When he was 22, Zayn Malik stepped away from the biggest pop band in the world. “I have to do what feels right in my heart,” he wrote at the time and in the nine years since, he’s consistently lived up to that promise. His R&B-tinged solo single Pillowtalk was a smash hit on both sides of the Atlantic, as was the debut album Mind Of Mine, but the records that followed moved further away from sugary stadium pop and focused on raw, confessional songwriting instead.
He only played his first headline show earlier this year, at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire to celebrate the release of rustic fourth album Room Under The Stairs, and his debut headline tour kicked off last week. “Thank you for being patient with me,” he told the crowd at Eventim Hammersmith Apollo on Tuesday night. “I know I took a while but we got here…it f***ing feels amazing.”
