Zayn Malik Gets Personal About Leaving One Direction: 'I Hadn�t Figured Out My Sound Yet'

It’s safe to say Zayn Malik is doing totally fine with his solo career, but if you’ve ever wondered why he left his life in One Direction at the height of its success, he’s spilling.

The “PILLOWTALK” singer got personal in his autobiography Zayn.

“By the time I decided to leave One Direction, it didn’t even feel like a conscious decision,” he wrote. “I just got to a point I knew I couldn’t go on. I was so tired. I just wanted to go home.”

“Everything I had known before was replaced with something alien, and that can be disorienting,” Zayn went on. “I grew up in a really tight-knit family and on top of everything else, it was difficult for me to suddenly be so far away from them.”

“The biggest obstacle for me after I left and when I first considered releasing my own stuff was that I hadn’t really figured out my sound yet,” he added. “I had some solid musical building blocks and lyrical ideas, but nothing more. I suppose that makes sense � I hadn’t exactly had much life experience when One Direction started.”

The decision seems to be working out fine for Zayn – he’s nominated for New Artist of the Year at the 2016 American Music Awards!

His girlfriend Gigi Hadid totally loves his solo music and showed her support by retweeting the offical AMAs tweet below:

Also pictured inside: Zayn arriving at the Peninsula Hotel on Wednesday (November 9) in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Click inside to read more from Zayn’s book…

“Logically it made no sense, leaving the biggest boy band in the world at the height of its success,” Zayn explained. “But, after nearly five years of non-stop touring and promotion, I was really struggling to keep going.”.