Zayn Malik - Singers, Facts and Family

Zayn Malik was born on 12 January 1993 to Yaser Malik and Tricia Brannan Malik in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. While his father is of Pakistani descent, his mother is a Christian of Irish origin, who embraced Islam after marriage.

He pursued his primary education at the ‘Tong High School’ and ‘Lower Fields Primary School’, situated in Bradford.

During his childhood days, Zayn Malik listened to different genres of music, such as hip-hop, R&B and even songs from Bollywood (Indian movies). His father apparently had a good collection and listening to various tracks helped him develop a love for rapping.

His first performance on stage was at school where the famous rapper, Jay Sean, was invited for an event and Zayn considers it one of the most memorable events of his life.

In 2010, Zayn Malik participated in the auditions for the seventh season of the television reality show ‘The X Factor’. Although, he was eliminated just before the final round of the reality show, the judges were thoroughly impressed by Zayn Malik’s talent and felt he had the potential to conquer great heights.

In fact, Nicole Scherzinger, one of the judges, suggested that he and four other fellow contestants, who didn’t make it to the final round, should collaborate. Thus, Zayn Malik and his four other competitors on the show formed the band ‘One Direction’, which went on to become quite popular eventually.

The popularity of these four contestants helped them sign contracts with two reputed record labels, namely ‘Syco Records’ and ‘Columbia Records’.

In 2011, ‘One Direction’ released its debut album ‘Up All Night’, which was well received by music lovers from across the globe. The track ‘What Makes You Beautiful’, from this album, became a chartbuster upon release. The very next year, the band released its second album, titled ‘Take Me Home’.

The band was quite surprised by the success of their second album, which was also a huge commercial success. It is believed that more than 5,00,000 copies of the album were sold worldwide, thus making ‘One Direction’ one of the most sought after music groups of the time.

Zayn Malik collaborated with English record producer Naughty Boy for several singles, which were released on the music sharing site ‘SoundCloud’. ‘I Won’t Mind’ and ‘No Type’ were two of these songs, which were liked by many and helped him gain a lot of visibility across the UK.

Several media sources had reported in 2015 that Zayn Malik will be collaborating with the record label ‘RCA Records’ for an album. In March the next year, his album ‘Mind of Mine’ had released. This compilation consisted of around 18 songs, most of which were co-written by Malik himself.

’Mind of Mine’ topped the charts in several countries, including ‘Billboard 200’ and proved to be a successful solo debut.

In 2016, Zayn Malik collaborated with acclaimed rappers, Chris Brown and Usher for the remixed version of the track ‘Back To Sleep’.

Although Zayn Malik has been a part of several successful albums composed by his band ‘One Direction’, he became more popular after the release of his debut album ‘Mind of Mine’. Around 157,000 copies of the album were sold worldwide.

The magazine ‘Glamour’ had included him in its list of ‘World’s Sexiest Men’, back in 2011. He had secured the 5th spot in the ‘100 Sexiest Men’ list published by the ‘Glamour’ magazine quite recently.

He was also one of the names on MTV’s ’50 Sexiest Men Alive’ list. Zayn Malik was included twice in the ‘Sexiest Men’ lists published by the newspaper ‘Eastern Eye’.

Zayn Malik has three sisters, namely Doniya, Waliyha and Safaa, of which Doniya is the eldest.

Malik was also in the news for his love life. He was seeing Perry Edwards, a member of the girl band ‘Little Mix’, since 2012 and the two got engaged the very next year. However, Zayn Malik informed media sources in 2015 that he and Perry had parted ways.

He is a follower of Islam and is fluent in both English and Urdu. He faced a lot of ire in 2012 after he posted a tweet in support of the war torn Palestine. Many radical thinkers were infuriated by Zayn Malik’s opinion and even threatened to kill him. As a result, he was forced to deactivate his ‘Twitter’ account.

Like many other celebrities, even he has done his bit for social causes. Zayn Malik has been chosen the official ambassador of the non-profit organization named ‘British Asian Trust’.

Zayn Malik was given the nickname ‘Bradford Bad Boy’ by fans of ‘One Direction’, since he often made news for his scandals and his physical appearance, which was nothing short of a hippie.