{"id":612356,"date":"2026-04-17T06:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T06:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/612356\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T06:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T06:25:08","slug":"zayn-konnakol-album-review-pitchfork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/612356\/","title":{"rendered":"Zayn: KONNAKOL Album Review | Pitchfork"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zayn<\/a> is at relative peace with his tumultuous past, or at least trying to get there\u2014and on the occasion of his new solo album, he wants the world to know. As he said in a headline-inciting podcast interview<\/a> in February, he\u2019s farming in Pennsylvania, giving his daughter a lot of money for her loose teeth, and wondering if he was ever in love with her supermodel mother, Gigi Hadid. The clarity that allows such bold introspection should\u2019ve helped him finally act on the promise of his artistic potential. But expecting KONNAKOL to break the pattern of underwhelming, moody R&B-pop albums, or to make Zayn as interesting as he\u2019s tried to signal he is for over a decade, will disappoint anyone not already committed to loving him.<\/p>\n

Most of his fifth album since exiting the era-defining boy band One Direction in 2015 commits his considerable vocal talents to overproduced tales of torturous love, sexual yearning, and gruff self-evaluation that rarely go deeper than recognizing the condition. At least some of the fault lies with producer James \u201cMalay\u201d Ho, a key collaborator on Zayn\u2019s 2016 solo debut, Mind of Mine<\/a>. Promotions for that album<\/a> referenced Malay\u2019s work on Frank Ocean<\/a>\u2019s Channel Orange<\/a>, the 2012 juggernaut that helped redefine R&B for the blog era. Back then, the connection aimed to paint Zayn as a similarly paradigm-shifting artist\u2014a pop icon, sure, but also an avatar of so many sociocultural dynamics. Fellow 1D alum Harry Styles<\/a> could be a David Bowie<\/a>-caping rock star without also being a symbol of multicultural England, or the only Western boy band star with a Pakistani Muslim parent, or a target of Islamophobic hate for tweeting #FreePalestine. Plus, Zayn made a deliberate point of saying he wanted to do things he couldn\u2019t in an uber-manufactured boy band. Taken together, the subtext went, Zayn could be that gamechanger.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

That never came to pass. Mind of Mine, 2018\u2019s bloated opus Icarus Falls<\/a>, and the reactively subdued Nobody Is Listening<\/a> didn\u2019t escape the trap of noncommittal sensitivity, riskless sensuality, and recycled Lothario-but-I\u2019m-tired personality into which he\u2019d backed himself. 2024\u2019s Room Under the Stairs<\/a> buried hints of reckoning in a Man of the Woods<\/a>-esque affect. KONNAKOL shows a bit more maturity, but rehashes enough of the played-out parts (he smokes, y\u2019all, still!) to reinforce the self-preoccupied tendencies every millennial male artist\u2014let alone one who pled no contest to harassment charges<\/a> for allegedly striking his child\u2019s grandmother, possibly referenced in \u201cBlooming\u201d with the Killers<\/a>-interpolating line, \u201cI\u2019ve been fighting my case and I\u2019ve been doing just fine\u201d\u2014should leave back in the \u201910s.<\/p>\n

Consider \u201cUsed to the Blues,\u201d a plodding rocker in which Zayn pleads for deliverance from unhappiness using, naturally, a smoking reference. \u201cCigarette don\u2019t hit me like it used to\/I got used to the blues,\u201d he croons over the intro, his emotive power muted by reverb. The song eventually gives way to rhyming dictionary phrases, building toward a half-climax that doesn\u2019t quite land. If this slog means to inspire candor, it offers nothing redemptive in return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zayn is at relative peace with his tumultuous past, or at least trying to get there\u2014and on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612357,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[12327,64,63,134,136,1672],"class_list":{"0":"post-612356","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}