The Tea On... Harry Styles

Harry Styles Biography

Harry Styles, in full Harry Edward Styles, (born February 1, 1994, Redditch, Worcestershire, England), British singer, songwriter, and actor, one of the original members of the boy band One Direction and a highly successful solo artist known for his multiple chart-topping singles and albums. Styles became a member of One Direction in 2010, when the group came together to compete on the British music competition television show The X Factor. He later embarked on a career as a solo artist and actor, with forays into fashion.

Styles was raised in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, England, by his parents, Anne Twist and Desmond Styles. His parents divorced when he was seven years old; thereafter, he and his elder sister, Gemma, were raised by their mother. Styles made his start in music while a student at Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School, where he was the lead singer of the

band White Eskimo. In 2010, encouraged by his mother, Styles auditioned for The X Factor. For the show, he performed a rendition of “Isn’t She Lovely,” a song originally written by Stevie Wonder. After failing to advance, Styles was recalled and joined with Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, and Louis Tomlinson to compete as a group

Memories (2013), Four (2014), and Made in the A.M. (2015)—were all hugely successful.

In 2016 Styles and the other members of One Direction decided to take a break from recording and touring, enabling Styles to pursue a solo career. That year he signed a contract with Columbia Records and on the show. The five-member group subsequently became known as One Direction, named at the suggestion of Styles, and ul timately took third place in the final round of the competition. The group released its debut studio album, Up All Night, in 2011. Styles cowrote three songs on the album, which climbed quickly to number two on the U.K. Albums Chart and to number one on the Billboard 200. One Direction’s next four albums—Take Me Home (2012), Midnight

launched Erksine Records, an independent record label. In 2017 he released his debut single, “Sign of the Times,” which topped the U.K. Singles Chart, and his self-titled debut album. His music became known for its combined elements of classic rock, soft rock, and pop, reflecting the many artists by which he was influenced, including the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Harry Nilsson, and Shania Twain.

In 2017 Styles made his debut as an actor, taking on the role of a British soldier during World War II in the film Dunkirk (2017); his performance received positive reviews. In 2020, a year after the release of his second solo album, Fine Line (2019), which broke U.S. sales records for a British male singer and earned him nominations for British Male Solo Artist and British Album of the Year at the 2020 BRIT Awards, Styles accepted a leading role in the film Don’t Worry Darling (2022), a psychological thriller directed by Olivia Wilde. His third solo album, Harry’s House, was released in 2022, the same year as the release of the romantic drama My Policeman, a film set in 1950s Brighton, England, in which Styles played the leading role of a gay policeman.

From early in his career, Styles was known for his philanthropy. He frequently donated proceeds from his concerts and tours to charities and took moments onstage to bring awareness to equal rights, gender equality, and other causes. He also promoted the slogan “Treat People with Kindness,” after which he wrote a song of the same name that appeared on Fine Line. Styles received numerous nominations and awards, among them the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance, for his song “Watermelon Sugar,” for which he also won the 2021 BRIT Award for British Single of the Year.

One Direction

One Direction, British-Irish male vocal group whose stylish good looks and bright pop-rock sound captivated young fans around the world in the early 2010s. The members were Niall Horan, Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, and Louis Tomlinson. The group formed in 2010 on the British television show The X Fac tor, a talent contest for aspiring singers. Each of the five members

Each of the five members audi tioned and originally competed as a solo performer, but early in the season they were advised to pool their talents. Taking the name One Direction, the boys—all were between 16 and 18 years old at the time—attracted substantial atten tion, especially from young female viewers, for their charismatic stage presence and vocal skills. Although One Direction ultimately fell short of winning on The X Factor, the show’s mastermind, Simon Cowell, offered the act a recording contract soon after the season ended.

