If Nobody is Listening to Zayn Malik, it’s because he has nothing mature to say

Zayn Malik, no doubt, dreams of the day he can release an album without the weight of having been in the world’s biggest boy-band resting on his shoulders. The first to break from the One Direction machine and strike out alone, Malik’s first solo outing was much anticipated, but his debut album, 2016’s RnB pivot Mind of Mine – or, to use the official MSN-Messenger-username styling, “MiNd Of MiNe” – was hampered by immaturity.

Its follow-up, 2018’s Icarus Falls, was a bloated, disinterested concept album that went on for 90 minutes as Malik sought to stretch his creative wings. The album spent one week in the British charts, at number 77. So can we be surprised that the now-mononymous ex-boy-bander has named his third solo record Nobody is Listening?

Opening with a spoken-word track, Calamity, you can hear Zayn straining to take control. He goes on, over a contemplative piano line, like a bank advert catering to “the youth”, talking about... well, it’s not exactly clear. The wrongs that have been wrought against him? The paths he has taken? The paths he is yet to take?

It’s not until two minutes in that we get our first whispers of his remarkable singing voice, beaming in through an open window from somewhere down the street, and sighing, “Nobody, nobody is listening to me.” You can’t help but suspect what he actually means is, “Nobody understands what I’m trying to say.”

Zayn’s sex references are as numerous and puerile as ever. “I want to bed you,” he sings at one point, while Windowsill is a whole song about “f---ing on the windowsill” and, occasionally, a countertop. Subtlety? Zayn doesn’t know her. (What do we expect from a man who launched his solo career with the opening line “Climb on board”?) But, teen vernacular aside, Windowsill is actually a song to which I find myself returning; its louche Soundcloud rap feel is reminiscent of Swedish rapper Yung Lean, and it’s a direction that Zayn should explore more, mixing the warmth of his voice with synth vistas and trap beats. It suits him.

Anyway, he’s happy, we can assume. He’s in love, his sex life is apparently healthy (if crashingly unsubtle) and his only real problem is that, well, nobody is listening. We can lay some of that blame at his own feet: Zayn has always employed a detached style, a kind of aloof attitude – “oh, this old thing? It was just something I had lying around” – to his solo music. It’s a risky move when you’re releasing RnB influenced records that have very little dynamism, and Nobody is Listening retains that one-speed mid-tempo across its 11 tracks.

There are glimmers of interest that give this record a spark that was missing from his first two releases. Connexion, which is not a song that I would describe as sounding good, employs Zayn’s trademark falsetto in a more forceful way than we’ve heard from him before. It disintegrates into a distorted, alien-like melee, a clear indication of Zayn testing the walls of the box he’s sung himself into. Sweat, meanwhile, is another song about sex that misses the mark of actually sounding sexy, but it’s nonetheless a great homage to Phil Collins (that classic signifier of all things sensual) with its pre-chorus drum fill.

Zayn employs the talents of Syd, from the super-cool collective The Internet, on When Love’s Around; it actually feels like a coherent song, with its Caribbean beat and two artists complementing each other perfectly. And the final song of the record, River Road, feels remarkable after such a wash of an album; singing alone over a solo guitar line, Zayn wavers over its post-chorus refrain of “Don’t you ever hope for something else?” while growling through the choruses and mourning through the verses. It has the same feel as Rihanna’s Love on the Brain (though not the power): surprisingly affecting and raw, after the smoke and mirrors of the rest of the work.

Though the materials accompanying Nobody is Listening insist that it’s Zayn’s most personal record to date, and the one over which he’s had the most personal control, it’s hard to find much trace of him here. What is he actually saying? On Unfuckwitable, he sings a telling line: “Me is all I need to be inspired / my vibe and my life are all my design.” Maybe, to push himself forward, what he actually needs to do is look beyond his own circle.

It’s okay to be inspired by art and experience outside your own personal realm, Zayn. Control over your music needn’t come at the expense of closing your mind.

Nobody is Listening is out on RCA Records now