Zayn Malik Performs One Direction Song at a Solo Show For the First Time Since Leaving the Group a Decade Ago

It’s been a decade since Zayn Malik left One Direction and on Tuesday night (March 25) during the singer’s show in Mexico City he did something he hasn’t done since then: he performed one of the group’s most beloved hits during a solo show.

At his gig at Palacio De Los Deportes on the Stairway to the Sky tour — his first arena show as a solo act — Malik shocked fans when he played the 2014 1D single “Night Changes” from the group’s fourth studio album, Four. In fact, Malik opened the show with the song, with a Twitter user reporting that he told the surprised audience, “I haven’t sung this song in 10 years. That you, that was amazing, I almost cried.”

Check out a video of Malik performing the song, and the audience shouting along to every lyric, here.

The song written by the group with Jamie Scott, John Ryan and Julian Bunetta was the fourth single from Four and the last one released by the band to feature Malik before he announced he was leaving 1D on March 25, 2015. The video for the ballad opens with Malik seated at a restaurant singing, “Going out tonight, changes into something red/ Her mother doesn’t like that kind of dress/ Everything she never had, she’s showing off” during what looks like a date with an unseen girlfriend.

The track had a resurgence in late 2024 after the shocking death of former 1D member Liam Payne after a fall from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina on Oct. 16. In the week after his death, “Night Changes” — which ran up to No. 31 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2014 — saw its U.S. streams spike 416% to 4.9 million, with the song re-entering both the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. (at No. 95) and the Billboard Global 200 (No. 117) for the week dated Oct. 26.

After rescheduling the tour after postponing it in the wake of Payne’s death, Malik kicked off the tour in November.