In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.
The timing was impeccable. Zayn Malik was never positioned as the public-facing leader of the British boy-band phenom One Direction. Instead, he was the group’s prototypical bad boy — the one with the best tattoos, the subject of the most rumors, the boy who seemed most reluctant to be in a boy band at all. Still, Malik was probably the group’s best singer and arguably its hottest member. (That’s my argument. I’m the one arguing it. The bone structure cannot be denied.) In 2015, Malik became One Direction’s Ginger Spice, the first to leave. One Direction struggled on for a little while without him, while he beat all of his ex-bandmates to solo-artist glory.
For a minute, it looked like Zayn Malik, solo artist, might really be something. Malik’s silky, melismatic tenor wasn’t especially well-suited to the peppy, poppy anthems of One Direction. Instead, he was way more into singing moody, indie-leaning vibescape R&B, which happened to be the coolest sound in the world in the mid-’10s. As the Weeknd made the leap to dominant pop stardom, Malik went to work with one of fellow R&B auteur Frank Ocean’s key collaborators, did some extremely pointed press interviews deriding his own pop past, and made a record of au courant atmospheric fuck songs. Despite never being the most famous or visible part of One Direction, Malik seemed poised to reach full Justin Timberlake status, cruising from teen heartthrob to adult pop star with an effortless grace that most teen idols never approach.
It was a good idea. It could’ve worked, if only Zayn Malik was a different artist. Zayn’s solo takeover of the American charts landed him a #1 hit, a feat that the fully assembled One Direction never pulled off. But that victorious run at the Hot 100 lasted all of one week before America discovered that Zayn had very little personality and almost nothing to say, and that his music wasn’t worth getting excited about. So it goes.
Zain Javadd Malik, the son of a Pakistani immigrant father and a white lady who converted to Islam, grew up in a working-class neighborhood in the northern English city of Bradford. (When Malik was born, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” was the #1 song on both sides of the pond.) His name means “beautiful king” in Arabic. Young Zayn loved his father’s R&B and rap records, and he sang at school assemblies. He also boxed as a teenager. He didn’t really consider music as a career until reality TV came calling.
In 2010, the 17-year-old Zayn Malik went to Manchester and auditioned for the UK version of The X Factor. Zayn later claimed that he didn’t want to go through with it but that his mother really wanted him to, that he did it just as a favor to her. When he went in front of the judges, the baby-faced, fauxhawked, and Northern-accented Zayn sang a nice-enough rendition of Mario’s 2005 hit “Let Me Love You.” He looks like a cute kid. He doesn’t look like a star.
It’s a rare privilege to be able to watch the exact moment that a cultural phenomenon comes into being. Zayn Malik didn’t make it on The X Factor, at least as a solo act. He didn’t get through the show’s boot-camp stage, but Simon Cowell and the other judges decided to put Zayn into a group with a bunch of other cute, fresh-faced boys who’d also been eliminated. The footage all exists online — the judges shuffling though photos of those kids, cooing over how cute they look together, marching them onstage, and telling them that they’re a group now. They all look ecstatic, Zayn included.
Zayn Malik was the last boy added to One Direction, and he was the only one who wasn’t white. Later on, people would write about how important it was to have a young South Asian Muslim teen idol. Zayn wasn’t necessarily a natural fit on One Direction, but nobody in One Direction was necessarily a natural fit. That was the whole idea. The kids didn’t do choreography or matching outfits. Instead, they bounced around the stage, singing cheerily amateurish versions of pop hits, and the screams in the studio got progressively louder each week. Simon Cowell had dollar signs — or, I guess, pound signs — in his eyes.
One Direction didn’t win their season of The X Factor. They came in third, but Simon Cowell knew that he could sell them. He signed them to a huge deal at his Syco Records imprint, and he sent them off to work with songwriters and producers. In 2011, One Direction released their debut single “What Makes You Beautiful,” an absolutely ideal introduction to a 21st-century boy band. There’s an almost Monkees-level innocence and energy to “What Makes You Beautiful,” a big and sticky and spirited song about how you, girl, are actually way prettier than you realize. In the video, the boys wear pristine white T-shirts and play-wrestle on the beach. The rocket took off immediately. “What Makes You Beautiful” topped the UK chart and made it to #4 on the Hot 100. (It’s a 9.)
