Harry Styles - As It Was review: Classic Stylsian heart-throbbery with a sorrowful twist
It’s been a funny old week for the One Direction alumni. It started out with Liam Payne turning himself into a meme with a rambling, post-slap reaction interview at the Oscars, in which his accent could be roughly described as Cardiff-by-York-on-Trent, and now it’s ending up with his former bandmate, Harry Styles, proving he can romp around a rainy Barbican in a sparkly red jumpsuit and make it look marvellous.
All of which is to say: there’s a new Hazza song out, with an excellent video to match. The 28-year-old sent pulses racing and wallets emptying when he announced his long-awaited stadium tour would roll into Wembley this summer (it sold out in minutes), which also stoked rumours that a feverishly anticipated follow-up to his Fine Line album might be in the offing.
And so it’s proved, with a 13-track record Harry’s House — not definitely but almost certainly a reference to one of Styles’s heroes Joni Mitchell, who has a song of the same name — set to arrive on May 20.
This is the lead single, a sub-three-minute rush of indie-pop with a fizzing bassline, loopy guitars and crashing bells. It’s got a whiff of the Eighties (what doesn’t these days?) although it’s nowhere near as Synths For Dummies as a lot of the stuff we’ve been peddled in recent years. Styles’s voice is soft and gentle for the most part, and his lyrics are quietly sorrowful, hinting at some greater darkness without ever delving too deep into it: “Answer the phone/ ‘Harry, you’re no good alone/ Why are you sitting at home on the floor?/ What kind of pills are you on?’”.
It’s catchy, and made for repeat listens — there’s no real structural complexity to it, but it’s certainly moreish, not overstaying its welcome. Does it stack up against the billion-stream megahits of Watermelon Sugar and Adore You? Perhaps not quite, but it’s yet more proof that Styles, along with his frequent collaborators and co-writers Tyler Johnson and Kid Harpoon, still know how to make an instantly enjoyable tune.
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Before we get onto the video, a quick content warning for any of readers of an easily flappable disposition: the video does, indeed, feature Styles stripping down to his boxers. In other words, it’s a classic piece of Stylsian heart-throbbery, with plenty of brooding looks to camera and a masculinity-morphing fashion sense.
But there’s an inadvertently poignant backstory to the video too. It was directed by Ukrainian-born director Tanu Muiño, one of the industry’s most sought after video-making talents, thanks in part to her role co-directing Lil Nas X’s scandalously brilliant Montero (Call Me By Your Name) visuals.
“Directing a Harry Styles video was a bucket list dream come true for me as he’s my favorite performer,” Muiño said. “Shooting him was bittersweet as it was one of the happiest days of my life, but on the second day of the shoot, my country Ukraine was invaded so you can imagine the insane emotions we had while shooting.
“Me and my team from Ukraine poured so much love into this video and you can see it on screen. It will be a music video I will never forget and now I can happily retire.”
We hope Muiño is joking about that early retirement; we can’t wait to see what she does next. And judging by the early viewing figures on the As It Was YouTube video, racking up almost nine million views since it premiered at midnight, both her and Styles have another smash on their hands.
What does it say for the new album? It feels as if any lingering Seventies influences have been banished, for sure. Apart from that, it’s hard to gauge which stylistic (excuse the semi-pun) direction (and again) he’ll be heading in. Wherever he ends up, we’re definitely looking forward to a visit to Harry’s House.
