LOML closes out Harry's House, it's a sad song about realising someone is the love of his life after he had lost them. Harry has spoken about an albums start and end, Harry's House starts with Sushi, imploring his muse to let love in and asking himself if just a taste of love is enough. LOML is about loss of that person and realisation that they were the love of his life. To Zane Lowe Harry said:
"Love of my life, I’ve always wanted to write a song about like home and loving England and all that kind of stuff. And it’s always kinda hard to do without being like ‘went to the chippy and I did this thing’ and to me Love of My Life was the most terrifying song for a long time because it is so bare, it's so sparse." He went on to say: "And in the spirit of what Harry's House is about, I think it started as an idea that was very literal, on the nose, [...] As I started making the album it wasn't about the geographical location it was much more of an internal thing."
So, what he said was that it is about his home and England is a metaphor. Home is common theme in Harry's work, most notably in Sweet Creature but even in 1D it has meant more than a place to him. The notebook also has a quote 'your mother is my home'. Taylor has also used home or homeland to refer to Harry, WomanExile has a great post on their usage of home as a metaphor for each other.
The Lyric Video has roses, which Harry and Taylor Swift also use to refer to each other:
Since 1989, all rose and thorn lyrics are about Harry
Harry 's rose Tattoo is from 11 September 2013, when they started dating again after the VMAs.
Roses have been in videos, outfits, social media posts about each other, a list is here.
Timeline
In the NY ONO show Harry said he wrote it in Rob Stringers' (Sony CEO) house and that the phone ringing in it is his. As it Was was recorded in the same session, and in part, has a similar meaning. This places it in the first half of 2021. After the rest of the album, California. Also after Folk/evermore which are about communicating and endings respectively. Harry had seen Taylor in March at the 2021 Grammy's. At the time it was written Taylor was still dating Joe. Harry had been dating Olivia for a few months.
California in particular refers to 'summers death left to breathe' indicating that there may have been an ending of sorts in 2020 before he returned to England and drove to Italy over the time Folklore was released.
Though not lyrically addressed, to me LOML is a 'yes' to Question..?'s "Did you realize out of time, she was on your mind?" Question was written in the same time period, after the Grammy's interaction but was released 6 months later.
Tracklisting, release and length
Love of My Life is Harry's only track 13, Taylor's number. It was released on her birthday. It is 3:12 long, or March, 31 2012 - the date they met.
Live shows
Harry said to Zane Lowe he thought he would close the show with it. And he did up until March 25 2023 when it was replaced by Fine Line in the last leg. Later that same week Taylor Swift replaced Invisible String with The 1 and announced her split from Joe Alwyn. It only returned for the 3 Wembley shows.
It was missing for 30 shows and is one of the least played Harry’s House songs, only above Boyfriends and Grapejuice which was added for the last leg.
Lyrics
Baby, you were the love of my life, woah
Maybe you don't know what's lost 'til you find it
The first verse is a turn on the phrase “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” he reconnected with his love and found she is the 1 but it is past tense, he still lost her. This is similar to the Clean secret message, which also appeared in the OOTW video “She lost him but she found herself and somehow that was everything.” And the cyclical nature of this relationship.
Take a walk on Sunday through the afternoon
We can always find somethin' for us to do
We don't really like what's on the news, but it's on all the time
The second verse to me is remembering good times with this person, when he felt at home, with shared experiences and comfort. The Central Park walk with Taylor was on a Sunday.
I take you with me every time I go away
In a hotel, usin' someone else's name
I remember back at Jonny's place, it's not the same anymore
To me, I take you with me everytime I go away refers to what Harry said about an internal feeling, no matter where he is in the world his love is ever-present even when they are not.
In the Dublin show on the 22nd June 2023 Harry confirmed this refers to his childhood friend is Jonathan Harvey. This speaks to Harry’s concept of home as the feeling that you are loved and belong. To me this reference is to when Harry took Taylor on a tour of his home in England, to the lakes, where he grew up and she may have met Jonny in 2012. She said that was her best birthday, sharing his home with her was important to him. To me, this line means their relationship is different now to it was then. As it was is also similar with with an external view of how others would see them and their place in life.
