Zayn Malik isn’t letting his old One Direction bandmates Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan have all the fun. The British pop singer is back with his fifth studio album, Konnakol (via Mercury Records/Island Records U.K.), a collection that houses the previously-released recording “Sideways” and lead single “Die For Me.”
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Konnakol is Zayn’s first since 2024’s Room Under the Stairs, which peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard 200, and No. 3 on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart.
Zayn co-produced the new LP with Malay (Frank Ocean, Lorde), extending a working relationship that dates back to his debut solo album Mind of Mine (2016) and its followup Icarus Falls (2018).
The former 1D star will go full bore with his promotional work in support of the new record. He’ll make his first late-night TV interview, with a performance, for Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show on April 21.
Next up, an April 23 appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, and on May 12, he kicks off his largest solo tour to date, with a show at AO Arena in Manchester, England.
Produced by Live Nation, the KONNAKOL Tour will visit major cities across the world including London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo, and is scheduled to close with a concert Nov. 20 at Kaseya Center in Miami, FL. It’s billed as his first-ever solo arena trek.
He should be match fit. Zayn complete his first-ever Las Vegas residency earlier this year, where he debuted and teased unreleased material from Konnakol.
The new album’s name is a reference to the art of performing percussion syllables vocally, a style found in South Indian Carnatic music. It’s “the act of creating percussive sounds with one’s voice,” he explains in a statement, “but what it means to me lies somewhere much deeper. It is a sound that holds the reverberation of a time before words existed.”
He added, “I have always drawn on my heritage for inspiration since I first started making my own music — this album is a development of that understanding, knowing more now than ever, who I am, where I come from and where I intend to go.”
Zayn made history as a member of 1D, and was the first to split from the band in pursuit of a solo career. He made the best possible start with his first single “Pillowtalk,” which led the Billboard Hot 100 and the Official U.K. Singles Chart. Its parent album, Mind of Mine, also went to No. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic.
Stream Konnakol below.
