10 Years of One Direction: Was Zayn Malik really the ‘villain’ behind the rift that broke the band apart?

Ten years ago, the world was intro­duced to One Direc­tion, a boy band con­sist­ing of five boys who would inad­ver­tent­ly change the face of pop/rock music and the nature of fan­doms. But just five years into their remark­able career, one of its mem­bers, Zayn Malik, called it quits and walked away. And the fol­low­ing year, the group went into a hia­tus that they stat­ed would last only 18  months, but they haven’t returned from it yet.

As fans cel­e­brate their tenth anniver­sary by tak­ing a walk down mem­o­ry and reliv­ing some of their One Direc­tion moments, many won­der: was Zayn’s depar­ture tru­ly the rea­son for the group falling apart? Was there real­ly so much bad blood between them that they com­plete­ly cut ties with Zayn, as was report­ed back in 2015?

One Direc­tion was rid­ing high in 2015 fol­low­ing the suc­cess of their 2013 album ‘Mid­night Mem­o­ries’, which includ­ed their smash hit ‘Best Song Ever’. They had embarked on the ‘Where We Are’ Tour begin­ning in April 2014 and fol­lowed that up with the ‘One Direc­tion: Where We Are — The Con­cert Film’ which doc­u­ment­ed parts of the tour. They then dropped the song ‘Fire­proof’ and announced their fourth album, ‘Four’, due late in 2014. The album would go on to be a huge suc­cess, earn­ing One Direc­tion the dis­tinc­tion of being the only group in the 58-year his­to­ry of the Bill­board 200 albums chart to have their first four albums debut at one. When 2015 rolled around, no one could have expect­ed that a group that was at the top of its game would sud­den­ly have it all come crash­ing down.

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Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Har­ry Styles, Louis Tom­lin­son and Zayn Malik of One Direc­tion per­form at Rum­sey Play­field on Novem­ber 26, 2013, in New York City (Get­ty Images)

In Feb­ru­ary 2015, One Direc­tion embarked on the ‘On the Road Again’ Tour, which would go on to be the high­est-gross­ing tour of 2015. Only a month lat­er, the group announced that Zayn would be leav­ing. In their state­ment, the band shared, “After five incred­i­ble years Zayn Malik has decid­ed to leave One Direc­tion. Niall, Har­ry, Liam and Louis will con­tin­ue as a four-piece and look for­ward to the forth­com­ing con­certs of their world tour and record­ing their fifth album, due to be released lat­er this year.”

The shocked One Direc­tion­ers every­where. While it seemed ami­ca­ble at first with Malik even help­ing pro­mote the band’s first song with­out him titled ‘Drag Me Down’, the split soon turned into an ugly rift that pit­ted the remain­ing four mem­bers against Malik.

Reports soon sur­faced that Malik’s depar­ture stemmed from inter­nal strife, lead­ing many to place blame on the singer. Malik shared a close bond with band­mate Louis Tom­lin­son, and their falling out would turn into a spec­ta­cle, includ­ing pub­licly tweet­ing each oth­er in the fol­low­ing months. On one such occa­sion, Tom­lin­son tweet­ed, “Remem­ber when you were 12 and you used to think those Mac fil­ters for your pic­tures were cool haha! Some peo­ple still do HA!” to which Malik replied, “Remem­ber when you had a life and stopped mak­ing b***hy com­ments about mine?”

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Zayn Malik per­forms onstage at ZAYN Album Release On The Hon­da Stage at the iHeartRa­dio The­ater on 25, 2016, in New York City (Get­ty Images)

Soon, One Direc­tion announced they would go on a hia­tus in 2016, and more rumors began fly­ing about Malik being the cause behind it. In 2019, Liam Payne and Har­ry Styles revealed that Malik’s depar­ture hurt them deeply. “We haven’t real­ly heard from him since he left,” Payne stat­ed to GQ. “He did­n’t even say good­bye.” Styles shared in an inter­view with New Music Dai­ly, “We were sad, obvi­ous­ly, that some­one had left, but also sad that he was not enjoy­ing it so much that he had to leave.”

Tom­lin­son, for his part, shared in an inter­view with Cap­i­tal FM that he was still angry with Malik. In an episode of ‘The Dan Woot­ton Inter­view’, the singer also point­ed out that Malik choos­ing not to be present at Louis’ moth­er’s funer­al was what tru­ly sealed the end of their friend­ship, which until that point was shat­tered, but not entire­ly bro­ken. Malik, for his part, alleged that the rift stemmed from unsa­vory things the band mem­bers had said to him.

Cut to 2020, and it appears not all fans believe this ver­sion of events was what real­ly hap­pened. For one, hawk-eyed fans noticed that all four mem­bers of the band are fol­low­ing Malik on Twit­ter again. Apart from that, a few screen­shots of a con­ver­sa­tion began doing the rounds online that seem­ing­ly implied the rift was noth­ing more than a ploy by the group’s man­age­ment to ensure that the remain­ing mem­bers would not deal with the fall­out of the split, and instead, Malik would take the bulk of the blame.

One part of the con­ver­sa­tion alleged that Malik break­ing his con­tract was ille­gal, but despite that, he did­n’t face a law­suit owing to him agree­ing to terms that stat­ed he would take the fall so the group would­n’t have to. It fur­ther alleged that the rift between Malik and Tom­lin­son was entire­ly made up to gen­er­ate sym­pa­thy for the lat­ter, fur­ther adding they nev­er stopped being the best of friends. These alle­ga­tions sur­fac­ing now is inter­est­ing giv­en that with Tom­lin­son and Simon Cow­ell both depart­ing Syco this year, no one asso­ci­at­ed with One Direc­tion has any ties to the com­pa­ny that launched them any­more, indi­cat­ing they can no longer be forced to com­ply with restric­tions on what they can say or do pub­licly.

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Record­ing artists Har­ry Styles, Niall Horan, Liam Payne and Louis Tom­lin­son of One Direc­tion per­form onstage dur­ing 102.7 KIIS FM’s Jin­gle Ball 2015 Pre­sent­ed by Cap­i­tal One at STAPLES CENTER on Decem­ber 4, 2015, in Los Ange­les, Cal­i­for­nia (Get­ty Images)

Over­all, it does seem odd that their friend­ship was seem­ing­ly dec­i­mat­ed by Malik not being there for Tom­lin­son as he griev­ed, since the singer tweet­ed at the time, “Love you bro! All of your fam­i­ly is in my prayers. Proud of your strength and know your mum is too.” Where it gets even odd­er is that the boys were seem­ing­ly on good terms and mend­ing the rift by 2017, as evi­denced by a 2017 inter­view with The Sun in which Tom­lin­son con­firmed he had recon­nect­ed with Malik and they were “mates again,” only to once again reit­er­ate that they were def­i­nite­ly not friends with Malik in 2019.

For fans, the entire sit­u­a­tion is hor­ri­fy­ing, owing both to the split being a trau­mat­ic for them as well as the real­iza­tion that these once-friends could turn on one anoth­er and not speak again.

But if it turns out their feud was por­trayed as being much worse than it tru­ly was, that would prob­a­bly be an even greater shock than the split itself. As one fan notes, “IDK if the Zouis fight was fake but if it was I hate the world for mak­ing us go thru that.” And that, ulti­mate­ly, is what makes the rift and Malik being paint­ed as the vil­lain so painful for fans.

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