In a couple of weeks, Harry Styles will close out his Love On Tour show in Reggio Emilia, Italy – a tour that began in September 2021 and has generated almost half a billion dollars in revenue. During that time, Styles has released his third album, Harry’s House, and won four Brit Awards and the Album of the Year Grammy. He has starred in two major films. Right now he is, by some metrics, the biggest male star on Earth. Yet I still find myself asking… why?
I can practically hear the screeches of pitchforks being sharpened as I write. But I have seen Styles perform live, and I’ve listened to his songs. I have seen Don’t Worry Darling. I’ve read his little tweets, signed off with a knee-buckling “H x”. I have observed – and appreciated – the reams of editorial cover shoots he has done, looking gorgeously needy in £5,000 knitwear. And while I understand that he’s good-looking and talented, and certainly seems kind, too, I think perhaps there is some societal-level projection going on. We need a male pop idol to match David Bowie, Prince or Freddie Mercury – and so we have made one.
Because Styles is the kind of star we want – and the kind of man we want other men to be. He’s got a good voice, great clothes, and the kind of face you never forget. He seems genuinely kind, and people seem to think he’s charismatic. But I also think that rather than being a failsafe indicator of his deserved idol status, Harry-hysteria –- and this, by the way, is not to be compared with Beatle-mania, though many will attempt it – says a lot about both what we want as a society, and also what we lack.
Styles is, of course, an alumnus of One Direction – the last successful British boy band, who were put together on The X Factor in 2010. As the most magnetic of five lads whose energy was once dangerously similar to that of the main characters of The Inbetweeners, he is the one who has to cultivated by far the biggest breakout career after One Direction disbanded (five years after they formed).
Zayn Malik came close, when he had a hit with “Pillow Talk” in 2016 – but then he had a controversial break-up with the beloved supermodel Gigi Hadid, and has since reverted from “go” very much back to “touch”. Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson have both released successful solo material, but nobody I know could name a song. Liam Payne’s trajectory has consisted, as far as I can tell, of dating Cheryl Cole and fathering her child, before the relationship ended and he had all his cheek fat surgically removed.
Styles was different. In 2017 he released his first, eponymous solo album, which featured the lead single “Sign of the Times”. It was abundantly clear that his team wanted to move him away from the saccharin bops of One Direction: this was a mournful croon of a track with baked-in pre-nostalgia and a tempo generally reserved for old rockers prone to swaggering. “Sign of the Times” said: the boy has become a man.
Luckily for Styles, there simply weren’t many other men around. The 2010s was a decade in which mainstream preferences switched from indie to grime, and when pop, in its purest sense, became dominated by women. For those who wanted a catchy male chorus there was Ed Sheeran, and there was Rag’n’Bone Man – but neither was much of a showman. So Styles, the last man in pop (save for Justin Bieber, who was too commercial, too sugary, too Canadian) was not just a man but the man – and, with Bowie dead only a year prior, his role as Man-In-Chief was cemented by a society bereft.
And Styles is, crucially, a different kind of man. As far as we know, he is not toxic, avoidantly attached, a narcissist or a Gemini. He’s a man who gets it. A man who calls his mum on Mother’s Day. Who wears Cuban heels and goes down on women. He has a song called “Treat People with Kindness”, which is also his tour slogan, and lyrics that say “I just wanna make you happier”. He speaks directly to us in his song “Boyfriends” – “Boyfriends/Are they just pretending?/They don’t tell you where it’s heading” – which he introduced at his 2022 Coachella set by telling “boyfriends everywhere” “f*** you”. He is a feminist ally and a champion of LGBTQ rights whose solo career was kicking off just at the time that these two attributes became some of the most valuable that pop stars could have. He is a green-flag smoothie who has seeped into the very bones of millions of women craving softness and men going “hmm, interesting”.
But while he may stand for everything we desire in 2023, his music remains steadfastly average, and the former tends to make people forget the latter. If a few decades ago we had elevator music, now we have TikTok music – and Styles’s latest hit “As It Was” is not only the bedrock of individual videos but a sort of engulfing soundtrack for the evening scroll. It tinkles through the top half of your head pleasantly enough, drowns out 50 to 65 per cent of your intrusive thoughts, comforts you like a soft, but slightly static, blanket – and leaves you feeling not very much at all.
This may also be what some people want from pop music these days – but for me, it is frustratingly vague and non-committal. “Excuse me, green tea/Music for a sushi restaurant/From ice on rice/Scuba-duba-do-boo-boo”, he sings – or that stodgy refrain “Watermelon sugar/High”. It’s both vibey and vibeless, sexy and sexless, written for an online generation obsessed with both sex and vibes but not quite sure how to obtain either of the two. It is melodic, but somehow the melodies all blend into one in your head, and it is what critics will insist on describing as “breezy”, but feels stifling every time it comes up on another Instagram reel about how to make buckwheat pancakes. The songs are glossy with 70s pastiche and bolstered by brass and guitars, but lack the emotional or technical punch to match his presence in pop culture.
Styles is doubtless a gifted performer, yet his live performances are further evidence of the mismatch in what’s on offer. When Styles performs live, there are no Mercury theatrics, no Bowie personas, no Alex Turner ennui. Instead, there is striding, skipping, hip-wiggling and smiling, kindly, at the fans who have camped on the pavement to be within five metres of him (an act of devotion usually reserved, these days, for female stars such as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift). It all feels a bit like a perfume advert – sexy and beguiling, but ultimately insubstantial.
Perhaps all of this is simply proof that celebrity in the 2020s is not just about having a talent – it’s about standing for something, be it your own brand or a worthy cause. That’s not to say that Styles is talentless – but it would be naïve to call him a “singer”.
He is a package deal, an immersive experience for those looking for the pinnacle of contemporary masculinity. His music is less the cause of than the soundtrack to his own stardom. So given I’m happy enough to look at him on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens, I suppose I could just put my fingers in my ears.