It's unfortunate, ooh
Just coordinates, ooh
It’s unfortunate, just coordinates sounds to me like he’s reflecting on how they got from the Lakes trip to their current state. This applies to his feelings about love and home. The impact touring has had on his life, what is home and his relationships.
I don't know you half as well as all my friends
I won't pretend that I've been doin' everything I can
To get to know your creases and your ends
Are they the same?
Knowing his love is a theme, in Sunflower Harry sang “Let me inside, I wanna get to know you” and in Fine Line “Spreading you open Is the only way of knowing you” to explore the idea of intimacy co-existing with distance with the same person.
He also sings about not knowing his love in Trouble “And I don’t even know you / But I feel like I do sometimes”. Interestingly in If I could fly he feels like she knows him “Now you know me / for you eyes only”.
The “are they the same” speaks to once knowing all the creases and ends but not now. “Super Pretty” has a similar theme of distant intimacy and vulnerability “do you still feel the same about me”.
Baby, you were the love of my life, woah
Maybe you don't know what's lost 'til you find it
It's not what I wanted, to leave you behind
Don't know where you'll land when you fly
But, baby, you were the love of my life
The final chorus adds “don’t know where you’ll land when you fly” which confirms he is singing to a person not a country. Specifically a person with a private jet who can fly without the destination known. For that person every mystery take off is relentlessly tracked by an instagram account. How alienating it must be to someone who loves and wants her to see that and not know.
1 year since Taylor and Harry both said they are never happier and "Taylor's life finally making sense"
5 years since the Gucci swans & white horses shirt on the beach.
7 years since Harry's Debut one night only with Stevie Nicks
9 years since Taylor's clean speech "maybe you lost a person you never thought you would lose, maybe you lost yourself. You know, I think that we all go through things like this. We all have questions about where we’re going or where we been or where we should have been at that time." (3 days after the 2015 BBMAs)
11 years since Taylor posted roses and a Gatsby quote and said to fans "you are the longest relationship I've ever had' (ouch)
12 years since Harry arrived in LA and both he and Taylor disappeared for 7 days, Everything has Changed was written after.
I have thoughts about the reaction to Harry’s tour
The stage
Harry has said repeatedly that he wants to be part of the crowd. That’s the point of the enormous stage. He is physically closer to thousands more people because of it.
For people mad about the seats being the best tickets… why? Lower bowl near the stage was the highest price in Australia and Wembley because it has the best view.
I do understand Amsterdam is different because of the linear pricing rules, so the lower bowl is cheaper there than elsewhere. Honestly, probably not the best country to start this tour in for that reason. And I get that the bumps were not disclosed and they reduce the barricade view for side GA.
But firstly, stand elsewhere. And secondly, those tickets are priced more like the lower bowl at the far end of the stadium. They are equivalent tickets.
Also, stadium tours sell vastly more seated tickets than floor tickets. Wembley and Accor have around three times more seats than floor spots. Fans would trash him for empty seats, but then also trash him for designing a stage that actually caters to the people sitting in them.
2 The length of the show
This is Harry’s longest show.
It’s around 20 minutes longer than HSLOT and around 45 minutes longer than Live on Tour. Seriously, I need people to stop acting like he’s somehow giving less.
3 It’s not The Eras Tour
I loved The Eras Tour. But it is not the best concert I’ve ever been to, and more importantly, I do not want Harry trying to recreate it.
Taylor’s show was like a musical about her career: tightly choreographed, precise, and replicated every night. Because she did not sing all of it. That would be impossible. It had a *complete* prerecorded backing track. There are literally videos where she’s talking to security while the song continues.
A Harry show has always and only ever given you Harry.
If Harry stops singing, talks to a fan, laughs, drinks water, there is no vocal. His mic is on constantly. That’s why he can change lyrics, skip lines in the songs every night.
That’s his strength. He’s a showman who can work a room.
It’s its own thing, and if something is not what you expected, maybe instead of getting mad consider what it is.
