Zayn Malik and his fiancée, Perrie Edwards (of Little Mix), went on a romantic vacation last week. She Instagrammed these pics to let everyone know that Zayn is perfectly okay after all of the drama and fallout after he escaped One Direction. The fans of 1D still aren’t okay. Madame Tussauds even started using a tissue attendant after fans kept bursting into tears around the group’s wax statues. The Zayn effect may spread to another British pop act. Sony execs are reportedly concerned that Zayn may pull Perrie away from Little Mix. That’s interesting, considering how fans accused Perrie of being the Yoko of One Direction.
Countless 1D stories continue to surface, and I’ll cover some of them in a moment. First up — the four remaining 1D members gave their first post-Zayn interview to The Sun:
Liam Paine: “It’s been a tough few weeks, probably the toughest since the band was formed five years ago. We’re gutted that Zayn chose to leave, but now after a few performances as a four piece, we’re feeling confident and are determined to carry on stronger than ever.”
Niall Horan: “We’re looking forward to seeing all our fans on tour this year. The fans are amazing. They are so loyal. All we want to do is make them proud and return their faith in us with a brilliant tour and an amazing new album.”
Louis Tomlinson: “All four of us are 100 per cent committed to staying in One Direction and we want to thank the fans for being so incredible during this time. We have so much more we still want to achieve. Our gigs in South Africa were some of the biggest the country has ever seen, so it’s exciting for us to keep breaking records for British music worldwide.”
Harry Styles: “It’s very exciting to be working on our fifth album, it shows how incredible the fans have been. A huge thank you to them for everything they’ve done for us. All the love to them.”
[From The Sun]
They sound very chipper in this interview, but I suspect these young men are on a very tight leash. All non-PR reports say the 1D guys feel extremely betrayed by Zayn. We already talked about how Louis Tomlinson popped off on Twitter last week. Reports indicate that the other members are upset about losing their 5-piece bonus. Zayn’s departure prevents them from receiving an extra £2 million for completing the contract as a unit. There’s also the rumor that Zayn dumped the group via text message after he left the tour. If that last detail is true, that’s cold. And it turns out that Zayn’s unimpressive new demo is actually a rejected 1D song from over a year ago.
Here’s another vacation photo of Perrie and Zayn on vacation.
Photos courtesy of Zayn Malik/Perrie Edwards on Instagram & WENN
That photo of him kissing her cheek is not from Zayn’s real Instagram account. His is niazkilam. He RARELY posts anything. But Perrie did post that photo on her account a few days ago. They’re cute.
Yea they’re cute when he’s not cheating on her…
Yeah she is definitely doing damage control- she posted more pics in the last 5 days of him than in the entire time she’s had her account.
Oh sh*ttttt hahahah I just lol’d at that, it is what it is. Damn.
LOL Dani I’m here to please 😉
Great voice but still very douchey to leave mid-tour. Couldn’t he wait till the tour FINISHED and then do the I-wanna-be-a-normal-kid-but-really-I’m-lying-I-wanna-go-solo crap. His departure made the others look like fools, IMO.
I agree. A lot of kids paid for tickets thinking they were seeing him in the group.
What a jerk. Did he even think about the people who had paid to see them all? He only had to stick around for a little while longer, but doing this has people talking and wondering what he’s doing with his music and life. He’s not a real friend to these guys
Yeah, and he quit the leg of the tour where they were going to places they’d never been before. They’d never toured the Philippines, Indonesia, South Africa, UAE before. They’ve done Europe and the US multiple times. There’s likely an extra sting for those fans who lost out on seeing him in those new tour destinations.
That whole ’tissue attendant’ thing sounds absolutely hilarious! lol
It’s time to retire the phrase, “I’m gutted”. Celebrities liked to use it when another celebrity died.
Within this context, and after the Ad Nauseam use subsequent to loses, it has officially jumped the shark. But ‘jumped the shark’ jumped the shark, too.
Only it’s an extremely common turn of phrase for Brits. It’s really not just for deaths.
I think someone from inside management pumped this guy to flee. Maybe someone wasn’t getting his/ her fair share of 1D profits.
Anyway, I doubt he would have pulled it off on his own or with outside help exclusively. He doesn’t seem all that bright.
So he could not hold it together to finish 7 some odd concerts so you and you friends can earn an additional 2 million. That is a straight up di*k move.
To me, the Sun stories looked like a package deal: ‘exclusive’ interview from Zayn one week, ‘exclusive’ interview with the boys left over the next week, both behind the Sun’s paywall. I’m sure the Sun got a few more subscribers that way.
