now sees the songs the former One Direction singer penned with him as “undisguised cries for help”.
Samuel Preston, now 44, forged a successful career as a songwriter after leaving the indie band behind, writing for the likes of Payne, Kylie Minogue and Olly Murs.
The former Ordinary Boys frontman has also faced his own struggles – in 2017, he was told he would never walk again after falling off a second-floor balcony while drunk and having taken a sleeping pill.
After using a wheelchair for six months, he eventually got back on his feet – but became hooked on painkiller OxyContin while recovering.
Preston wrote “Live Forever” about the accident in the months that followed and gave the song to Payne, who recorded and released it in 2019.
In a cruel twist of fate, Payne fell to his death off a balcony in Buenos Aires in 2024, at the age of 31. A toxicology report found Payne had “pink cocaine” – a cocktail of drugs containing methamphetamine, ketamine and MDMA – in his system at the time of his death.
“There are certain things that happen in your life where you just cannot believe this is a real set of circumstances,” Preston said in a new interview with The Guardian.
Describing the former One Direction star as “a very funny, sweet, kind guy” and “misunderstood”, Preston added that he now considers some of the songs Payne co-wrote with him as “undisguised cries for help”.
“I saw a lot of him in me, because we both suffered,” he continued. “I massively wish I’d been able to do more. But as for some kind of intervention, I don’t think I [had that role] in his life.”
Preston also penned Payne’s 2018 track “Slow”, which charted a break-up, and the melancholy “All I Want (For Christmas)”, released the following year.
His comments come after Payne’s 1D bandmate Niall Horan opened up about moving between “shock to sadness to anger” in the wake of his death.
Horan told GQ Hype he “just didn't think it was real” when he learned of Payne’s death – which came just two weeks after the pair had last seen each other.
“I just remember getting a message, and I was just like, What?” he said. “Someone so young, you’re not expecting to hear that they’ve passed, especially someone that you’ve just seen. I just went back from shock to sadness to anger.”
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