Two NYE ago means 2015 NYE right? Since Harry was with that girl, and she was pretty mad at that time, maybe she was reminiscing about their time together and hoping to find someone who'd stay and then after meeting Joe she repurposed it because she thought she found that love she was searching for with Joe. I think most of reputation is her repurposing songs/ideas that were about something/someone else. And Joe just fit but some songs definitely has part Joe in them too. So I guess she succeeded in that bait and switch thing
That video, (which Taylor Nation has cut at 24:38 from their version) is from Chicago 27 June 2018, so she is referring to NYE 2016/17. (side note: Harry was also in Chicago 30 June 2018. In his next show he changed the Lyrics to MMIH to 'running with thieves you'... a few weeks before Hamille ended due to cheating......)
We have been told a few things to tell us she was with Joe then:
In 2018 the Reputation magazines included photos from Stella McCartney's farm in Bishampton (on the pages adjacent to NYD) and in January 2016 Joe posted a photo of himself woods that also had trees... not the same trees, but OK... I guess.
In 2019 in promo for A Christmas Carol Joe told interviewers he swims in Hampstead Heath every christmas, which many linked to Paper Rings, along with a very natural photo of Taylor painting a literal wall. And maybe he does, just him, his family and (long time lcy swim enthusiast) Harry Styles and by chance no one ever photographed or spoke about it.
Then on 30 December 2020 Taylor was hacked and the only photos they got/leaked was 7 (rather odd) images of Taylor and Joe getting ready on that new years eve. Amazingly they had access to Taylor Swift's camera roll and only leaked 7 PG images that placed her with Joe the at the time of a story Taylor Nation edited out of one of their videos about an icy swim on NYE, almost on the anniversary of when they were taken. (The 7 Photos were in 2 drops, the proper (non-mirror) selfies leaked October 2021.)
So why do I doubt this? Any alternative version is pure speculation we don't know where Taylor was NYE 16/17. But the edited video is weird, and I find the above odd.
FIrstly New Year's Day seems like an 1989 outtake to me, the story also fits the NYE 2012/13 Haylor Kiss that did involve hardwood floors, a Taxi in which to squeeze hands, a lobby girls could carry shoes in and an insane crowd that did make it hard and probably made them feel lost. And she looked ready to cry performing it while she was dating Joe?
Where was Harry on New Years Eve 2016/17?
Well he was spotted with Taylor on 28 December 2016 in Liverpool. Within a few days, one of his friends signed a record for Taylor to gift Austin Swift. Austin thanked the band who replied "when someone asks you to sign a record for their "friends little brother' and the friend turns out to be Taylor Swift."
After being missing for a few days he was next seen taking photos with fans in Holmes Chapel (1.5 hours drive from Stella's farm) on New Years Eve.
But wait! Taylor said she and Joe had been together for 3 months in the Lover Journal?
What she said was "we" maybe that was Joe and we didn't find out for another 5 months. Or maybe she was with someone else.... in this entry shaped like a butterfly.
Updated with more.. so I question adding this and need to cavet that haylorsecrets was an account that claimed to have inside info from Taylors PR office and lost the inside connection (in hindsight after Taylor fired her publicist before Tree in 2014) they then had a friend who fed them some info. It may have all been made up, but they were right about some things. Looking for another post I saw these where she posted in February 2017 that Harry and Taylor had been together at christmas. (x, x)
I think I’ve seen this film before too. At the 2016 iHeart awards on 3 March 2016. Calvin and Taylor arrived separately and were icy, Taylor won 4 awards and didn't thank Calvin when accepting 3. Calvin was apparently looking annoyed then thanked literally everyone but Taylor, even ET reported on it. Taylor then thanked him for tour.
I will always hear these two lyrics about that night.
