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Zayn Lets His Guard Down on ‘Room Under the Stairs,’ but Teeters Between Reinvention and Reintroduction: Album Review


Zayn, a former member of the wildly successful boy band One Direction, finally lets listeners in on the folk-imbued 'Room Under the Stairs.'

The album was a promising launch for a solo career, but Zayn himself was struggling with the anxiety of leaving the overly controlled environment of a manufactured boy band to define what kind of artist he could be on his own. Three years later, he’s back with something very different: “Room Under the Stairs,” an album conceptualized in rural Pennsylvania, recorded in Georgia, and co-produced by the Nashville-based Dave Cobb, best known for his work with country and Americana mainstays including Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile and Jason Isbell. The closing “Fuschia Sea” returns to the smooth and sultry vocal deliveries that we heard from Zayn’s previous projects, while the chorus is a total earworm: “Ferocious devotion / I can’t keep it up, i’m fallin’ into motion,” he sings.

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