Zayn Malik ‘Tried to Reach Out’ to One Direction, Hasn’t Heard Back

Ever insistent on growing the gap that already exists in excess between he and his former bandmates, Zayn Malik has once more spoken out about what sounds like a truly excruciating time spent traveling the globe with One Direction.

In his recent cover story with L'Uomo Vogue, Zayn not only expresses the desire to distance himself from the band's creative efforts, but he shatters the illusion that there's any friendliness left there at all. Zayn admits that while he initially tried to keep in touch with the rest of the group, his phone calls and texts went unanswered. While this, undoubtedly, stings for the singer, he says what hurt above all else was the quartet's insistence to the media that things were fine between all five of them when they clearly weren't.

He said, "The truth is I haven’t spoken to any of the boys at all really, I spoke to Liam a bit and that’s just the way it is. I did try to reach out to a couple of people and they didn’t get back to me, but then publicly, when they were asked questions about it, said that they’d spoken to me and that we were friends. But that’s not the case, I tried to reach out and be their friend but they haven’t even replied to any of my calls or texts."

Despite how things might have ended between Zayn and the rest of the group, he maintains that, music-wise, there's "no competition between me and the boys, I didn’t leave for any reasons of animosity, I just wanted to do me."

And doing Zayn is a far cry from doing One Direction. While his time with the group often felt like work, he says writing "music that feels honest to me, it doesn’t feel like work. It really is relaxing to me."

As for the "mysterious" moniker ascribed to him during his time with 1D, Zayn says it stemmed from an inherent need to shut down: "To be honest, I mentally and physically distanced myself from what I was doing creatively because I didn’t want any part of it really. It didn’t feel like I was really being me."

And for those of you hopeful for a collaboration on Zayn's forthcoming solo album, don't hold your breath. He said, "I just want this album to be about me and me standing on my own two feet. I’ve sung with four other voices for over four years now so I want to hear myself, alone for once."

Read the full interview over on L'Uomo Vogue.

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