What opal ring did you think Harry bought for Taylor? The link in your timeline doesn’t work anymore. I think it was on your 2014 timeline. Is it the same ring as the opal ring she wears in the Cardigan MV?
yes she does wear it in cardigan, there are pictures of it here
The global pop superstar chats with legendary author and fellow marathoner Haruki Murakami on the sublime simplicity of running—and how it nourishes the creative life. By Sophie Heawood Photography by Laura Jane Coulson
Harry Styles is asking for advice. He’d been nervous about today, almost couldn’t believe it was happening. But excited too, to sit down with one of his heroes, a man who had made him feel it was okay to be vulnerable. Someone who inspired him to take up running. Marathons, specifically.
“I wonder if you might have any advice to pass on to me: as a man, as an artist and as a runner?” he asks.
He poses this to Haruki Murakami, celebrated Japanese novelist and author of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a book Styles credits with making him believe he actually could run a marathon. Which he did in 2025, first in Tokyo finishing in 3:24, then in Berlin six months later, when he crossed the finish line in a stunning 2:59:13.
“Such a difficult question,” says Murakami with a chuckle.
“Well, as a human being really,” Styles clarifies, laughing too.
They’ve been chatting for an hour or so, Styles having flown in to meet the writer near his home. They make an unlikely pair: the 32-year-old singer, songwriter, and actor, and the 77-year-old best-selling author. But they share a love of running and quickly develop an easy rapport.
Styles has come prepared, with deliberate and thoughtful questions revealing a level of introspection rare in a young man who’s been in the public eye since the age of 16.
The wide-ranging conversation covers a lot: attention span (Harry’s, he struggled with reading as a kid), illness (Murakami’s, he’s recovering from a hospital stay and hasn’t been able to run), solitude, observation, music, creativity, fame, and the desire to be ordinary.
And running of course, which has everything to do with all of that.
Murakami, who has finished more than 25 marathons, thinks for another beat, then declares, “One of the important things for human beings is to embrace the contradiction. When I’m writing, I always feel I have a contradiction and that’s why I want to express myself…to understand it. Even at my age I’m still wondering, what is this chaos in me?
“That would be my advice to you as an artist as well as a man. If there’s something that’s dirty within you, you can’t just present it as is. You kind of have to turn the contradiction into something positive by sharing it with other people who might not think they have one. Sublimate those contradictions within you into art.”
He pauses again, then smiles. “My advice for you as a runner? No contradictions.”Laura Jane Coulson
Glasses: Oakley Cybr Zero.Laura Jane Coulson
T-shirt and Adidas trainers: vintage, sourced on eBay. Shorts: Pleasing. Socks: Calzedonia.
YOU CAN’T GO TOO FAST TOO QUICKLY
Harry Styles: One of the things I really loved in your book about running was that it freed me from the idea that music had to be an unhealthy profession and I had to be this tortured soul.
Your point is that being healthy makes you able to be an artist for a long time, that you can be a structured, healthy person and make great work. So I have a lot of gratitude to you for that.
Haruki Murakami: To write a book is not so difficult, but if you try to keep on writing, you have to be strong. It’s powered by endurance.
When I was in my teens, musicians died so young. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix. I think they couldn’t wait—live fast, die young. But that is not a thing that I wanted.
What I wanted to do was live a normal life because I’m just a normal guy—but then write abnormal books. That’s the kind of ideal that I was pursuing.
HS: If you want to run a marathon, it takes a lot of discipline. You can’t go too fast too quickly.
Has it always felt obvious to you that your running and writing feed each other? Or do you think it can be really easy to overcomplicate that, and actually, you just like writing and you also just like running?
HM: Running and writing books both match my personality. With running, it’s not just about speed. I was never into sports that involve balls. It’s more about me competing with my own self.
HS: We live in a time when making such an effort can be considered quite uncool, and there’s this romanticism that comes with the idea of being an artist, as if it’s this almost spiritual thing that just happens to you. But in your work I see a lack of fear around being uncool.
When you write about sex and masculinity, your characters aren’t all experts at sex—there are a lot of scenes of them fumbling around. There’s an innocence to them, as well as vulnerability, and shame.
That has definitely changed the way I view being masculine and being vulnerable. I wondered if that was something you felt you did consciously or discovered while you were writing it?