In the tradition of earlier pop-music “boy bands,” One Direction was promoted as a set of teen idols who were musically compatible but also distinct in style and personality. After building its fan base in early 2011 by touring the British Isles with fellow The X Factor contestants, the group entered the recording studio. The resulting album, Up All Night (2011), filled with cheerily harmonized pop songs about carefree revelry, first-time heartbreak, and other adolescent concerns, was an immediate hit both at home and in other European and Commonwealth countries. Its popularity was fueled in part by the song “What Makes You Beautiful,” a buoyant empowerment anthem that topped the British and Irish singles charts and in early 2012 was named best British single at the Brit Awards (the British equivalent of the Grammy Awards). Although the American market had often bedeviled otherwise popular British boy bands, One Direction, aided by a social media campaign that introduced the group to potential overseas fans, had little difficulty breaking through. Up All Night debuted at number one on the Billboard album chart upon its 2012 release and went on to sell more than a million copies in the United States. The quintet extended its worldwide success with its sophomore release, Take Me Home (2012), which departed little from the winning formula of its predecessor. In 2013 the group was the subject of a 3-D concert-tour documentary, One

Direction: This Is Us, and released a third hit album, Midnight Memories. Two years later, while touring in support of the album Four (2014), One Direction announced that Malik had left the group. The remaining four continued to tour but announced a planned hiatus shortly before the release of Made in the A.M. (2015), and the band members began issuing solo albums thereafter

Where is ‘Harry’s House’ anyway? Harry Styles explains

Harry Styles has been constantly on the go since his teenage years in the boy band One Direc tion – one world tour after another. So the idea of home is something he’s been giving a lot of thought. Just consid er the title of his new album, out today: Harry’s House.

Morning Edition’s Leila Fadel spoke to Styles about the concept of home and where he sought it during and after lockdown, helping friends heal and the process of separating the pop star from the per son, especially when they’ve been the former for so much

of their life. And she learned, while researching him for the interview, he was researching about her too.

“Leila gave the best com mencement address in Northeastern history,” he says.

Leila Fadel, Morning Edition: This album, Harry’s House, was recorded all over the world – LA, Tokyo, Maine, London. That’s indicative of the life you live, the life of a trav eler. So what is home for you?

Harry Styles: I think for

me home is just about friends. While this is such a personal album, and so much about my own journey finding a place of home, I also feel like it’s very much dedicated to my friends.

I always felt like I would land in a certain place, or a certain house and feel like ‘Oh, this is the home I’ve been searching for.’ And I think, much like happiness, that isn’t necessarily a final resting place and it is a jour ney and it’s kind of peaks and troughs of happiness, sadness – all of the things that make you feel alive.

LF: The "Matilda" here – is that Roald Dahl's?

HS: It’s definitely dis guised as Roald-DahlMatilda, yeah. It was kind of like okay, we’ll disguise it as speaking to Matilda now that she’s all grown up, who’s been mistreated by her family, how would you speak to her?

I think people have so much guilt with things that they don’t necessarily need to have guilt with. It’s your right to protect the space around you and be protective of yourself and look after yourself. I think it was a moment where it’s not necessarily my place to make someone else’s experience about me, but it’s just wanting to reassure them that I was listening.

LF: The single "As It Was" has a re ally fun energy, but when you listen to the words, there's nostalgia... there's sadness. What mo ment in time are you singing about?

HS: It’s about meta morphosis, losing your self, finding yourself. Embracing the fact that life hits you at differ ent times, not when you expect it. That’s wonderful, but with these wonderful things comes some complex emotional journey[s].

HS: I think because I started so young, it became kind of like – that’s who I am. I don’t know if I ever stopped for long enough to realize what I was if I didn’t do it. But I think getting to a place where I feel like, ‘This is what I do and I love it, but it’s not nec essarily who I am.’ Just feels like a much healthier place to be operating from and making music from.

LF: You’ve talked about trying to figure out how to not be defined by what you do, trying to figure out who you are separate from it.

