Boy bands are dependent on staying the same. Part of their appeal is remaining static throughout their career, and this can lead to personality-free products. One Direction is perhaps the strongest contemporary example of this phenomenon. (As we monitor the band’s rumoured disintegration over the next few months, it’s going to be interesting to see the stories and personalities that emerge.) 1D’s newest video for “History” speaks to this desire to stay the same, as images of the four remaining members mingle with early, black-and-white toned footage from the band’s early career—with emphasis, of course, on the cutesy antics of each member.
But ZAYN’s new single, “Pillowtalk,” released January 28, is a wholly new development for the former band member. “Pillowtalk” presents a move away from a cookie-cutter approach to music, with both the song and its video allowing for a greater exploration of ZAYN’s identity beyond 1D.
“Pillowtalk” benefits from a video with strong artistic direction. Not to get too auteurist-film-theory-major, but Bouha Kazmi’s video crafts a distinct feel for the song. Kazmi’s surrealist approach takes what is otherwise a song about the duality of love (a rather overdone theme in current pop music) and gets to questions of what ZAYN is trying to do with this single, besides make money. In opposition to many of 1D’s videos, which focus heavily on who fans want the stars to be, “Pillowtalk” is far more about how ZAYN wants to portray his music moving forward.
While the song’s lyrical content is pretty unoriginal, the video develops a surprisingly different direction. While the track is evidently about sex, the video does not depict the act, instead opting for free associations to be made. From undulating filtering effects, to images of people bleeding from their eyes, the video emphasizes aesthetic effect over meaning, placing this video within a line of recent art-house-esque music videos. And, honestly, “Pillowtalk” is a pretty good video—while a little inconsistent, its construction does a lot of things well, and differentiates ZAYN from many other artists within the same genre. While “Pillowtalk” doesn’t escape the objectification unavoidable in most music videos, it does take a slightly less obvious stance on its placement of women as objects—often obscuring the view of the body, morphing its positioning, and otherwise suggesting a distinctive shift in how the video even conceptualizes the physical body. Kazmi manages to get the dual feelings of sensuality and sexuality across in a way that allows for critical engagement with the video. With emphasis on a bright, pure aesthetic, Kazmi’s video appeals to not only a distinct artistic sensibility, but also a different audience from the one that knows ZAYN’s previous work.
The video, with its explicit flower-as-sex-organ symbolism, is not for the tween-age fans 1D has relied on for the past five years. It is instead a movement towards an older audience, as well as a new artistic goal—no longer is ZAYN interested in being a simple heartthrob. His single speaks to a desire to provide a more mature sound, and find a new niche within the pop market. He wants to be more like Drake, The Weeknd, and other artists who have found a fanbase that doesn’t fit neatly into any one demographic, but spans the 20-something decade. I suggest, however, that I don’t think ZAYN is so much seeking wholly new fans, just the original fans who have aged a few years and are ready for some change.
While critics have called “Hotline Bling” an exploration of postmodernism, “Pillowtalk” instead develops as a response to identity politics. “Pillowtalk” is about growing up. ZAYN’s development is about creating space between his past persona and the personality he wishes to craft moving forward. The single and its accompanying video epitomize the struggle to break out of the boy band stasis that has defined Zayn Malik since 2010.
