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December 2014: Harry Styles stands up, straightens his black, unbuttoned, Jagger-esque shirt and extends his hand. “Hello, I’m Harry,” he says, his English accent thick. “Can I interest you in a macaroon or some sort of beverage? A water, even? No? Now, tell me, where abouts in Sydney did you grow up?” Yes, at best the then 20-year-old One Direction band favourite was a talented, buoyant charmer and – depending if you’d spoken to Taylor Swift or not – at worst, a heartbreaker. “So what kind of questions are you going to ask me?” Styles cheekily quips as I advise of my “no-peeking at my notepad” rule. “I can just about see the first question on your page. Yep, I got it.”
Today, the questions on journalist’s lists across the globe run much deeper and vary vastly from those directed to five young boys three years ago. For today, Styles releases his highly-anticipated debut solo self-titled album; a brilliant, eclectic melting pot of dreamy psychedelic pop and rock tracks laden in confessionals. At an exclusive advanced listening session in Sydney, six hours before the album dropped across the globe, we’re reminded by Sony executives that this is no longer Harry from 1D: This is Harry Styles. (A quick reference check in the latest Rolling Stone U.S. will confirm this as well; the singer’s shirt – no longer emitting chest vision – has made way for a staple Gucci pussybow. Some would say a sign of the times, indeed.
A distinct departure from all we know, Styles opens the album with Meet Me In The Hallway, a mellow, dreamy, hippy track – one you could expect from a Matt Corby – as the lyrics long for a relationship to simply work out. “Just let me know I’ll be at the door/ Got to get better” reverberate. You can see why the singer chose to perform a secret concert at Brooklyn’s Rough Trade in New York City this week; a venue inside a record store which usually hosts indie acts. (Unfortunately Styles chose to use the opportunity to do something he always wanted to do – stage dive – but fell flat on his face instead to an unsuspecting crowd.)
There’s nothing flat though about this 10-track offering. Sign Of The Times follows up as the sweeping piano ballad we know and the number one single in the world. Emotional and Bowie-esque, it’s not actually a prelude to the rest of the album at all but is still the best. We get some Beach Boys 1970s vibes in Carolina – Styles’s father’s favourite – as he muses of a “good girl” on a social pedestal: “I met her once and wrote a song about her / I hope she hears me now” and “She’s got a book for every situation/ gets into every party without invitation”.
Two Ghosts is one of my favourites and will be yours too. Stripped back, you can really hear Style’s breathy vocals as he pines for a spark in a relationship that once was.
“We’re not who we used to be/ we’re just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me, trying to remember what it was like to have a heartbeat.”
The universal feeling of longing for better times hits you emotionally quite hard, the country strings a welcome interlude to the heavy lyric. Simple Creature will be the ballad track Styles belts out the best live, even better than SNL’s Sign Of The Times performance. Listen out for “We started two hearts in one home, it’s hard when we argue, we’re both stubborn I know/ Wherever you go, you bring me home.”
The atmospheric sounds of Meet Me In The Hallway are repeated next in Only Angel but are quickly interrupted by old school rock. Comparisons are likening this track to an early Mick Jagger with its Stonesy chorus.
Nothing says “coming-of-age” like Styles finally being able to sing about a woman “being a devil between the sheets”.
Kiwi is a track I have questioned in the past, wrongfully alluding to the idea it might be about Styles’ reported fling with New Zealand model Georgia Fowler. Styles muses through the stages of falling for an irresistible girl, going crazy for her and losing it because he’s so into it. But then it takes a turn into a shouty, fast-paced rock pop track as we discover this girl is actually a heavy-drinking, cheap-pack-smoking lady who is threatening to be having his baby. Upon interviewing Fowler today, who blushed upon reference to Styles, I really, firmly believe this song is not about her at all. It’s also probably my least favourite track on the album.
Ever Since New York is reportedly written to Taylor Swift and one which Styles debuted on SNL – a beautiful, heady holiday dalliance that repeats it’s lyrics “Tell me something I don’t already know/ tell me something before you go”. Through this repetition, it appears Styles is pleading/searching for something in the same way Swift was mulling over the same lyrics in her track Out Of The Woods (“Are we out of the woods yet, are we in the clear yet?”) Alas, it’s a good break from the rock offerings.
Credit: Instagram @harrystyles
The ninth track on the album, titled Woman, opens with an American voice – presumably one of Style’s band asking “Should we just search romantic comedies on Netflix and see what we find?” It is, of course, a reference to Styles and his team spending two months at the end of 2016 in Geejam – a studio built into a mountainside near Port Antonio in Jamaica (and where Drake and Rihanna have written music). According to Rolling Stone, house-workers would leave at night and find Styles in the morning – with little sleep and bleary eyes – watching old romantic comedies. The strings in this song remind you that nothing about this album is cut from the same pop cloth as that of Styles’s past. It’s not one that will run through the washing machine motions of the pop music industry only to be spat out in the boom and bust cycle and it’s certainly not one Simon Cowell owns.
If you need further convincing, From The Dining Table rounds off the album perfectly. With a sound similar to that of Meet Me In The Hallway, we finish where we began, a cyclical ending. And yet, it’s of a man still searching, hoping and wondering. “Maybe one day you’ll call me and tell me that you’re sorry too.” It’s the type that when sung live will ring out to silence both for the reason that it’s score is so beautifully written and also for that one question we’re all inevitably grappling with: Who’s that girl?
Harry Styles is out now.
