One Direction: ‘Drag Me Down’ Full Song & Lyrics

The new 1D track just happened to arrive toward the end of a week in which Malik has signed back-to-back deals with Turn First Artists management and RCA Records, signaling the grass-shoots of his own solo career.

And do you feel that he and Simon Cowell did in fact lie to One Direction fans by not revealing that they were apparently working behind the scenes on a solo recording deal for Zayn all this time?

While it’s unclear what ultimately caused the end of Malik and Naughty Boy’s working relationship, it appears Malik is moving to bigger and better things with his new record deal.

Simon Cowell, the notoriously harsh American Idol judge who discovered One Direction, congratulated Malik. The image was captioned, “Welcome to the #RCAFamily!”

Malik signed with famous recording company RCA which also houses the likes of Alicia Keys, Chris Brown and Justin Timberlake. Twitter user POCzirry shared this information on her post, which Zayn retweeted. However, fans are being supportive of Malik’s latest music venture.

Especially as Zayn had previously said he wanted to leave the band to be a “normal 22-year-old”.

Zayn, who quit One Direction last March and was dropped by Simons Syco label, announced the news on Twitter on Wednesday night.

One Direction is now on tour in the United States and they will return to the UK in September for another tour there.