Harry’s Home and the Age of the Lover

Anyone alive and conscious in the past 20 years may have noticed many distinct shifts in popular music. We moved out of 90s grunge and the last waves of what wanted to live up to 80s rock glory into truly diverse pop music. R&B swept the charts at the same time as pop ballads and bubbly melodies.

Mariah Carey topped Billboard’s Year-End Hot 100 chart in 2005 with “We Belong Together,” but just the top 10 also sees two Kelly Clarkson songs (Since U Been Gone and Behind Those Hazel Eyes), Kanye West, 50 Cent, and Green Day. It would be unfair and inaccurate to claim any year or era of music as truly the most diverse, but in the past 20 years, after the hard work put in by influential 90s artists, hip hop and R&B found a place not just on the radio, but on top charts.

Now why am I talking about Mariah Carey and 2005 when I clearly slapped Harry Styles as not only my welcoming image, but also my title? Because music changes and for better or for worse, Harry Styles is the fave of modern pop. “Pop” as a genre of music has always meant very little. “Popular” doesn’t have a sound (by nature) though there are sounds, there are trends, that become popular. But pop can be rock, or it can be rap, or it can be all sorts of things. Regardless of what pop is, pop has changed. What you might hear 5, 10 years ago - as a small and completely unimportant point, I mistakenly thought of 2010 as 5 years ago while writing this, and that is the best summary I can give of the passage of time and our very confusing 21st century - is so remarkably different from now in, I find, one thing more than all others: who you find singing about what.

Leaning into stereotypes (sorry), the idea is, that women have created love songs about feelings and men have created love songs about, well… sex. A fantastic example would be to compare just about any Taylor Swift and any Maroon 5. They embody not just what we heard, but we expected, with their sounds and images founded in a very long history of music and celebrity and on and on. The romance of men was meant to be charming, sexy, and based in power. At the end of the day, he was the suave rockstar.

Now, I cannot possibly get into the history of Harry Styles and One Direction because… well because I don’t care about it. What I care about is image. To gain wild popularity, young One Direction had to fit this market, which becomes even stranger taking into account that as a boy band, they were marketed to young people - and let’s be honest, young girls in particular.

Now, this was the 2010s, this is THE time for fun music about dancing and hot girls and clubs and being stupid all in the name of love. But of course, they’re also young, so they can sing about love without going quite as far as Maroon 5 can. Point being, the idea of romance and heart throb begin early for our dear Harry, and it’s not a choice he gets to make. It’s all about marketability, because hey, isn’t that what we all love?

So eventually he strikes out on his own and suddenly there’s this shift. He cuts his hair (gasp!) and the gloves come off. Some other things happen too, I guess, but I wasn’t paying attention at the time. Anyway, he releases his first album. It’s 2017 and a new wave of viewing men and viewing male musicians especially has taken over.

Maybe Ed Sheeran and his soft voice and completely nonthreatneing ginger face are to blame. Or maybe it’s the constant barrage of young male singers ever since Justin Bieber - or did the Jonas Brothers come first - and suddenly (after a lightning quick 15 or so years) appeal isn’t all about sex. It’s about something much easier: approachability.

Will a man give everything for you, stare into your eyes? Will he go as far as Bruno Mars promised us in “Grenade”? Will he croon like John Legend, like Sam Smith? Music has entered the age of the lover. Vulnerability is the word and man, does Harry nail it.

This isn’t about whether you like him or not. Harry Styles has become much more, and much less, than a musical artist. Harry Styles became a movement. Now, in those early days of his solo career, in the mid to late 2010s, this could pass with rather shallow aesthetics. But what wonderful aesthetics they were! Soft pink and tattoos and fantastic guitar riffs and some real ear worms.

But it takes his second album to solidify what this new age of romance means. Before we get into that, I do want to clarify: when I say romance I don’t just mean love and the ideal lover. I also mean romantic ideals — beauty, individualism, freedom, nature and imagination and those sort of things. Love, in a grand and sweeping sense. Oh, yeah, and another little buzzword perfect for Harry: kindness.

If you spend so much as a minute in the depths of Harry Styles fan twitter or tik tok (I don’t recommend this at all), it should take no time at all to know that many consider him not just a musician, but a lifestyle. Harry’s second album released in 2019, and Fine Line gave us 46 minutes and 43 seconds of warm syrupy songs turning into slow romance turning into the ever iconic “Treat People with Kindness”. Another note - I say, “us” but I won’t mislead you, I first listened to the album 2 days ago, so I wasn’t really present for this music history moment a few years ago.

Ever since, the world has decided do they love him, or do they hate him. Again, I don’t care about that. Some do, some don’t. But as he sweeps not just Spotify and however else you listen, and invades SNL and magazines and movie theaters, Harry truly is a movement. Harry Styles represents calm approachability.

Sometimes he’s sour, sometimes he’s sweet (possibly due to his fixation of fruit? if anyone knows what that’s about, please explain it) and sometimes he’s sexy. His music - visually, musically, lyrically - embraces feeling good in your skin, making others feel good (in many ways), and the little moments that feel, well, good. His music explores emotional intimacy with a delicacy we still don’t always get to see with male musicians.

I’m not saying it’s not a bit, or that it’s not extremely marketable, it’s just that it works. He manages to do it without a million neon signs showing how superficial everything truly is. Maybe, it’s because he manages to be both intimate and private at the same time. Maybe it’s because while he is experimental and carefree, everything doesn’t always work, and this sort of imperfection speaks to how hard he tries. I really can’t say. And maybe, more than half the meaning of Harry Styles is found not in his albums, but his monumental impact on his audience.

Because really, what Harry’s House invites us to do is to feel the way we are meant to, not in a way he dictates. Either, he’s telling us of the feelings of his life and asking us to empathize, or he’s asking us to all feel good together. No strings attached, so long as we are kind. It’s not about whether his music is good, it’s about whether you feel good.