Right away, One Direction inspired an early version of the kind of internet fan army that’s so prevalent today. The Directioners, as they were called, took things to levels that people hadn’t quite seen before. They wrote fan fiction about group members’ relationships. They came up with inside jokes based on viral concert flubs. They feuded with Justin Bieber’s Beliebers. Group members got in on the act, winking at certain fan storylines as those storylines were taking shape. Their main job was to serve as focal points for this widespread feeling of teenage longing and excitement. Singing was secondary. They still had some good songs, though.
One Direction were bigger in the UK than in the US, but they were stars everywhere. Their first three albums all went triple platinum, and they all launched singles into the upper reaches of the Hot 100. “Live While We’re Young,” the first single from 2012’s Take Me Home made it to #3 over here. (It’s a 7.) A year later, Midnight Memories led off with “Best Song Ever,” One Direction’s biggest-ever US hit, which peaked at #2. (It’s a 6.) I really like “Story Of My Life,” the tender Midnight Memories single that peaked at #6 over here. (It’s a 9.)
By general consensus, One Direction’s breakout star was Harry Styles, a kid who was somehow cherubic and leonine at the same time. This column will get to that guy eventually. Zayn Malik was the dark horse, the one who couldn’t quite vibe with the respectful-jocularity feeling that One Direction usually put into the world. He later claimed that he suffered from eating disorders and anxiety while he was in the group. There were rumors about drugs or about Zayn cheating on his then-fiancée, Perrie Edwards. (Edwards was a member of the girl group Little Mix, an X Factor creation from a different season. Little Mix’s highest-charting Hot 100 hit, 2015’s “Black Magic,” peaked at #67.)
One Direction came with an implied expiration date; it’s probably why the group worked so quickly. Four years after those guys all met each other in the X Factor stage, they had four albums, and they toured relentlessly. 2014’s Four didn’t sell quite as well as its predecessors. It only went platinum in the US, and none of its singles reached the top 10. (Lead single “Steal My Girl” peaked at #13.) A few months after Four came out, Zayn backed out of the Asian leg of a One Direction tour, claiming that he needed a mental health break. A week later, he announced that he was leaving One Direction. Fans were bereft, and One Direction only lasted one more album before splintering.
In the months after he quit One Direction, Zayn Malik made a few tracks with British rappers and producers. None of them ever came out, but a few leaked on the internet. Four months after his departure, he signed a solo deal with RCA. Zayn went to LA and recorded most of his solo debut Mind Of Mine with James “Malay” Ho, best-known as Frank Ocean’s primary collaborator on his widely beloved 2012 album Channel Orange. (Ocean’s highest-charting lead-artist single is the Channel Orange track “Thinkin Bout You,” which peaked at #32. Malay didn’t work on that one. Ocean also reached #25 as a guest on the 2017 Calvin Harris/Migos collab “Slide.”)
Zayn Malik clearly wanted to be a cool young R&B singer, and there was nobody cooler than Frank Ocean in that moment. Ocean had been a peripheral music business figure, a guy who wrote songs for Justin Bieber and remained on the shelf at Def Jam, until he linked up with the Odd Future crew and released the Nostalgia Ultra mixtape. He was an insider-turned-outsider who became every insider’s favorite. But Frank Ocean had never been famous before his big makeover. Zayn was famous. But crucially and unfortunately, he was also not Frank Ocean.
Nevertheless, the hype was real. In 2015, the world was full of young cool-kid R&B singers making big leaps, and Zayn Malik was positioned to become one of the biggest. In November 2015, before he’d released a note of solo music, Zayn was the subject of a splashy FADER cover story, in the late stretch of the period when it meant something to be on the cover of that cool-hunter magazine. In the accompanying interview, Zayn talked about how he never really felt like he fit in One Direction: “There was never any room for me to experiment creatively in the band. If I would sing a hook or a verse slightly R&B, or slightly myself, it would always be recorded 50 times until there was a straight version that was pop, generic as fuck, so they could use that version. Whenever I would suggest something, it was like it didn’t fit us.” In his solo music, Zayn wouldn’t have to worry about fitting into the mold. We would get the real him.
