Zayn Malik Covers Billboard and Opens Up About His Time in One Direction

After a tense departure from One Direction, Zayn, 22, has finally opened up about his time with band. In his cover story with Billboard Magazine, Zayn talked about not buying 1D’s album, the struggles of being in a boy band, his upcoming album, and more.

After leaving the band last year, it appears that Zayn is distancing himself from One Direction even further in 2016. He describes a very rocky relationship with his former band mates in his Billboard article:

“The truth of it is,” he says carefully, “you can think one thing about a situation and the total opposite can happen. I had every intention of remaining friends with everybody, but I guess certain phone numbers have changed and I haven’t received calls from a lot of people. I’ve reached out to a few of them and not got a reply. Certain people have pride issues, but it’s stuff you overcome in time.” 

Zayn didn’t appear to enjoy his time as boy band member either. He spoke about the struggles of working within the boy band confine:

“We weren’t allowed to say certain things, or word [lyrics] the way we would want to,” says Malik. “I’d sit and wonder, ‘If the fans knew how it worked, what would they think?’ My argument was: People are more intelligent than that. They want to hear what’s real, so why don’t we write some stuff that we’re actually going through?”

When asked about what he thinks of One Direction’s new music, he seemed very uninterested:

“I’ll be honest. I thought the first single was quite cool. I heard the second single and” — he screws up his face — “yeah, I didn’t buy the album.”

Read more about Zayn and check out the full article HERE.

BLAKE & WYLDE