New love is exciting, complicated and sometimes confusing. Those emotions, and much more, are explored on the new duet from BLACKPINK‘s JISOO featuring Zayn Malik. The K-pop star began hinting at the surprise, smoldering duet “Eyes Closed,” earlier this week via a mysterious teaser featuring a shadowy male silhouette standing behind her with the cryptic phrase “EYESCLOSED” and the caption “a duet is near.”
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It dropped on Friday (Oct. 10) and it finds the pair trading verses about the exploration and excitement of a new love, with JISOO leading off the ethereal ballad with the lines, “Time is standing still and I don’t wanna leave your lips/ Tracing my body with your fingertips,” before former One Direction member and solo star Zayn responds, “I know what you’re feeling and I know you wanna say it/ I do too but we gotta be patient.”
The pair then trade lines in the dreamy chorus about how a love that shouldn’t work is somehow perfect, especially when you don’t try to make it make sense. “‘Cause someone like me/ And someone like you/ Really shouldn’t work, yeah, the history is proof/ Damned if I don’t/ Damned if I do,” they sing over soothing, bubbling synths, a spare beat and acoustic guitar strums, alternating lines before joining their voices for the heart-swelling chorus: “Oh, we should fall in love with our eyes closed/ Better if we keep it where we don’t know/ The beds we’ve been in/ The names and the faces of who we were with.”
The duet comes more than three months after Zayn was spotted attending BLACKPINK’s New York show on July 27, accompanied by his daughter, Khai. After the show, he shared a photo from the audience with the caption: “@BLACKPINKOFFICIAL THANK YOU 🙂 ME & KHAI LOVED IT,” leading fans to speculate about the connection between the two artists.
The duet is JISOO’s first new music since the release of her solo EP Amortage in February, which features tracks including “Hugs & Kisses,” “You Love” and “Earthquake.” JISSO is on the road now on BLACKPINK’s Deadline world tour, which will pick up again on Oct. 18 with the first of two shows at Kaohsiung National Stadium in Kaohsiung, Taiwan before continuing along to Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, wrapping up with three shows at Singapore National Stadium (Nov. 28-30).
Zayn is preparing for his first Las Vegas residency at the Dolby Live at Park MGM, which kicks off a seven-show run on Jan. 20.
Listen to “Eyes Closed” below.
