Zayn - Nobody Is Listening

Pitchfork 56

Read Dani Blum’s review of the album.

The Guardian 0

(RCA)
The former One Directioner has retreated to the bedroom on this impressively assured set of R&B booty calls

Pop music is not an easy place to be a reluctant, brooding antihero. In a world where everyone is doing jazz hands, strutting their stuff and projecting to the back of the hall, Zayn Malik has long been more wallflower material – less eager to please, more introverted and more sceptical than the job description called for.

Nearly six years since he bowed out from One Direction, precipitating their indefinite hiatus, the mononymous Zayn remains something of a cipher. Despite being three albums and umpteen paparazzi shots into a solo career, he’s a vanishing act. Nobody Is Listening doesn’t change that. As Zayn himself would have it, he’s perennially “in a world of [his] own”.

Happily, Zayn’s libido is not the toxic kind that has you rolling your eyes