Where are all my One Direction stans at?
I know that Zayn Malik being the first to leave the group was major breaking news, but we got to see a lot of promising solo careers come soon after, so that’s something, right?
Even though he left One Direction several years ago, he’s still out here spilling all the tea for us.
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t pay attention to One Direction back when they appeared on “The X Factor.”
How crazy is it that they got their start eight years ago? It honestly feels like just yesterday.
Before any of us could brace ourselves, “What Makes You Beautiful” was stuck in our heads.
That song was a real bop, and also the moment I knew that Harry Styles was my one true love.
Even when he went through that long hair phase, he was still adorbs.
And when he went through that even longer hair phase, I was okay with it.
You know what I’m talking about.
As time went on, we all picked our favorite band members.
I know I said that Harry was my favorite, but for others, it was Niall, Liam, Louis, and Zayn.
We were all shook to our core when Zayn announced that he was leaving 1D in 2015.
No, seriously. People’s worlds ended. You would have thought that he vanished from this earth altogether or something, it was wild.
At first, things seemed to be pretty amicable.
“I am leaving because I want to be a normal 22-year-old who is able to relax and have some private time out of the spotlight.I know I have four friends for life in Louis, Liam, Harry and Niall. I know they will continue to be the best band in the world,” Zayn’s statement read .
But then news broke that Zayn was spotted at a recording studio, and the remaining members of the band weren’t impressed.
“We were angry at first but then it was just a bit more disappointed. We wish him the best of luck with whatever he gets up to,” Independent reported after the boys spoke out about it.
Since then, Zayn went on to release his first single as a solo artist.
“Pillowtalk” was a hit, and it received critical acclaim from the likes of Forbes , Digital Spy and Billboard .
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Clearly this was good news for Zayn, who had made the right decision by venturing out on his own.
And since then, all of the other band members have put out singles as solo artists, and we’re not mad about it.
Now, it’s been a hot minute since we’ve heard any news from the One Direction world, and understandably so.
It’s clearly been all about Ariana Grande lately, there’s no time for Harry and Naill’s dramatic ballads.
Recently, however, Zayn sat down with “Vogue” for a pretty personal interview.
He got considerably candid about his experiences with the band.
“We went from theatres, to arenas, to stadiums.”
“There was never any sort of bridge between. Just boom, boom, boom,” he says about his rapidly growing career with One Direction.
It’s no surprise that because of the group’s massive success, Zayn had a very demanding schedule.
“I guess that kind of progression to any mind – but especially when you’re 17, 18 – it kind of affects you a little bit. People take it different ways – especially when there are five different personalities. The relationships had broken apart.”
And he admits that even after five years with 1D, he walked away from the group without a single friend.
“I have always been a bit like that, though – always a bit of an island. I don’t like to confer with too many people,” he explained.
He even admitted that he doesn’t speak with any of the band members.
“Nah. I ain’t spoke to any of them for a long time, to be honest with you. That’s just the way it is.”
It would have been understandable with busy schedules making it hard to meet up, but Zayn revealed that there was more to the story.
He explained that there were things that happened, and things that were said after he made the decision to leave the group.
“Snide things. Small things that I would never have expected,” he explained.
This is some piping hot tea, and it’s actually pretty sad to hear that the boys he spent so much time with turned their backs like that.
Thankfully, Zane has his relationship with Gigi Hadid keeping him content.
He explained that she helps get things together for him, and he leans on her a lot, and added that he enjoys living his semi-isolated life the way he does.
Of course, Zayn isn’t the first celeb to feel the negative effects of being the first to leave a group or a band.
And I seriously doubt that he’ll be the last.
We can’t forget that back in 2016, Camila Cabello was the first to leave Fifth Harmony.
When the group released their initial statement on Twitter , they had wished Camila well, and announced that the remaining four of them would continue on together.
However, the “wishing her well” part didn’t seem to last long.
If you remember back to the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, you’ll remember them famously “yanking” a fifth member off the stage, symbolizing Camila’s exit.
Camila opened up about the incident, and wasn’t happy about it.
“It definitely hurt my feelings. I wasn’t expecting it, I wasn’t prepared for it — especially because at that point I’d moved on from it. I was just like, ‘What? Why?’” she explained to Billboard .
Similar to how Zayn flourished after leaving 1D, Camila did the same.
She dropped a fire album, her hit “Havana” burned up the charts, and she was the opening act for Taylor Swift’s stadium tour.
Not too shabby.
Anyway, it’s pretty unfourtate that the 1D boys didn’t stay friends with Zayn.
Mostly because it means that the chances of there being a One Direction reunion in a decade or so is pretty slim at this point.
