Let Life Take Its Time

Zayn “Truth”

It’s funny that although I’m pretty familiar with One Direction, I don’t think I had any sense of Zayn Malik as a singer until he released his first solo singles. One Direction songs are built so the five guys all sorta blur together, to the point that most of them sound like there’s only one lead singer, and the backup vocals have more or less the same timbre. Left to his own devices, Malik strays from the high-gloss rock of 1D and gravitates towards a very Frank Ocean-ish brand of R&B. It suits him well, particularly when he moves towards the extremes of his voice – the deliberately sexy early morning rasp he slips into on “Truth;” the stunning falsetto he uses on the chorus of “It’s You.” Those two songs are not coincidentally the best on his debut record, which suggests that he should probably lean into those strengths later on. “Truth” is particularly well-written, and though it has some of the best hooks on the album, it’s decidedly mellow and low-key. A lot of Zayn’s brand is projecting a very potent yet chill hyper-masculinity, and “Truth” conveys that better than anything else he’s recorded. It’s a sound he can grow into, for sure.

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