Zayn review, Nobody’s Listening: A blancmange of watered-down R&B

Zayn Malik never really wanted to be in One Direction. “I just gave it a go because it was there at the time,” he once said of his former band, who were put together on The X Factor and went on to sell 70 million records worldwide. In 2015, when it became clear that there was little room for his own musical input, he “realised it wasn’t for me”, and left to carve out his own musical identity. Six years and three solo albums later, he’s barely even picked up the chisel.

Zayn’s new album, Nobody’s Listening, follows 2018’s Icarus Falls – an ambitious, 27-track concept album inspired by Greek myth that reached No 77 in the UK charts. Less than half that length, Nobody’s Listening is described in a press release as his “most personal project to date” – it arrives a few months after the birth of his first daughter with partner Gigi Hadid – but it offers no narrative to speak of and only brief glimpses of personality. It is a blancmange of watered-down R&B, each song sliding listlessly into the next; this is playlist music for the last few hazy hours of a house party, when nobody can be bothered to get up and press skip.

The most daring moment comes at the very beginning. Over a Portishead-like instrumental – keyboard; double bass; distant, lethargic snares – Zayn delivers a spoken-word piece in which he declares: “Whatever the calamity, I did this for myself/ F*** all of your fantasies.” While it lacks the ingenuity and sinister edge of something like Portishead's “Glory Box”, it is an intriguing beginning. Soon after, that intrigue falls off a cliff.

Most of the lyrics feel insultingly half-arsed. “Imma do all the things,” he sings on “Vibez”, alongside overwrought, over-warped instrumentals, “Type of things that happen in your dreams.” “I need you in my life,” he warbles on “When Love’s Around”, “You could be my wife, for real.” Musically, that twitchy galactic number is one of the record’s highlights, thanks in part to a welcome vocal cameo from The Internet’s Syd.

Zayn had the best voice in One Direction – sullen, caramel, raspy – but he doesn’t do it justice here. On “Better”, with its Frank Ocean funk and distorted guitars, he has an affected mumble, as if he’s just had a tooth pulled and the local anaesthetic hasn’t worn off yet. With the occasional squeak of a finger sliding up a fret, “Connexion” is a welcome break from the overproduced distortion that swaddles the rest of the album, but his falsetto – which has been so crisp and effective in the past – sounds like a shriek. Perhaps the best this album has to offer is “Sweat”, with its Phil Collins drum fill and a chorus that comes dangerously close to being fun.

During his time in One Direction, because of his relative reticence, Zayn was often dubbed the “mysterious” one. Maybe it’s time to accept that he might not have much to say.