My guess is that this ‘exclusive’ was in return for not writing something else, as deals are often done in tabloid-land. Heaven knows what the Sun has on Zayn, but the general rumors are that he was fired because of his drug use and general unwillingness to perform or do promos, and the timing had a lot to do with a looming drug test before the concert in the Philippines. Some rumors suggest that he was fired with the full consent of the other guys, who were worried about him messing up the One Direction brand.
At any rate, I see that Louis and Harry stayed behind together in Dubai while the others flew back to England. Maybe they’ve decided to stop wasting their energy staying the closet now. What is management going to do, anyway – fire them at this point?
Harry has already flew to LA. I don’t believe Harry is gay, but even if you do, you cannot tell me you still think Louis and Harry are together. Maybe in the beginning, but they’re never together during breaks anymore. “Larry” is getting old.
Yes, I do think Harry is gay, and I think Louis is gay, and I strongly suspect Liam is bisexual. Management seems to have put a lot of effort into fixing up all three of them with fake and/or paid girlfriends. (Harry’s fix-ups, such as Nadine Leopold, seem to be in it for the publicity). Management leaves Niall alone, since he is pretty clearly straight.
I have no insights as to whether Harry or Louis were ever a couple or are still a couple, but at one point management did a lot of heavy lifting to keep them publicly separated at all times. No one seems to be bothering any more.
And if they are gay, so what? What’s with all the emphasis on their sexual orientation? They’re allowed to be whatever they want to be. It doesn’t make or break the band.
I think their sexual orientation is of interest because they’re being sold as personalities, not necessarily as musicians. There are a lot better singers and songwriters out there: what made One Direction interesting was the synthesis of five (now four) personalities. Whom you choose to love is a big part of who you are – see Taylor Swift, John Lennon, Beyoncé, Queen Victoria, the Duke of Windsor, or even Barack Obama, all of whose choice of partner (or partners) significantly affected their overall lives.
Dani says: It doesn’t make or break the band.
I have to disagree. If you are a young girl “in love” with a singer, and then find out he’s gay and would never marry you, you quit buying his records and going to his concerts. Now multiple that by a million (or more), and there’s a whole lot less fans who are spending their money on the singer.
I think @iheartjacksparrow has a point. We also have to keep in mind that homosexuality is still illegal in many countries, and certainly highly frowned upon in many of the highly religious countries they One Direction has just visited. Hell, it’s still highly frowned upon in largely non-religious countries like Russia and China. It doesn’t mean that One Direction would have been barred from giving concerts – I believe Elton John does just fine – but having one or two openly gay members could have caused problems for a young group that wants to fill stadiums.
The gay band member thing is a gimmick long used in Korean and Japanese boybands. You have to be blind not to see how management encouraged them to play this up especially in the beginning. The concerts and interviews are filled with sexual innuendo between pretty much every conceivable pairing. And far from hurt the brand, it helped. The act was sufficiently subtle to excuse as bromance but was suggestive enough to create a whole “shipping” sub-culture.
Why Louis and Harry had the most chemistry in the gimmick game is up for debate. I personally think it’s just one of those things. Harry always struck me as the awkward outsider (forget the PR spun image, just watch him with the others in the twit vids) and Louis is loud and carefree. I think Harry gravitated towards Louis as his way “in”. And they definitely clicked but in my view platonically not romantically. The romance stuff was an act.
See how they backtracked when they realized Larry was completely consuming the brand. See how it was always Louis pushing hardest against the rumor. Obviously coz the fan base viewed him as the effeminate one and his management knows that could be a problem after the band. He already has very poor prospects post-band and the key to gay rumors is that to be titillating there must exist some deniability. Larry stripped Louis of deniability. Harry on the other hand benefits from bi rumors. They make him seem edgy like Bowie plus it allows shippers to pick the sexuality they prefer on him. He never resisted the stories because he benefits from them.
But they say that he actually flied to L.A.
Anyways, if you are into Larry (which i am but believe they broke up) I highly recommend “freddieismyqueen” s latest youtube video.
Maybe it’s just me, but when your fiance gets caught cheating on you, aren’t you supposed to, you know, dump his sorry ass?
Unless Perrie is a paid player in this whole little charade as well, which some websites have suggested. There are a lot of publicity benefits for Little Mix in being associated with a much bigger act like One Direction, or even an ex-member of One Direction. Perrie could do a big angry breakup story, but after that there are….no stories. Making the relationship last as long as possible means more interest in Perrie. If she’s being paid too, I’m sure she can swallow her pride for a few more months.