For A Harry Styles Concert

Even with all the pre-re lease chatter about the rock leanings and ’70s vibe of Harry Styles’ debut solo effort, few people proba bly predicted the 23-year-old ex-One Direction superstar to drop the kind of album that makes your uncle or your mom perk up, say “what’s that?” and buy a CD for themselves on their next trip to Target or Wal-Mart.

Yep, “Harry Styles” is that rare generation-spanning, for ward-thinking retro album, one that nods to the past with out garishly repeating it, apart from an occasional selfaware wink: Think Amy Wine house, Justin Timberlake, and of course Adele, although he doesn’t sound much like any of them apart from the Adelesque grandiosity of the lead sin gle, “Sign of the Times.”

But let’s not get into any premature “Next Adele” fe ver-dreams just yet. While the album doesn’t sound out of time, there’s really not much to place it in 2017: It’s loaded with acoustic guitars and has nary a trap beat, drop or apparently even an electronic drum and has nary a trap beat, drop or apparently even an electronic drum. It even feels like an old-school vi nyl album: In an era when many long-players have 18 songs and hover around the 70-minute mark, this one’s got an even 10 tracks and

clocks in at 40 minutes, without feeling skimpy. It’s even, at least subconsciously, divided into sides: the softer side one and the rockier side two, which kicks off with the hard-riffing “Only Angel” (hell, the song’s even got a cowbell) and roars into the even ballsier “Kiwi” before down shifting for the final three

But despite the guitars and the hype about how “rock” “Harry Styles” is, it’s miles away from the Rolling Stones or even the sweeping rock anthems purveyed by two of this album’s pa tron saints, David Bowie and Queen. Instead, their influence is heard more in the cinematic sweep of the bal lads, along with dashes of Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Nilsson (the arrangement on this album’s lead single, “Sign of the Times,” is more than a little reminiscent of his 1973 hit “Without You”; “Carolina” has some of his quirky charm) and even Bad finger — the guitar line in “Ever Since New York,” which is lifted almost directly from that group’s 1972 pow er-pop chestnut “Baby Blue,”

The primary sonic architects here are executive producer Jeff Bhasker (Fun, Kanye West, Be yonce, Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk”) and two of his longtime associates, who bring even more diversity: co-producer/ guitarist Alex Salibian worked with Young the Giant, country singer Cam and big-voiced pop thrush Elle King; co-producer Tyler Johnson’s studio pedi gree includes OneRepublic and Ed Sheeran, and he wrote songs with or for Cam, Keith Urban, Miley Cyrus and John Leg end. Yet that’s not to downplay the decisive mark Styles makes here: He co-wrote every song, played guitar and performed all of the vocals on several (check out his impressive stacked har monies on “From the Dining Ta ble”), and makes his mark as a strong and distinctive lead singer. And there’s no question whose album this is: You never think for a second that he’s not do ing exactly what he wants, as far as it may place him from the teen-pop realm that made him a superstar. And while there are definitely hits on the album — “Sign of the Times” reached No. 4 on the Bill board Hot 100 — there’s nothing you’d exactly call a “banger.” In fact, the most likely sec ond single from the album, the acoustic lilt “Two Ghosts,” is closer to contemporary country than pop radio (and not just because it’s supposedly about his ex, Taylor Swift).

So the big question here is where this leaves Styles’ millions of young fans. The rap turous critical response and receptive ears in later generations thus far speak to the album’s quality and genera tion-spanning appeal (and it’s safe to say that Eagles manager Irving Azoff, father and partner of Styles’ manager Jeffrey Azoff, knows how to market to an older audience). But will the kids come along? Will “Harry Styles” be the summer soundtrack for bonding moments between re bellious teens and their par ents, or will the kids feel he’s abandoned them? Indeed, he sings “I’ve never felt less cool” on the closer, “From the Dining Table.”

Time will tell. But either way, Styles has made a bold and brave statement of intent that completely reinvents him as an artist — and leaves a wide-open road for whatever he might want to do next.