HM: I’m just an ordinary guy. Always. When I was a teenager or in my 20s, I wasn’t particularly adept at anything. But when I graduated college, I didn’t want to be a salaryman or to belong to a company. I created a small jazz club in Tokyo, I owned it, and I didn’t think I was going to be a writer, I just loved to read books.
But when I turned 29 the desire to write was very strong. So I wrote a book and I became a novelist—kind of on a whim.
But I’m still an ordinary guy living an ordinary life with my wife and everything. When I get interviewed, I sometimes feel awkward because why would an interviewer think that I’m special? That’s why the characters in my books are just normal people and they have that awkwardness.
I don’t even think I’m a creator; I’m just a recipient. I love to listen to music, I love to read books, but I’m just a reader, just a listener. I did try to practice some musical instruments, but I couldn’t get into it because I hate practice. It’s boring.
HS: Oh, it is.
(They both laugh.)Laura Jane Coulson
Nike track jacket: vintage, sourced on eBay.
IN THIS TOGETHER
Styles’s fourth album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally, drops March 6. Fans have been clamoring since 2022 for a follow-up to the chart-topping Harry’s House.
But after years of intense touring, Styles was prepared to wait much longer to record again—five, eight, 12 years if he had to. He was no longer sure what he wanted to say.
“Something I’ve often struggled with, in the middle of a tour, is feeling like I’m not sure what I’m giving, not sure what I’m adding to the world. Especially when the reward system and the kind of…adulation that you can receive feels so loud. Like clearly I’m getting so much from this, I’m getting all this energy. People are giving me so much, which I deeply appreciate. But what am I contributing? At times I felt quite existential about that.”
In 2010 when he stood baby-faced and floppy-haired on The X Factor stage describing plans to study law and sociology at university, he was just an ordinary lad with a part-time job in a bakery and a mum who thought he could sing.
Sixteen years later, after navigating stratospheric success and the massive operational apparatus that comes with it, those existential feelings were exacerbated by a sense of growing isolation.
“Over the years, I had to say no to everything I was invited to,” he says, “whether it was a friend’s birthday, a trip somewhere amazing, an opening. I started to wonder if I was saying no because I really was so busy or because it was more comfortable than saying yes. When you close yourself off to protect yourself from people who might bring negativity into your life, you’re also missing out on positive experiences.”Laura Jane Coulson
Shorts and cap: vintage, sourced on eBay.
He turned 30 in 2024 and decided to take some time off work, partly to do the things that people did in their 20s.
He started traveling for fun, “for the first time in—well, in some ways, ever,” he says. Japan, Spain, Germany. He loved Berlin, and found himself going back again and again, making new friends, hitting the club scene at night.
“Good electronic music is so good, you know—especially the melodic aspect. When you’re out at night, it’s such a community, but you’re also watching people have such individual experiences.”
He began to think he wanted his next album to deliver that feeling. “I wanted to recreate [what] I had on the dance floor, being lost in instrumentation and the musicality. It was so immersive, like, this is how I want to feel when I’m on stage too.
“I don’t want it to feel like a sermon I’m delivering. I wanted it to feel like, oh, we’re in this music together. Like I’m in it with you.”
This lifestyle was a lot for someone so accustomed to more structure, which is where running came in. It offered discipline and a different way of being alone.
“Because in some of those new experiences, there’s just so much stimulation, right? So many people, and it’s just so loud. So then running also became my processing place for all of that. Really being by myself.
“When you’re training for a marathon, which is the loneliest part, you just kind of set out for a run, and three hours later you come back. But there’s a real synergy between that and electronic music. It’s kind of hypnotic and becomes like a mantra almost.”
He started recording the new album in early 2025 with his longtime producer Kid Harpoon at Hansa Studios in Berlin, near a five-mile stretch of road he ran most days. Sometimes he’d listen to his own demos on his phone, making notes as he went.
“I used to have song playlists but realized that I’d be too aware of saying to myself, ‘Okay, just 20 more songs to go,’” he says.
