The historical significance of 2026 is something academics will ponder for years to come, but in the field of Simon Cowell-approved boy bands its importance is easily understood. It is the 12 months in which the surviving members of One Direction, the X Factor alumni who conquered the planet back when TV could still make you a star, have embarked on ambitious reboots, albeit with results that have veered from puzzling to patchy.
First up was Louis Tomlinson, who released an album, How Did I Get Here?, earlier this year without anyone appearing to notice. How Niall Horan will fare by comparison remains to be seen. His last LP, The Show, from 2023, suggested he’d been swotting up on Tame Impala and Death Cab for Cutie. What comes next is a question that will be answered when Dinner Party, his latest record, arrives in June.
Then there was Harry Styles, who’d quite like to be the new David Bowie. Or, if that option is no longer on the table, a chart-friendly mash-up of LCD Soundsystem and Moderat. Alas, on the evidence of the anaemic Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally, he lacks the artistic depth to bring those ambitions to any sort of meaningful endpoint.
This, lest we forget, is a singer who decided that the best way to stardom was to audition for an Ant and Dec talent show. A decade on, we really shouldn’t be shocked that Styles talks a good game and knows his references but is not up to much beyond that.
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You do, of course, have to credit him with trying something different. This keen marathon runner is willing to go the distance in terms of breaking new ground. Unfortunately, he has yet to find a voice equal to his self-image as a serious artist.
Now, sandwiched between the Styles and Horan releases, is Zayn Malik, who pulled a Robbie Williams by leaving 1D 12 months before their break. And who is, incredibly, on his fifth album with the bland, anonymous and underwhelming Konnakol.
The project marks a resumption of his relationship with the producer Malay, who is best known for his work on the Frank Ocean albums Channel Orange and Blonde, and whose collaborations with Zayn date back to his debut.
But instead of Ocean’s sublime postpop, here the partnership is all at sea across a suite of jaded mid-tempo R’n’B that, as with Styles and his new Berlin direction, has aspirations to artsiness but lacks the means to fully articulate them.
Zayn was always the one who pushed back against the corporate forces steering One Direction. He wanted to make edgier music and grew frustrated when his suggestions were outvoted. He has also had the vision to look beyond strictly western influences. He sang in Urdu (the national language of Pakistan, where his father was born) on a 2024 collaboration with the Karachi trio Aur and has talked about recording an entire LP in Hindi.
That day may yet come. For now he sounds locked in the same muted groove that has characterised his previous releases. As is typically the case with ex-1Ders, the feeling with Konnakol is that he’s making a record because… what else is he going to do? At no point does its existence feel like much beyond a box ticked on a contract.
The sense of missed opportunity looms throughout. Konnakol is named after a south Asian musical style that involves performing percussive syllables vocally. How that has filtered through to this monotonous, wallpaper-esque collection is hard to say. If Malik, who comes from Bradford, in northern England, is obviously proud of his south Asian heritage, and incorporates Urdu lyrics on the slow-mo ballad Fatal, it’s ultimately a shame he didn’t go further in that direction instead of reflexively harking back to the lush, anodyne R’n’B that has been his signature since the end of One Direction.
The album opens with the pasty-grey funk-pop of Nusrat, a woozy meditation on excess and loneliness that plods along and then loses interest entirely and peters out.
The grooves are livelier on Betting Folk, which features an xx-style guitar motif that is submerged beneath waves of overproduction on the chorus. An already understated listen slows further on the John Legend-style ballad Sideways and the intensely introspective 5th Element, which is torn between the impulse to go somewhere genuinely dark and Frank Oceanesque and Zayn’s apparent don’t-scare-the-horses belief that every piece of music bearing his name has to be topped off with a neat chorus.
Konnakol does, at least, depart on a high with the single Die for Me. By far the best tune here, with its haunting chorus, it is a fine showcase for the expressive vocals that remind us once again that, of all 1D members, he was the most gifted singer.
It’s a great way to exit – while also reinforcing suspicions that Konnakol could have been so much more than a muffled collection of anti-bangers. In the year of 1D comebacks, Zayn is lost among the trailing pack.
