Because he was marketed as “the mysterious one”, Zayn is rarely given his due for speaking out on tough subjects. Read more: Zayn Has Never Looked Hotter Than In His New Music Video “It helps that she can get things together for me a little bit. “She’s super-organised and I’m really not,” he says gratefully at one point. His eyes positively swim with love every time her name is mentioned. “Everything is great,” he says of their relationship, which weathered a brief, if very public, split and reconciliation earlier this year (side note: are Instagram break-ups ever really break-ups?). Fashion week rages away in the city below, so his girlfriend Gigi Hadid pops in between catwalk commitments to cuddle and watch cooking programmes. “No” is still “nurr”, his best friend is his cousin, he loves his mum and, between visits to the recording studio, lives in semi-isolation getting lightly buzzed and playing Fortnite. As we sit in the rain drinking lagers, it becomes apparent that beyond the intense razzmatazz of his extraordinary facial symmetry is a quiet, thoughtful twentysomething man from the north of England, with flat Yorkshire vowels undiluted by fame. But he loves the view and has a young person’s pride in his fabulous property investment. “I’m domestic,” he says, dispatching his assistant to find some towels, because he wants to hang out on his roof in thick New York drizzle with only a fluoro-orange Air Jordan hoodie for protection. He also became an international figurehead for biracial success and anti-Islamophobia. He moved to the States, clocked up billions of streams, dueted with Taylor Swift, shot campaigns for Versus and endured the peculiar menace of having a dozen paparazzi camped outside his door every day. For a brief moment, Zayn was the YouTube generation’s answer to John Lennon (or Geri Halliwell, at least), devastating millions of fans across the globe with his shotgun exit, then thrilling them a year later with a record-breaking, Billboard-topping debut album. That was a year after he fled One Direction, in March 2015, when the world’s most successful group was at the hormone-addled apex of its fame. Though, as per his instructions, I must dutifully point out that it’s a simple “Zayn” these days, ever since the 25-year-old boyband survivor from Bradford with perfect hair and poptastic falsetto dispensed with his surname and went fully Cher. Welcome to the wonderful – if somewhat half-baked – world of Zayn Malik.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |