Without Zayn, One Direction become four goofy white guys shouting Brad Nelson

I’m a fan of One Direction’s music. It’s very efficient pop music that doubles as ecstatic, funny, and emotionally complex arena rock. Becoming a fan of One Direction’s music has inadvertently and perhaps inevitably drawn my focus toward the individual members of the band, my favourite of which was initially Zayn Malik, who has now left them in order to live the life of a “normal 22-year-old”.

Malik’s function in the band was in some ways obscure or invisible. He didn’t write for the band often, and when he did he usually appeared among a galaxy of co-writers on the group’s most gelatinous ballads (Louis Tomlinson and Liam Payne are responsible for the majority of the group’s internal songwriting). His modesty and the economy of his expression gave him the reputation of the “quiet one” and the “mysterious one” among the boy band taxonomies. 

..

In the One Direction documentary, This Is Us, he features minimally compared to the rest of the group; when the band takes a break from their aggressive and interminable touring schedule, Malik is depicted in isolation, in a room he’s decorated entirely with graffiti. In another scene, he streams by the camera on a Segway. His smile seems to materialise slowly and almost imperceptibly across his face, composing itself atom by atom.

He’s also frankly gorgeous, all sculpted, glossy angles. When I look at the structure of his face I am reminded of a geometric prism, or the interior of a geode. These features were identifiable even early in their careers when the other four members appeared to be one elastic teenage face. His hair is also shapely, shimmering and kind of incandescently dark, as if permanently enhanced by a follow spot. Its styling never quite collapsed into the strange vertical animals emerging from the skulls of Tomlinson or Niall Horan. An enduring image of One Direction is of Malik in the Night Changes video, the soft and intricate cascade of his hair merging with a dense knot of spaghetti.

He was one of the more accomplished vocalists of the group, exhibiting the widest range. He mostly inhabited a silvery, full-bodied tenor, similar to but more sharp and precise than Harry Styles’ smoky warble. At one point in This Is Us, while on tour, he is extracted from sleep by songwriter/producer Julian Bunetta to record the bridge of Best Song Ever, into which Malik compressed a tenor and falsetto vocal. His solos, especially on the ballad You & I, could be dazzling, his voice moving with grace through impressive aerial designs, and he contributed body and dimension to the group’s choruses.