“Pillowtalk” was the first taste of solo Zayn Malik. Zayn’s debut single wasn’t one of the tracks that he recorded with Malay. Instead, the song came from earlier songwriting sessions with Michael and Anthony Hannides, two British brothers who’d worked with UK R&B artists like McLean and former Number Ones artist Jay Sean. The Hannides brothers got songwriting credits on “Pillowtalk.” So did producer Levi Lennox, who’d worked with buzzy American rapper Angel Haze and UK duo Krept & Konan, and session guitarist Joe Garrett.
You’re never going to believe this, but “Pillowtalk” is a song about fucking. Zayn had been working on his own music during his One Direction downtime, landing a few songwriting credits for the group, but he clearly relished his first opportunity to get outwardly sexy on wax. This is a cliché for a reason — the onetime teen idol who aims for adult seriousness by singing about sex. On “Pillowtalk,” Zayn describes the act like he’s letting out his animal side: “Reckless behavior! A place that is so pure! So dirty and raw!” He doesn’t sound much like an animal, but I kind of like how he sings “reckless” as “reck-a-less.”
“Pillowtalk” describes the act of sex as a means to seek transcendence and as a site of conflict. Zayn’s bed, he insists, is “a paradise, and it’s a warzone.” Cool. One thing that you don’t get from “Pillowtalk” is the sense that Zayn is having any fun at all. That’s one thing that separates “Pillowtalk” from “Pillow Talk,” the horny proto-disco hit that future Sugar Hill Records co-founder Sylvia Robinson took to #3 in 1973. “Pillow Talk,” all moans and coos, isn’t a great song, but it least communicates the idea that sex can be a good time. (It’s a 5.) I don’t get that from “Pillowtalk.”
Instead, “Pillowtalk” gives us sex as pretentious would-be poetry. Zayn is a capable singer who radiates sensuality and who clearly relishes getting the space to explore it, but his come-ons, if that’s even what they’re supposed to be, don’t register as come-ons. Levi Lennox’s production, with its martial drum programming and aqueous synths, sounds like Weeknd runoff. There’s no memorable hook, no image or turn of phrase that might stick in your head. Instead, everything churns away with the antiseptic gleam common to so much of that era’s critic-pandering pop. It’s a forgettable three-and-a-half-minute ride in a sleekly built Uber. On first listen, I thought “Pillowtalk” was not bad but nothing special. On repeated exposure, the not-specialness became more and more glaring.
Zayn released “Pillowtalk” under his first name only. (He also spelled it in all caps, but I’m not doing that.) The song got a big media push, and we were clearly supposed to look at Zayn as a fully-formed star, materializing right in front of us. But “Pillowtalk” is nowhere near the introduction that “What Makes You Beautiful” was. It’s a big, empty, calorie-free blank, an early sign that Zayn had nothing much to say.
You can get that sense from the video, too. There’s no story or hook to the “Pillowtalk” clip. Instead, director Bouha Kazmi shoots Zayn and his then-girlfriend, the supermodel Gigi Hadid, making out in a blank CGI void. Future Queen & Slim star Jodie Turner-Smith is in there as a dancer, too. At one, point, Turner-Smith opens her legs, and hey, what do you know, there’s a pink flower right there. Very artful. Extremely subtle. I can’t believe anyone actually thought they were making something here. I’m bored just thinking about it.
Naturally, “Pillowtalk” debuted at #1 in both the US and the UK, as well as a bunch of other countries. Over here, “Pillowtalk” sold a few hundred thousand downloads in its first week. You can’t discount the curiosity factor here. “Pillowtalk” was our first glimpse at a post-One Direction future. Just as naturally, though, the song only got a single week at #1 over here. In its second week, “Pillowtalk” plunged to #7. The song lingered in the top 10 for a while, even getting a bump when Zayn’s Mind Of Mine album came out. Former Number Ones artist Lil Wayne rapped on a “Pillowtalk” remix — a nice thing to do, considering that the Mind Of Mine cover art shamelessly bit the tatted-up baby photo that Wayne used on his Carter III cover. That remix probably helped the song’s chart longevity, too. Ultimately, the “Pillowtalk” single went quintuple platinum — not a failure by any means, but not the blockbuster that I’m sure some people envisioned, either.
