Photography by Dennis Leupold
Styled by Jan-Michael Quammie
Zayn Malik has long known how to use his voice.
His sharp, full-bodied tenor helped One Direction become one of the world’s best-selling boy bands of all time. One of the most visible pop stars of Asian descent working outside Asia, he sang in Urdu, the lingua franca of Pakistan, on his 2016 solo debut Mind of Mine. At Valentino’s Fall/Winter 2024 show last January, he wore a suit emblazoned with the words WE'RE SO OLD, WE HAVE BECOME YOUNG AGAIN in all caps—a wink, perhaps, to the fact that, at the age of 31, Malik is now a pop veteran with a decade and a half of experience in the public eye under his belt. (Ever the family man, he attended the Paris shows in January with his mom in tow.)
But on his new album, Room Under The Stairs, the solo artist reveals his most surprising act yet: himself. Written and recorded independently over six years, mostly from the seclusion of his farm in rural Pennsylvania, the record trades slick studio wizardry for a stripped-down acoustic sound, confessional lyrics about the messiness of love and parenthood, and the many existential questions that come with entering one’s fourth decade. (Malik shares a three-year-old daughter, Khai, with his former girlfriend, model Gigi Hadid.) In one of his first interviews in years (he appeared on Alex Cooper’s hit podcast “Call Her Daddy” last summer), the press-shy singer discusses his daughter’s budding vocal talents, working with the legendary music producer Dave Cobb (who has worked with Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Jason Isbell, and more), and the peace of mind that comes with knowing that no one out there knows what they’re doing.
ALEX HAWGOOD: You’ve spent the past few years writing songs for your latest album at your home in rural Pennsylvania. What is your creative process like working from home?
ZAYN MALIK: When I get time to myself, I spend the majority of my time in the studio—I’ve built, like, a cabin studio. Even when I release a new record, I’m always thinking a few years ahead. That’s kind of how this album was created. It overlapped with working on some stuff that I was going to put on my previous record, Nobody Is Listening. I’m able to do it every day, because that’s been how I spend a lot of time here on the farm—just relaxing and spending time with my daughter.
AH: Another creative space that you share with your daughter is your vegetable garden.
ZM: Yeah, I love gardening. I got into it when I moved out here, probably about seven years ago. And now I get to share that experience with her, because I’ve gotten a bit better at things. My crops are actually edible and usable. So it’s really fun to take her out to the garden and show her the vegetable patch and all the different things in the garden, you know, what she can eat and what she can’t. She’s really interested in it. She loves raw vegetables. I’ll just find her, like, munching on a piece of broccoli, which is a parent’s worst nightmare, you know? [Laughs.] Whatever way you can get veggies into your kids, right?
AH: Having lived in New York for the past two decades myself, I have always found rural Pennsylvania to be some of the most beautiful landscapes on the East Coast.
ZM: I’m quite an outdoorsy person—I did fall in love with the landscapes and serenity. You get a lot of time to really think about things. And when I found out that my partner at the time was pregnant, I pretty quickly made up my mind that this would be a great place to raise a child because there's so much for her to do here. So, we do spend a lot of time outside. We do the gardening. She likes to camp with me. We cook outside. We fish a little bit. And she’s really into it, too, so it makes it fun. Hopefully, we can create some amazing memories here.
AH: The thing about kids is that they love tents.
ZM: I have a pretty neat setup at the property. I have a cool tent now, whereas before I used to have a “hunting tent;” I think that is what it was called. The reason it’s called a “hunting tent” is because you can, I think, have a chimney attached to it and cook from fires inside of it. If people shoot a buck or whatever, they’ll skin it and then smoke out the meat inside the tent. Now, that’s not what I used it for, because I’m not into killing animals or really getting down with hunting at all. I used to just hang out there, relaxing and playing a bit of guitar with the fire burning. But now we have a better one that my friend got me for my birthday. I spend a lot of time in there with my daughter, and she loves it.
AH: Your new album is titled Room Under The Stairs. Does that refer to a specific space where you recorded in your house?
