The last time Simon Cowell saw Liam Payne was a year before the former One Direction singer and solo star plunged to his death in a fall from the third-story balcony of a Buenos Aires hotel on Oct. 16, 2024. Speaking to the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast this week, Cowell described their final meeting and the conflicted feelings he’s struggled with in the time since about his role in thrusting the 31-year-old singer into global fame.

“I saw him a year before this happened. He came over to my house. We talked about his son and being a dad,” Cowell said Cowell said in a Rolling Stone Music Now podcast (Payne talk begins at 40-minute mark) about their discussion of Liam’s now seven-year-old son, Bear, with former partner Cheryl Cole. “I remember saying, ‘Music is not everything, by the way.

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