“Pillowtalk” did what it did because of the conversation swirling around Zayn and the end of One Direction, not because of anything especially compelling about the song itself. It’s notable, I suppose, that Zayn managed to reach #1 on his own. One Direction never did that as a group. But One Direction cranked out albums with mechanistic efficiency, and that might’ve kept any of their singles from feeling like events. In a pop landscape increasingly dependent on events, “Pillowtalk” qualified merely by existing. Zayn’s follow-up single “Like I Would” was not an event. It’s a better, catchier song than “Pillowtalk,” though it’s still not great. Without the boost of event status, that single peaked at #55.
Zayn’s album Mind Of Mine — terrible title, by the way — has a few minutes where he sings in Urdu, his father’s language, which is kind of cool. Mostly, though, it’s expensively turgid, full of half-desperate grasps at relevance and profundity. The album debuted at #1 and eventually went platinum, but it did not launch Zayn into he solo-star stratosphere. Instead, Zayn has only managed one more big American hit, and he can thank someone else for that one. In 2017, Zayn and Taylor Swift, someone who’s been in this column lots of times, teamed up to record the duet “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” for the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack, and it peaked at #2. (It’s a 6.)
Zayn has released three more albums since Mind Of Mine, and none of them set the world on fire. The title of his 2017 follow-up Icarus Falls feels a little poignant, and its biggest hit, the Sia collab “Dusk Till Dawn,” peaked at #44. It mostly just sounds like a Sia song. (Sia will appear in this column pretty soon.) In 2021, Zayn released Nobody Is Listening, and that title definitely feels poignant. Lead single “Better” peaked at #89, and Zayn hasn’t been back on the Hot 100 since then.
For the most part, Zayn’s career has fallen into C-list purgatory. He’s made songs with people like Timbaland and Nicki Minaj, but those songs haven’t been hits. He recorded a whole new version of “A Whole New World” with a singer named Zhavia Ward for the 2019 live-action Aladdin remake, but nobody needed that. He doesn’t tour. As far as I can tell, he’s never even performed “Pillowtalk” live. Zayn got dropped from his RCA deal in 2021. He found a new home at Mercury, and I’m only just now learning that he released an album called Room Under The Stairs earlier this year. At some point, he got a scalp tattoo.
Zayn stayed with his “Pillowtalk” video co-star Gigi Hadid for a few years, and their daughter was born in 2020. A year later, Hadid’s mother Yolanda accused Zayn of shoving her into a dresser during an argument. He denied it, she pressed charges, and he pleaded no contest to harassment, getting a probation sentence. Zayn and Hadid aren’t together anymore. Lots of people who have appeared in this column have done lots of things worse than that, but that ain’t great.
The Zayn Malik solo career hasn’t worked out the way lots of people hoped or maybe expected. For a minute, he had juice, but he didn’t have songs. He also didn’t seem to have the kind of outgoing personality that’s almost always a job requirement for pop stars. I have no doubt that there will be a One Direction reunion one day, but I wonder whether Zayn will participate. I wonder if they’ll want him to.
GRADE: 3/10
BONUS BEATS: Early on, it seemed like Zayn really wanted to be like Frank Ocean. That never happened, but the closest that he ever came was when Odd Future mastermind Tyler, The Creator decided to do his own “Pillowtalk” remix, reworking the track completely and making a goofball webcam video for his version. Naturally, the Tyler remix is a lot better than the real song. Here’s the video:
(Tyler, The Creator’s highest-charting single, the 2019 Playboi Carti collab “Earfquake,” peaked at #13.)
The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal The History Of Pop Music is out now on paperback via Hachette Books. I’m seeing the pain, seeing the pleasure, seeing the… light enjoyment, probably? Buy the book here.