“When I started listening to more electronic music”—artists like British electronic producers Floating Points and Jamie XX, or mixes by German techno DJs Fadi Mohem and Ben Klock—“the shift felt just very hypnotic, like oh I’m really lost in this thing. It was helpful to my running to get to that place where I felt like I was meditating right there. It makes the time go by in such a different way.”Laura Jane Coulson
Track jacket and pants: Pleasing.Laura Jane Coulson
JUST YOU MOVING THROUGH THE WORLD
HS: Do you find that you end up being creative while you’re running, or is it a time when you set everything else aside?
Personally, I’ve found the hypnotic, meditative aspect of music to have a lot of synergy with the meditative aspect of running.
When I’m running is when I have…time to think a lot about what I’m making and other things in my life too.
HM: When I’m running, I’m just running. I don’t think much. I listen to music mostly.
When I come back to sit in front of the desk I begin thinking, but when I’m running, I’m kind of empty. Something comes into me, but I don’t notice it.
To be empty is my one of my purposes with running. I feel that training your body is the way to create the perfect vessel, building a foundation for the ideas to come into.
HS: For me, one of the things that can be complicated is that, as an artist, say if you’re a novelist or a musician or a filmmaker, you’re an observer—but when you become a known person, you become the observed. You know you’re still the same, but other people can begin to view you as something different.
So something I love so much about running is the simplicity of it. You are the observer once more, and you can go about your day in the most naked form. It’s just you, alone, moving through the world.
That’s what I love about it: You don’t need anything, just a pair of shoes.
HM: Ah, but that’s not what I’ve got. As a novelist, I don’t have to be observed that much, like you do in your job. As a writer, you can just stay in all you want. You don’t have to meet anybody.
HS: One of my favorite things you ever wrote was, don’t feel sorry for yourself, only assholes do that.
Something else I like in your work is the poetry of simple things, like how you describe sitting down to eat breakfast, or having a beer.
That has definitely influenced the small moments that I take to myself when I sit down and appreciate the everyday things in front of me. It changes the way that you see the world.Laura Jane Coulson
Originally from Cheshire in the north of England, Styles has lived in London for 15 years now and is a big fan of the hilly, green expanses of Hampstead Heath.
But when he started walking and running through the city itself, he fell in love with it in a different way.
“You see things from ground level that you don’t see if you’re driving. There were so many areas of London I had missed,” he says.
“And during my early days in One Direction, we spent so much time inside hotels and venues that there are countries I’ve been to that I didn’t really experience.
“So when I travel now, it’s about committing to going outdoors to see some stuff, whether that’s running or walking. You experience places in a whole different way.”
Styles takes scant credit for much of his commercial success. It’s “all about the fans, it isn’t down to me. I can’t sell out a venue—only they can do that. And there’s a producer that I work with who makes me great, and everyone who works on my team—everything that I’ve been rewarded for takes a lot of people.” Running, in a way, is the opposite of that, which provides a deeply refreshing contrast. The pursuit of creativity—making music, writing novels—can be freeing, but also loaded with pressure. An album might never feel finished, but a marathon has a fixed start and a finish line.
“Sport is so binary, and it’s all about time,” Styles says. “It’s not about me trying to top the charts, because I’m not that level of runner. But I can beat myself. Do the training and get through it.”
Styles isn’t new to running. He’d go out for some easy runs back in his 20s, but the habit didn’t stick. “Being young, I didn’t stretch enough or take care of my body, so I got injured pretty quickly,” he says.
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Now he trusts that he’ll show up. “The satisfaction comes from knowing that on the Wednesday that I felt terrible, I still got up and ran,” he says.
“I used to think that trying to run a sub-3:00 was such a specific goal, the idea of doing it in such a close time, how do you manage to keep it up throughout? But the thing that appealed to me with running was how much I could actually control it.”
He’s learning what parts he can control; pacing, for one—his splits in Berlin were nearly identical.
And fueling: “I usually drink a lot of water, but I was really scared of peeing myself during the [Berlin] Marathon, so I fueled up in the morning with a lot of electrolytes and not too much actual water, then I drank lots during the race,” he says.
