Zayn: Room Beneath the Stairs Album Assessment

Zayn’s solo profession has been a sequence of matches and begins, a product of a contemporary pop panorama the place being a gifted singer is way from sufficient to seize the zeitgeist. It could have been a mistake to initially outline himself by what he was not: not a Simon Cowell shill, not a squeaky-clean boy band idol, not above laborious idea albums. His chosen character of the brooding, bothered Don Juan, provocative as it might be, will not be precisely distinctive; even the Weeknd has begun working past its artistic limits. And with ROOM UNDER THE STAIRS, Zayn appears to be lastly removing that tried-and-tested persona, no less than to an extent.

Should you’ve ever tuned into SiriusXM’s The Espresso Home station, you realize what this album feels like. Taking out the pulsing, club-ready R&B of Zayn’s previous solo work, Dave Cobb’s co-production paints a brand new backdrop of beachy guitar and stay drums, enjoying into Zayn’s former One Route position because the introspective crooner. “I’m discovering my manner on the freeway this yr,” he declares on “Concrete Kisses,” over glowing keys and a meandering bassline. Recorded at his dwelling in rural Pennsylvania, that is apparently meant to be Zayn’s coming-clean, “again to fundamentals” document, channeling the likes of Chris Stapleton (one other Cobb collaborator) and John Legend as a manner of projecting sensitivity. The sound is nice sufficient, if just a little too picturesque. The strongest entries are the trio of songs that Zayn didn’t co-write: “Stardust” is a gushy ode to new love, “One thing within the Water” has Zayn doing his greatest Blonde impression, and “False Begins” carries a propulsion that’s sorely lacking all over the place else.

Whereas not fully devoid of references to partying—“So fucked, I can’t really feel my face”—ROOM UNDER THE STAIRS gestures in direction of a vaguer messiness of long-term relationships. “Take me as I’m, I’m drained/Of dancing across the level,” Zayn sings on “What I Am,” then proceeds to spend the entire album doing simply that. Other than just a few true groaners (“Received a giant outdated cup of shit/Advised me to drink it”), the lyrics are principally forgettable mush, circuitous nothings like, “Lately, I stay to my depiction” (“Grateful”) or, “With no senses, ain’t no sentence/Making sense of us” (“Dreamin”). These garbled ideas solely reinforce the songs as background music—the soundtrack at a boardwalk cafe the place you’re solely meant to listen to each third phrase, or the needle drops on actuality TV each time one contestant proposes to a different. They’re not dangerous, per se, however they’re nameless.

ROOM UNDER THE STAIRS follows Zayn’s break up from his on-again-off-again associate Gigi Hadid, which resulted in 2021 when Zayn pleaded no contest to 4 expenses of harassment for allegedly hanging Hadid’s mom. Why, then, are relationship narratives on this album ambiguous to the purpose of meaninglessness? There’s a second of startling emotional readability on “Shoot at Will,” a revealing observe the place Zayn alludes to his and Hadid’s daughter: “Once I take a look at her, all I see is you/If you take a look at her, do you see me too?” However for essentially the most half, Zayn seems way more snug sporting the masks of vulnerability as a substitute of truly exercising it.

Zayn: Room Beneath the Stairs