Even Zayn Malik gets embarrassed — and starstruck — sometimes. The former One Direction member revealed that when Taylor Swift complimented his new album, Mind of Mine, he couldn’t help but blush.
“I don’t get much feedback from my peers. I spoke a bit to Taylor,” he told the summer 2016 issue of Dazed magazine about the time he chatted with Swift at his girlfriend Gigi Hadid’s home. “At Gigi’s house we briefly spoke and she told me she really enjoyed the album. It was nice to get some feedback. She said she thought I was cool, and I kind of blushed a bit and didn’t know how to take it.” Making the conversation even more surprising, Malik’s One Direction bandmate Harry Styles briefly dated Swift in late 2012, and the “Bad Blood” singer penned several songs on her album 1989 about Styles.
While the “Pillowtalk” singer, 23, is definitely an A-lister in young Hollywood, he prefers a night in over hitting a red carpet or hot spot. “I don’t tend to go out much,” Malik said. “I stick to my own bubble as it is. Creatively and socially, I think, as I’m getting older, that’s just the way I am.”
“I haven’t done much acclimating,” he continued as he discussed his fame. “I’m just staying the way that I am. I think that’s the best way to keep your sanity. You’ve got to hold on to what you are and not let things get to your head, because if you do, that’s when everything comes crashing down terribly.”
Back in March, Malik announced he was permanently leaving the wildly popular boy band, and broke hearts around the world. “I just knew it was my time,” he said of his One Direction departure. “I knew I wanted to do something different and start expressing the way I felt about certain things.”
He exited his contract early from Sony and signed with RCA to make his first solo record. “I didn’t know what to expect,” says Malik of his fans’ reactions to his new style of music, which is more trippy, electronic R&B than pop. “I wanted to make that statement, that this was something completely separate from whatever was out there before. I kind of expected the fans that followed me before to be a bit freaked out by it. It was nerve-racking for me, but it worked out for the best, because people started listening to it in a more mature context.”
Earlier this month, the singer briefly split from Hadid, 21, after seven months of dating. A source later told Us Weekly that the couple quickly reconciled. “They broke up and got back together almost right away,” the insider previously told Us. “Right now, it’s back on, but it could be off again in an hour.”
Malik and Hadid made their red carpet debut as a couple in May at the 2016 Met Gala, wowing in technology-themed attire chosen according to the year’s "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology" theme. “I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I know it’s a big deal in the fashion industry. Anna Wintour obviously runs the whole thing so it was an honor to even get to go. I was asked to design my own costume by Donatella Versace,” he told Dazed. “It’s a bit easy to just dress up in a suit. I like to do things that are a bit outside of that.”
