Further enforcing the point that his time with One Direction was one entirely bereft of joy and good times, shade king Zayn Malik admits he wanted out of the group from the start.
Zayn -- whose immaculately crafted face is so perfectly symmetrical, so overwhelming in its otherworldliness, it could make a believer out of even the most stringent atheist -- quickly realized the group's bubblegum pop (which eventually evolved into classic rock-inspired dad jams) wasn't the right fit for him.
Kicking things off with a 1D-related quip, he said, "I realized the direction we were going in -- mind the pun -- with the music, I instantly knew it wasn't for me because I realized I couldn't put any input in."
Rather than fight the rest of the group on their sound, Zayn chose to go with the flow instead: "You kind of just go with whatever's going on, and I didn't want to be the person to say 'I was right' because who am I to say [that]?"
Still, Zayn says, the rest of the group engaged his vocal style as best they could: "I think the boys kind of knew that wasn't my cup of tea...They would try to facilitate certain things for me so I could sing certain R&B ad-libs here and there, and that was nice."
When it was time for Zayn to quit, though, the rest of the group didn't put up much of a fight.
"They obviously didn't want me to leave," he said. "But they couldn't talk me out of it at that point. I'd already made my mind up."
So it is that Zayn is a solo act, so it is that One Direction have succumbed to the infamous boyband hiatus.
Zayn's first official single "Pillow Talk" doesn't drop until Friday (January 29), but be sure to tune for his full interview with Zane Lowe when it airs on Apple Beats 1 Radio tomorrow at 12PM EST.