ZM: Yeah, pretty much. It’s that simple. There’s a dark horror movie that I watched when I was growing up called The People Under the Stairs. I probably watched it when I was younger than I
should have. I always thought the idea of being under the stairs had a powerful sentiment to it, and I ended up coincidentally recording most of my record in a shoe cupboard under the stairs. So I was like, This is perfect.
AH: You mentioned living surrounded by nature allows you the ability to be contemplative. I definitely picked up on that from “What I Am,” the first single. The song’s lyrics are both self-aware—”Just take me for what I am”—and self-questioning—”Am I crazy? Am I foolish? Am I stupid for playing these games with you?”
ZM: I think that’s a common thread amongst us all. We’re not really sure of anything, you know? There is this crazy idea that everybody knows what they’re doing when they wake up in the morning. The truth of it is, in reality, nobody really has a clue what’s going on. We’re all just kind of guessing. Am I crazy? Am I stupid? Am I foolish? I think most human beings feel that way. I don’t know, correct me if I’m wrong, but...
AH: Well, certainly the lyric “If I told you I loved you, would you say that it’s fucked up?” paints a whole world in a few words.
ZM: Oh, that line can be taken many different ways. I think that’s the beauty of music. Whatever it means to the person who’s listening to it at that time, it can mean that. For me, in that moment, what I’m talking about is that I’ve moved on from this situation. But if I told you that I loved you, would you say it’s fucked up at this point? It’s funny that you picked those words out, because I
was listening to the song the other day and those are the words that really stand out to me. I feel like a lot of people can relate to that, feeling like you’re in love with somebody and not knowing if it’s right for you to be in love with that person.
AH: It sounds like you had most of the album already sketched out before you started working
with Dave Cobb, who you co-produced the album with.
ZM: I could tell straight away from speaking to him that obviously he’s a musical genius. He pretty much understood everything, from the intention behind why I was trying to do things to the emotion that needed to be required, and just played it. It was a pretty seamless process, us collaborating musically. He did change up a couple of things, and said to me, “Oh, do you mind if I put this here and I change the order there?” He’s way more structurally aware and musically educated than I am. I’m just a kid that came out of school who was kind of guessing and singing karaoke.
AH: Cobb has this to say about your collaboration: “I feel as if this record is removing the glass from his spirit directly to his fans.”
ZM: It’s a really poetic way to put it. The intention behind the record—why I did it the way I went about it—is that I tried to keep everything super-minimalistic and raw, as if it’s a conversation with me rather than this glossed-up version of whatever sounds appealing to the public. For many reasons, some of my music in the past just felt a bit glossed over, like a little bit too perfect and affected by the computer. Standing behind it as a performance never felt like something I wanted to do. You know. I’m not gonna give you a full dance break and get down like that. It is just not really my vibe.
"The truth of it is, in reality, nobody really has a clue what's going on. We're all just kind of guessing."
AH: I know some of the songs touch upon being a parent. Does your daughter ever end up in the recording studio with you?
ZM: It’s past her bedtime. She doesn’t come to the studio, but she’s starting to understand that Baba sings and Baba does music. She asks everybody, whenever there’s a song on the radio, “Is my Baba singing?” But in front of me, she kind of gets shy about it. Khai has a lot of natural ability herself already. I know, it sounds ridiculous because she’s three, but her retention for language, especially when it’s formatted in a musical sense to her, has been amazing. She'll remember every lyric of every song that she likes. She remembers chord progressions and notes. She can do runs that have, like, three, four notes already. I look forward to seeing what she’s going to be capable of doing as she gets older.
AH: Raising Khai around nature and music sounds like pretty amazing parenting, if you ask me.
ZM: I appreciate that. I’m just trying to keep her grounded and enjoying the Earth, rather than all the noise that comes with it.
HAIR Mike Webb
GROOMING Dana Boyer
CREATIVE CONSULTANT Mariana Suplicy
PRODUCTION Danielle Ellsworth
DIGITAL TECH Chelsea Marrin
SET DESIGN Jacob Burstein
PHOTO ASSISTANTS Ben Bitton and Travis Emery
SET ASSISTANT Kelli McGuire
STYLIST ASSISTANT Stephan LaCaval
