When you’ve known and worked with each other in the music business as long as Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik have, you’d think that there they’d be BFFs given everything they’ve been through together, not to mention how they’re probably the only few people in the world to completely understand what each other has been through during their One Direction days.
As it turns out, the pair’s relationship has more twists and turns than a rollercoaster ride.
When the pair were still in One Direction, Louis and Zayn were pretty close pals by all accounts, even when Zayn quit the band to do his own thing.
But things took an unexpected turn for the weird when Zayn wasted no time working on music with producer, Naughty Boy. For some dumb reason, Louis ended up getting into a dumb Twitter spat with the producer, which escalated dramatically when Zayn weighed in on the beef.
Needless to say that the Louis Tomlinson/Zayn Malik ship was sunk faster than the Titanic following this weird Twitter feud that seemingly came out of nowhere, but things seemingly looked like they were getting back to normal in 2016.
Louis’ mother passed away at the end of 2016 due to leukemia and his One Direction bandmates all expressed their support, including Zayn, who tweeted out a pretty nice message for his former pal.
To pay tribute to his late mother, Louis decided to perform his then-new single, ‘Just Hold On’, on The X Factor and his former One Direction bandmates agreed to show up for his performance as a show of support.
However, when the time came for the performance, Zayn was the only one who didn’t turn up, which seems a bit cold, especially to a former bandmate.
Needless to say that this didn’t sit down too well with Louis, who didn’t say anything publicly about Zayn’s absence for a long time. That being said, it didn’t stop him from tweeting out weird stuff that is almost certainly about his former pal.
When Zayn released his single, ‘Good Years’, in 2018, Louis wasted little time in tweeting the seemingly random comment, “Proper confused. What a hypocrite!”
While it seems like Louis is screaming into the void for some reason, it can also be interpreted as some kind of dig at Zayn and ‘Good Years’, which has lyrics supposedly alluding to his time in One Direction such as, “I’d rather be anywhere, anywhere but here / Too much drugs and alcohol. What the hell were we fighting for? / ‘Cause now the whole damn world will know. That we’re too numb and just too dumb to change the story.”
Just when this strange little saga couldn’t have any more twists in it, Louis finally addressed his and Zayn’s friendship when he chatted to Dan Wootton in 2019, saying that their relationship “never really got better” following One Direction.
Referring to the X Factor snub, Louis says he “had a couple of calls” with Zayn after his mother died and that it really “bugged” him when his former bandmate decided not to show up.
“It was just seeing everyone there—Harry, Niall, and Liam—that was what I needed that night, that support. So on the other end of the spectrum, it kind of really showed. So, eh, I hope he’s alright, but…”
No need for a translator so read into what Louis is trying to get at there.
It’s pretty hard to sum up Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik’s relationship at this point. On one hand it seems like their friendship is still there somewhere, yet on the other it looks like the chances of the pair reconciling are about close to zero.
It’s all super weird and going through their history for this edition of Never Forget made me realise just how dumb it is. Maybe I should stick to Tom and Jerry cartoons, at least that’s a love/hate relationship that makes a bit more sense than whatever is happening here.