The long overdue Harry Styles thread

Let's just give in.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/harry-styles-cover-interview-album-871568/

Among my fave quotes (absolutely no irony):

“We’d do mushrooms, lie down on the grass, and listen to Paul McCartney’s Ram in the sunshine,” he says. “We’d just turn the speakers into the yard.” The chocolate edibles were kept in the studio fridge, right next to the blender. “You’d hear the blender going, and think, ‘So we’re all having frozen margaritas at 10 a.m. this morning.’” He points to a corner: “This is where I was standing when we were doing mushrooms and I bit off the tip of my tongue. So I was trying to sing with all this blood gushing out of my mouth. So many fond memories, this place.”

...

In the studio, he’s overseeing the string quartet. He has the engineers play T. Rex’s “Cosmic Dancer” for them, to illustrate the vibe he’s going for.

...

He got so obsessive about Joni Mitchell and her 1971 classic Blue, he went on a quest. “I was in a big Joni hole,” he says. “I kept hearing the dulcimer all over Blue. So I tracked down the lady who built Joni’s dulcimers in the Sixties.” He found her living in Culver City. “She said, ‘Come and see me,’” Hull says. “We turn up at her house and he said, ‘How do you even play a dulcimer?’ She gave us a lesson. Then she got a bongo and we were all jamming with these big Cheshire Cat grins.”

...

He’s always had a fervent female fandom, and, admirably, he’s never felt a need to pretend he doesn’t love it that way. “They’re the most honest — especially if you’re talking about teenage girls, but older as well,” he says. “They have that bullshit detector. You want honest people as your audience. We’re so past that dumb outdated narrative of ‘Oh, these people are girls, so they don’t know what they’re talking about.’ They’re the ones who know what they’re talking about. They’re the people who listen obsessively. They fucking own this shit. They’re running it.”

and he loves London Town, Back to the Egg, and "Landslide."

And tattoos.

why is harry styles?
did the ed sheeran bot break down?

white girls needed someone whose photoshoots they could quote-tweet with "ended toxic masculinity!!"

no offense to white girls, i'm not any better than y'all, not by a long shot

“sign of the times” is a great great song

i sometimes hate it

I was team Zayn during the OD days and right after (why because he look interesting) and never cared too much for SOTT (though I did like it), but I find myself loving both “Lights Up” and “Watermelon Sugar” a lot. Styled for the Harness!

One extra reason I love “Lights Up” is that the intro reminds me of one of my favourite Nederpop classics:
http://www.youtube.com/Y8fRQc3lBag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iquhBgM-Qv0

i think this album's going to be pretty good

idk, that one seems a notch or two below the others.

btw, for everyone who sent in postcards with their guesses, the nugget in question was this, of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8fRQc3lBag

"adore you" is the best one yet imo

it's better than "watermelon sugar" for me, i like it

Album is excellent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ3PeDGswz4

i don't if it's excellent, but it's better than the first one.
the first stretch until 'cherry' is amazing.

i’m on “she” right now, so far this record is fucking awesome

is that Harry doing Gainsborough/Sea Change-era Beck

are you talking about the album cover or the song

i only have mixed feelings with 'falling'.
loving the last one.

title track is incredible

"falling" is v much a middling mid-album ballad but it's still getting to me

"treat people with kindness" is like harry trying to rewrite the zombies' "friends of mine" and i'm not mad

i bet that by monday i'll be totally won over by this record.

Been playing this daily since it came out. So many great little production bits, perfectly sequenced, and enjoy every song. Can't wait to finally play it on headphones after giving it to the OB&C for Xmas.

Loved reading that he took a bunch of mushrooms and played "Ram" to get inspired. Feel like this might get lost in terms of year-end lists due to the release date, but time will be kind. Far better than the debut, which was pretty good in its own right.

kinda love it now. 'falling' is the only song that i skip most of the times.

Maximum Dad this morning: woke up early to take my older daughter and her friends to the arena to wait in line to get wristbands to get good pit-placement for the Harry Styles show tonight. They are inordinately excited.

i've mostly been a h8r toward his solo career but "as it was" is probably my fav single he's put out thus far, tho those stupid bells almost pull me out of it

The video is easily and I’m not just saying this, one of the best I’ve ever seen.

really amazing song and video imo

feels to me like a chillwave "blinding lights"

(i like the song a lot)

holy cow at that video, quite an achievement. song is a mega earworm but not my bag.

It's aight.

Funny, you could almost believe it was Noel G on that thread start.

Almost...

heard "As It Was" in the wild today (well, at the office) and it sounded fantastic.

i heard the album, which leaked awfully early. his best yet imo, consistent with a few stunners. enjoy that he seems to have crafted this low key solo career on his own terms, given the rank desperation given off by some of his former bandmates

"As It Was" seems programmed precisely for my ears but I'm cool towards it except as a radio jam.

also: i don’t remember thinking anything about the quality of his vocal in 1d but, at least on this record and the last one, now i love his singing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMAPW7ZoOLw

Not bad.

yep.

re the album- some don't like his lyrics

NY Times review excerpt-

The wedding-band funk of “Daydreaming” and the lyrically inane “Cinema” feel comparatively frictionless, and display Styles’s unfortunate tendency to write lyrics that feel more like precisely posed Instagram carousels than conjurings of specific emotional states.

Washington Post excerpt- “Harry’s House” is a lyrically vague offering that sticks to you-know-I-love-you-babe platitudes. You won’t feel as if you know Styles any better when it’s over — a wise move for an overexposure-courting celebrity in a public relationship, but criminally deficient for a would-be confessional singer-songwriter.

I will note that precisely posed Instagram carousels DO conjure emotional states.

I didn't read the review, but I noted in mind how Styles is Heartstopper in human form -- and, boy, do precisely posed Instagram carousels advance its narrative.

mind = mine

don’t insult heartstopper like that

I listened to Fine Line a lot with my (now almost 14yr old) daughter during the first lockdown and I find the title track and 'Falling' almost unbearably poignant. We're listening to the new one now (bought her the vinyl) and it's sounding really good. 'Matilda' and 'Satellite' current standouts for me.

did you see this? harry styles spit on chris pine. yeah, it's true. people are dissecting the footage looking for a second spitter but apparently it only came from one direction pic.twitter.com/76GiOxj8Ye

— Ben Rosen (@ben_rosen) September 6, 2022

:(

Worry? I’m not even here, darling.

Caption: Chris Pine astral projecting at Venice Film Festival. September 5, 2022. pic.twitter.com/qSU1XbTWDp

— Richard Newby (@RICHARDLNEWBY) September 5, 2022