Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik? Duetting? When you think about it, it's not that off-the-wall, given that Malik is going out with one of Swift's BFFs, Gigi Hadid.
What seemed like an inevitability has become a reality as the pair have indeed collaborated on a new track called 'I Don't Wanna Live Forever', taken from the soundtrack of '50 Shades Darker'.
Considering that both Ellie Goulding and The Weeknd had huge hits with their respective tracks taken from the first 50 Shades film, they'll no doubt be hoping for similar success with their moody ballad, which has lyrics like "I don’t want to live forever, ‘cause I don’t want to be living in pain / I don’t want to fit wherever, I just want to keep calling your name / ’Til you come back home.”
It's Swift's first new material since she released the Grammy-winning '1989'. It was co-written by her with Sam Dew and Jack Antonoff (sometime fun. member and songwriter who also wrote on 1989). He said that he recorded Swift and produced the song at his home, while Zayn recorded his part in Los Angeles - and that the song 'came together in a week'.
Although the pair didn't record it together, Malik did post a picture of them with Swift's cat to Instagram:
The song appeared on iTunes just after midnight, with both of them sharing the news on Twitter:
Z | T | 50@fiftyshades #fiftyshadesdarker @itunes pic.twitter.com/m4meFS4F79
— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) December 9, 2016
#IDONTWANNALIVEFOREVER @taylorswift13 @FiftyShades https://t.co/29qTancSJT@AppleMusic pic.twitter.com/yxXL739E9R
— zayn (@zaynmalik) December 9, 2016
Needless to say, the Internet kind of... well, freaked out:
Taylor Swift and Zayn Malik have a new single together
As Swift is vehemently anti-Spotify, the song isn't available to stream yet - but watch this space.