INQUISITR.COM / Entertainment

Zayn Malik Throws Shade At One Direction In New Interview, Criticizes Band’s ‘Authenticity’ Problem

By Lawrence Arboleda
Published on: 19:23 PST, Mar 21, 2016

What little hope fans have left of Zayn Malik ever rejoining One Direction has been dashed during the 22-year-old singer’s interview with Complex.

Zayn, who left One Direction in March of last year, confessed the many reasons why he decided to part ways with the five-piece band that shot him to stardom in 2010. During the interview, Malik said that he had issues with how the band compromised his authenticity and how he was frustrated with the group’s sound.

“It was about denying the authenticity of who I was, and what I enjoyed about music, and why I got into it,” explained Zayn.

‘That was something that was always underlying, and ended up as the main factor of me leaving in the end.

That was always there. It was one of the things that wasn’t going to go away, so I had to go away. I was frustrated with the band.”

Zayn also revealed that he is adamant about the idea of conforming to the youthful image being imposed on the band’s members.

“There were certain restrictions in terms of the way that we could come outside of that young teen boy look. Mainly my beard, honestly. I wasn’t allowed to keep it. Eventually, when I got older, I rebelled against it, and decided to keep it anyway.

“That was just because I looked older than the rest of them. That’s one of the things that is now quite cool. I get to keep my beard. I also wanted to dye my hair when I was in the band, but I wasn’t allowed to.”

Going by Zayn’s words, the reason can be chalked up to that old chestnut: “creative differences.” But the rest of the interview revealed that some of the differences the “Pillow Talk” singer had with the band have a more personal bent to them, saying that he was frustrated about not being given a lot of opportunities to establish his own voice.

Malik said he was not happy that his former band mates ( Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson) always got to speak first before him during interviews. He admitted to being annoyed that they were always louder than him.

Now that he’s a solo artist, Zayn relishes opportunities to express his passions, which were not always readily available to him when he was still a member of the group.

“It’s nice to have the chance to speak,’ he admitted. “Now I get to talk about what I’m passionate about.”

This is not the first time Zayn had been vocal about his displeasure with the band. In an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 Radio, he admitted that he never wanted to be in the band even when they were just starting out.

“I just gave it a go because it was there at the time. I think I kinda always wanted to go. From the first year, I never really wanted to be there in the band.

“When I realized the direction that we were going in, mind the pun, with the music, I instantly realised it wasn’t for me. How do you write a song from five people’s perspective?”

In the Complex interview, Zayn Malik talks about his efforts at maintaining a good relationship with his girlfriend Gigi Hadid amid the spotlight.

“I try to keep the two very separate. I try to, as much as I can. But there’s only so much you can do,” he noted. “I’m learning to deal with it. It’s just one of those things now, in the background. I just leave it as a bit of a noise in the background.”

Now that he’s gone solo, Zayn has started to adopt a more mature image, which is quite evident in the Pillow Talk music video, which features him and Gigi Hadid making out.

The music video was deemed by many as too racy, but Zayn Malik noted that the racy parts between him and Hadid in the Pillow Talk music video weren’t written into the script.

“We were just messing around,” he explained. “It wasn’t even, like, part of the shoot. You know when they say, ‘action?’ They didn’t do that. It was just rolling.”

[Photo by John Salangsang/Invision/AP]

Share this article: Zayn Malik Throws Shade At One Direction In New Interview, Criticizes Band’s ‘Authenticity’ Problem
one direction zayn malik Gigi Hadid
More from Inquisitr