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Zayn Malik has revealed that he's not in touch with his former One Direction bandmates, and said that the band's fans are "more intelligent" than the music.
Malik quit his job as one fifth of the biggest boyband in the world back in March - but in a statement, he insisted that he still had "four friends for life."
Now though, he's not so sure. "The truth of it is," he told Billboard, "you can think one thing about a situation and the total opposite can happen. I had every intention of remaining friends with everybody, but I guess certain phone numbers have changed and I haven’t received calls from a lot of people. I've reached out to a few of them and not got a reply. Certain people have pride issues, but it’s stuff you overcome in time."
Malik, who is currently working on a solo album, has made several not-so-complimentary remarks about his former band in the ten months since he quit. Last year, he told The Fader, "There was never any room for me to experiment creatively in the band. If I would sing a hook or a verse slightly R&B, or slightly myself, it would always be recorded 50 times until there was a straight version that was pop, generic as fuck, so they could use that version."
In his new Billboard cover interview, Malik has expanded on those comments. "We weren’t allowed to say certain things, or word [lyrics] the way we would want to," he explained. "I’d sit and wonder, 'If the fans knew how it worked, what would they think?' My argument was: People are more intelligent than that. They want to hear what’s real, so why don’t we write some stuff that we’re actually going through?"
He insisted, "I genuinely enjoyed [the band] and did whatever I could to be myself within that, but it’s just not where I sit as a musician. The other boys' taste was generally indie rock. It's good music, but I don't fuck with it. That was never cool where I was from."
Malik signed as a solo artist to RCA in July. His currently untitled debut solo album is due for release in early 2016.