When One Direction went on hiatus in 2016, it wasn’t really a question of if Harry Styles would release solo material – more, what sort of music would it be? Would he follow ex-bandmate Zayn Malik down the sensual electronic-R&B route? Would he try and shed the boy band label and push out a record of boyish indie? Or would he go down the Justin Timberlake route of a tightly written, full-blown pop album?

Well, he did none of the above. Styles’ debut single ‘Sign of the Times’ was a Bowie inspired epic standing at just under six minutes. The power ballad fused elements of ’70s rock with Britpop, and was a taster of what was to come on his self-titled debut album, which combined the aforementioned influences with elements of soft rock, psychedelia and a dash of funk. Bril liantly bizarre and endlessly endearing, it featured a handful of mega tunes, but sometimes it felt like Styles was borrowing too heavily from his musi cal heroes. There were glimmers of his personality and own sound, but they were partially obscured by the eclectic inspirations and attempts to distance himself from his boyband past.

His follow up ‘Fine Line’ has taken this nostalgic sound and combined it with soaring pop sensibilities. And while his influences are still evident (Hell, he even sought out the woman who made Joni Mitchell’s dulcimer in the ‘70s, and plays one on the album), there’s far more of a cohesive Styles sound on

‘Fine Line’.

This was evident in the first few sin gles: ‘Lights Up’, which blends soft rock with modern indie and a glimmer of soul, and the bombastic ‘Wa termelon Sugar’, a ‘70s inspired bop stuffed with bolshy brass lines. The rest of ‘Fine Line’ follows suit.

Punchy opener ‘Golden’ is a big and brash indie-pop song. It’s filled with simple backing vocals, twinkling glockenspiel tinkles and a huge, warm chorus. You can hear the weight of his heroes Fleetwood Mac threaded throughout the track (and on the rest of the record), but this time around Style’s own charm doesn’t seem lost among his admiration for historic greats.

The jangling ‘Cherry’ is drenched in psychedelia with its clattering riffs and harmonica lines. ‘Sunflow er, Vol. 6’ is stuffed with The Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies and production that could have come off the latest Vampire Weekend record, and ‘Canyon Moon’ combines those aforementioned Fleetwood Mac nods with sunny, ‘Screamadelica’-indebted instrumentation.

Lyrically, it’s brazenly honest. The album, Styles has said, is “all about having sex and feeling sad” – you couldn’t put it better yourself. On ‘Falling’ he alludes to the fact he cheated on his ex, admitting that “there’s no one to blame but the

the drink and my wandering eyes,” while on ‘Cherry’ he mocks his exes new partner, asking: “Does he take you walking ‘round his parents’ gallery?”. And then there’s the deliciously saucy lyrics of ‘Watermelon Sugar’, which may or may not be about oral sex: “I just wanna taste it / Watermelon sugar high”.

Sometimes it borders on trite – the Queen-influenced introduction of ‘Treat People with Kindness’ sees a female choir proclaim: “Maybe we can find a place to feel good / And we can treat people with kindness / Find a place to feel good.” But as the choral introduction subsides into another banging pop tune, the clichés are forgiven.

There again, there are some lacklustre moments. Ballads such as ‘Falling’, for instance, are disappointing. It’s a saccharine heartbreak on an album otherwise bursting with personality and charm; there’s nothing on the track that would distinguish it from another weepy rock infused ballad – you could tell somebody that this was James Arthur or John Legend and they wouldn’t bat an eyelid. New single ‘Adore You’ similarly does little to differentiate itself from being any other slice of gener ic chart fodder.

For the most part, though, Styles’ second album is a total joy. It’s an elegant combination of the ex-boy bander’s influences, slick modern pop and his own roguish charm.

On the last song, the euphoric, Bon Iver-inspired ‘Fine Line’, Styles comes full circle, seemingly feeling hopeful after his past heartbreak and indiscretions.

“We’ll be a fine line,” he croons over and over atop jubilant, lush orchestration, before adding: “We’ll be alright.” Given the quality of Styles second album, we’re inclined to agree.

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