This would have made sense while Zayn was still in the band… but now?
I think they’re young, and he left his band and all the temptation to be with her and make things right. At that age, I think that’s enough.
@Original Tessa, I’m looking at it from Perrie’s point of view: why would she stay? From Zayn’s point of view, I agree with you entirely. His cover story for his departure from the band was that he wanted to have a ‘normal’ life back in England with Perrie. If Perrie dumps him, he will look like a major loser. Even Management doesn’t want that: Zayn is under a solo contract to them. Thus, Perrie gets paid to stay around long enough until everyone’s attention has moved on to some other celebrity story.
On a similar topic, I noticed that the Elounor breakup was dumped into the bloody water surrounding the Zayn departure, and thus went very little noticed. I imagine she had wanted out for quite some time so she could start a career and live a more stable life, having graduated from university. Hard to have a regular job when you’re being called to all corners of the world to do cover-up publicity photos on a moment’s notice.
They don’t jump out at me as a couple in love more “woooo look at all this attention this is so much fun!” Whatever. They’re young and clearly loving fame. Why not milk it people are buying!
At some point, money isn’t a comfort for a stressful situation.
They could always replace him with another no-talent pretty-boy. After a while the girls probably wouldn’t even notice
They were together for 5 years. Okay, they probably established a nice relationship, but come on. It’s not as if they were this iconic band that had been around through decades of cultural change, suffering the ups and downs of different popular preferences for genre, through maturity and life changes like marriage or parenthood, illnesses or large artistic arguments. They were a manufactured boy band. The ‘gutted’ part is ridic. They are making a melodrama out of a molehill.
I don’t know. They’re young guys. They’ve essentially grown up together. The four remaining members were originally told Zayn would be returning.
Then they find out, from the label/management, that he’s quit the band mid-tour; in doing so he cost them each 2 million pounds; he didn’t have the professionalism, respect and maturity to tell them he’s quitting to their faces; and, then they find out he’s quitting to go solo in the very near future.
I think most people would feel pretty gutted if someone they considered a friend did that to them.
They would have also been more professional not going with this ‘gutted’ statement. But they are young, so there is that, where they can’t put a speed bump into perspective of serious long term life challenges.
He is the only hot guy in the entire group but what a douchey way to act. The remaining 1D interview sounds like a script straight out of central casting.
I agree – the ‘interview’ sounds like a statement written by PR people, not 21 or 23-year-old guys. I assume Simon Cowell and his team have closely managed this entire departure, and probably also wrote Zayn’s ‘interview’ last week. If Zayn was fired, as the rumors suggest, this is even more likely. The last thing anybody needs is a lawsuit.
It probably was. Simon and Co. likely took over real quick after Naughty Boy released the very rough demo, Naughty Boy started taunting Zayn’s fanbase and 1D fans, and Louis started tweeting in response to it all.
Louis was closest to Zayn. He was on that two week bender with him, including the night he supposedly slept with the two girls in one night. He has the dirt. Him pissed off, with free reign over Twitter, would be good gossip but PR messes to clean up.
Good point. I think Louis is a very interesting question at this point – why could he pass the drug tests and insurance tests when Zayn couldn’t? Granted, Louis still seems able to perform (or at least, sing the one or two solo lines per song he is allotted), so perhaps his case wasn’t as urgent as Zayn’s, although by many accounts he has provided very little stage patter on this tour.
But you’re right, Louis and Zayn seem to have been on a major bender together, including flying from the Australian dates to LA for a rap artist’s party, and then back to Japan for the next tour date. I could never quite figure out if Louis was going along partly to supervise Zayn and keep him from going over the edge, or if Louis himself was just as close to going over the edge. It’s a mystery.
I have to disagree with this article i don’t think he is cold necessarily. He left a job he didn’t enjoy at the end of the day its just a job. Although his tween fans think its their life its really just a job to him particularly if you look at the history of the group.
They all signed up for x factor as solo singers, so in fact they are manufactured group, its not like they are life long friends who decided to start a group together. They were assembled on a talent show by cowell for him to make some money off at a very young age. You change a lot from 17 to 22 also, i just look at it as he was the first one who tire of the boy band thing. His life his prerogative, nobody should be forced to see out a job contract if its making them unhappy.
This is just PR to cover up Zayn being fired.