Liam Payne almost decided not to embark on a solo venture.
The former One Direction singer released his debut solo single ‘Strip That Down’ last week, and has admitted he originally just wanted to "go into songwriting" when the boy band took a hiatus in 2015, but quickly realised he would be "ridiculously stupid" to miss out on the chance to make music on his own terms.
He said: "To be honest with you, I wasn’t going to do a solo venture. I was just going to go into songwriting and carry on and do that. But then I was like, ‘You’ve been trying to do this since you were 14 years old. You would be ridiculously stupid to turn down the option to have a deal.’ Coming out of the band, we had some pretty good opportunities around us. I had to do something."
The track was written with the help of Ed Sheeran – who previously helped pen One Direction hits ’18’ and ‘Little Things’ – and Liam said he had just touched down in Los Angeles before he was whisked back to London to record the track with the ‘Castle on the Hill’ hitmaker.
Liam – who welcomed his son Bear into the world with his girlfriend Cheryl in March – said: "I was in a gym in LA, and I got a call that said ‘You have to get to London now.’ And we had literally just gotten to LA, so we U-turned straight back to London – which of course you do for Mr. Ed Sheeran, because I’d do anything for the man. We went in, sat around and discussed a bunch of things about life, and [the song] basically just came together."
And Liam has also praised rapper Quavo – who is part of the rap group Migos – for his appearance on the song, as he managed to get his part done in just 24 hours.
He added: "Quavo is the man! He turned the rap around in like 24 hours … It’s taken them a long time to get to the point where the Migos are now, with ‘T-Shirt’ and ‘Bad and Boujee.’ I feel like they’re very well-structured men to take on this task, because if you accelerate too quickly into what fame is, it’ll mess with your head. They’ve had a lovely rise, and they can carry on doing this for many years."
Despite not wanting to go solo at first, Liam is pleased with the result of his first single, which he dubs as "edgy" and "different" to anything he would have done during his time with the ‘History’ hitmakers.
He told Billboard magazine: "If you’ve listened to a demo too many times, one thing can change your whole perception of a song. I left it alone for a while, and then when it finally got around to this place where it is right now, I was like … right, then. I believed!
"It was such an edgy, different song for me to do, with [that One Direction lyric] in it as well, and the way that was written. It was quite an experience."
Liam Payne almost didn’t go solo
