One plus four: is the five-year itch to blame for Zayn Malik leaving One Direction?

After Zayn Malik quit One Direction, a week before their Dubai gig, Saeed Saeed examines boy bands of the past to predict 1D’s future.

Zayn Malik is waving goodbye to One Direction. Press Association Images

It was the news none of the faithful wanted. After five years of unprecedented success, One Direction confirmed that Zayn Malik has left the band.
It comes on the back of the troubled singer citing stress as the reason for returning to the United Kingdom after quitting the group's world tour in Thailand with only half a dozen shows remaining, including the present leg's closer at Dubai's 7evens Stadium on April 4.
The break became permanent, with the group releasing a statement on Wednesday conveying Malik's desire to move on and that One Direction would continue as a four-piece for the rest of the tour and beyond.
"I am leaving because I want to be a normal 22-year-old who is able to relax and have some private time out of the spotlight," Malik said. "My life with One Direction has been more than I could ever have imagined. But, after five years, I feel like it is now the right time for me to leave the band. I'd like to apologise to the fans if I've let anyone down, but I have to do what feels right in my heart."
While fans and a slew of tour promoters are dismayed at the news, Malik's decision could eventually prove to be a wise one, in terms of not only preserving his mental health, but also safeguarding any potential return to the music industry.
Fans and music critics are already speaking of a new beginning for One Direction, with the band returning to the studio this summer to record a fifth ­album.
However, for more astute music industry watchers, these developments ring a tone that could prove worrying for the group.
The music manager Louis Walsh, who was part of the judging panel of the 2010 X Factor series in which One Direction finished third, was one of the first to foray into the subject.
"I have heard the rumours for the last few weeks that everything wasn't happy in paradise," he told Irish radio station RTE. "The problem with these guys is they've been in a bubble for the last five years, pressure, working, a lot harder than people think, so something had to give. So Zayn was the first person just to crack up a little bit."
Those problems he alludes to can be best described as the "five-year itch". It's a phenomenon that has bedevilled many boy bands in their prime.
For an early case, one should look back to the mid-60s career of The Monkees. Sure, the quartet had it rough from the get-go – with critics deriding the Americans as a manufactured response to The Beatles – but they nevertheless managed to outsell the likes of The Fab Four and The Rolling Stones only a year into their career in 1967. As it turned out, it was a case of peaking too soon. By the fifth year the group's creative well increasingly became dry and the original group slowly disintegrated to forge their own careers in 1971.
The five-year itch can also affect a band's chemistry. The British boy band JLS had no real reason to break up when they called it a day back in 2013. Their fourth and final studio album, 2012's Evoloution, was a solid collection of RnB tunes, and an arena tour beckoned. However, the group called it quits soon after the tour, as they felt the relationship within the band wasn't passionate enough to continue.
Despite the painstaking efforts made by boy bands to present themselves as a united front, at the end of the day there's no denying each group is made up of members with their own ideas. The five-year itch can bring these issues to the fore. In the case of The Wanted, the five-piece knew the whole teamwork thing was beginning to be a drag in the middle of their world tour last year. Only a month before their Dubai Jazz Festival appearance, the group revealed they would go "on hiatus" to launch their solo careers. For one member, SivaKaneswaran, the newfound freedom reportedly meant he could "go crazy and do acting, singing, and maybe some juggling and rebuild some cars".
Perhaps more worryingly for One Direction fans, particularly those fond of the presently troubled Malik, it's also on the five-year mark when nerves begin to fray and singers resort to unhealthy measures to keep them going. For Take That's Robbie Williams, his drug abuse became rampant and he chose to quit the band after being given an ultimatum to behave or leave. While for Five's Sean Conlon, it was also the five-year mark where he suffered a mental breakdown caused by constant touring and his battle with glandular fever.
Conlon reportedly saw similarities between his experiences and One Direction's trajectory. Asked whether One Direction would stay together, he told Press Party in January that the seeds for the band's eventual rupture had ­already been planted.
"If I could give them any advice, it would be to have a little break and stay together. But they're not going to listen to it, like we didn't," he said. "I wish somebody could have stopped us from splitting up and that we could have found a way to carry on."
[e-mail]