Cracking the Zarry Code - how Deep is real.

Shame on Me

Here's the deal:

I am a literature grad and, as you might have guessed if you have read Deep, I love words. That's why I write. I spent a lot of my time at Uni analysing poetry. So I consider myself pretty good at analysing the lyrics to a song. But when it came to Zarry, until March this year (2018) I hadn't listened to all the songs I should have – the 1D songs written after Z left - and Harry's songs on his album.

As a result, I didn't have the full picture. I was looking at a half-completed jigsaw. And when you look at a half-completed jigsaw, the picture makes no sense at all....

So, when I first heard Z's "It's You", I bought the PR story that it was all about Perrie Edwards. And "Pillowtalk" I assumed was about Z's heterosexual relationships (generally). Why? Why, when I had written Deep? (Which was all based around Z's song I Won't Mind).

Was I just being dumb?

Well, the answer was that I didn't trust my own judgment.

Despite some readers having said that I must know the band personally, Deep is fiction. It is me, "filling in the blanks", inspired by the simmering body language, eye contact and sexual tension that I sensed whenever I saw Zarry together. Yes, I can do dialogue and I am from the UK. I have many things in common with the boys, so I understand a lot about the backgrounds they come from. But I don't know them personally. And I would never presume to know what they really think or do. I guessed Zarry had a crush on each other... but I had no idea if they ever acted on it, or how soon they got over it (if ever).

However..... I can read a lyric - when I have the whole song. And I know that, often, artists put their true feelings into their art. Art is where the forbidden can be said – albeit in coded ways. It is a safe space in which to express feelings which otherwise need to stay hidden. Poets and writers have done this for centuries. Even now, when people give each other mix tapes they are often saying things they can't say out loud. Personally if I want to know how someone in the public eye really feels I look at their Spotify playlist (if they have one).

But why did I Won't Mind make me sit up and take notice, when Zayn's later songs didn't? Well, IWM very obviously suggests Zarry (see my later chapter all about it). The difference is that IWM was never meant to be made public. As Bob Dylan / zarry documentaries has said (and I agree) it was probably written for Harry's ears only. That's why it's only a demo – it even sounds half-finished. Remember, the producer Z had been working with (and who he later fell out with), Naughty Boy, leaked it, soon after Z left the band. You can look it up – I'm not going to quote news articles and posts from the time, it's all there on the internet. 

The "official" song catalogue that Z has put out features songs that are either difficult to read / ambiguous or seem to follow the "party line" of Zerrie engagement / break up / leaving the band / Zigi / break up / cheating drama / drugs etc. / anxiety along the way. At least, that's what the songs seem to be saying when you listen to them in isolation....

BUT when you put them into a "conversation" with songs that Harry has written or things that Zarry or 1D have done they suddenly make perfect sense. It is like one of those codes where you have to put a mirror at right angles to a bunch of symbols and suddenly they form a sentence... and, as I will show you in the following chapters, with Zarry songs it happens all the time.

I promise that if you read these chapters you will be convinced – as I now am – that Zarry was (and probably still is) real. And not only that, it is one of the most beautiful love stories of the century, told to us through the art of songwriting.