As for food, “usually before every long run, I eat the biggest croissant I can find.”
What about the things he can’t control? The sheer vulnerability, the nakedness of being a known person running through the streets of London?
About that, he seems surprisingly unbothered, often clad in bright, multicolored training gear and head-turning Nike Alphaflys.
“Well, the main thing is that you’re always moving. You can turn a corner wherever,” he says. “I think with people who see me, it’s a bit more ‘Was that…?’ rather than, ‘Oh look it’s him!’ And by that time, you’re already gone.”Laura Jane CoulsonLaura Jane Coulson
NO ONE CAN RUN A MARATHON FOR YOU
HM: What I like about running is that it’s a very solitary thing, but only in a way. You’re alone, but then you’re also with other runners, with a vague kind of boundary between you.
My book about running was translated into many languages, so wherever I go in the world, if I’m on a run, other runners recognize me and call out my name. So wherever I go, I have a friend.
HS: In the first paragraph of that running book you claim it’s a well-known saying that a gentleman doesn’t talk about women he’s dated or the tax he’s paid. Then you admit you’ve just made it up, but that really people also shouldn’t talk about how they stay healthy. Haha.
It’s wonderful to start a book about running with a sense of humor. As the normal guy you said you are—not as some kind of ethereal character.
In fact I think my favorite thing about you is that I know nothing really about you, other than the work you’ve given to people. So I’m as deeply grateful for the amount that you’ve chosen to keep to yourself as for what you’ve chosen to share with us.
HM: You write music and you write the lyrics, right? That’s great. I’ve been wondering, always, what is creativity? I have been writing books, creating something, for 45 years or so, but still I don’t know what creativity is.
There is something in me, but I cannot grasp that essence at will. Because, uh, it just comes to me. And when I finish writing, it’s gone. And I wait until it comes again.
But waiting is not an easy thing. Sometimes it’s so hard, because you are not sure if it’s coming back. But you have to wait.
HS: Yeah and submitting to that waiting can feel quite passive—so perhaps the juxtaposition between that and running is what you enjoy so much.
With creativity being something that isn’t tangible, it’s subjective, but then you’ve got running in which there is a beginning and there is a finish line. There’s no finish line on being creative.
As a musician, there’s so much that I still don’t understand about what that means and what that will mean to me in years to come.
But [running is] a competition with yourself, whereas to make something and be celebrated for it externally is so much about other people deciding that they like it. It depends on them.
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Embrace Running Like Harry Styles
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HM: You have to create a foundation in order to put stuff on it. The act of running taught me many good things.
My peak as a runner was when I was 45 years old; after that, it went down. I knew there was a peak for everything, and I had to prepare for it.
But writing has no peak—I’m 77 years old, but I’m still writing, and my new novel will be published this year. This July. I just finished it. I’m very happy!
HS: Congratulations! After your book Norwegian Wood became such a huge hit [in the late 80s], was there some response, kind of like an artistic defiance there to make your next books more surreal?
And do you think any part of that was a subconscious reaction to…it becoming so popular in a way that felt unnatural to you, as someone who wanted to remain living as an ordinary person?
HM: In Japan, Norwegian Wood sold over two million copies at that time. So I was kind of depressed for a year or so because it became so popular. I don’t want to be popular.
But I recovered from the depression, and I started to write something different. So that was my turning point, I guess. But how do you think about your albums that have sold well?
HS: Yeah, I get it. I think there’s a point when you’re making something, when it feels so pure to you; a really beautiful moment where it’s finished and it’s just yours.
Then there’s almost a sadness at the handing-over. You have to let it go, like sending your kid off to school, and then it feels somewhat detached from you.
But only in the last couple years have I realized how much of people’s responses to it are not necessarily about me at all. I think I’m of less importance.
And that can be quite scary, realizing that it’s not about me, but it can also be really freeing to know actually, my job here is to just remain a person, and to keep recording that. That’s what my job is. Rather than me being supposed to deliver the answer and let everyone know what life is about.
I think there’s freedom in realizing that actually my job is to let people watch while I ask the questions. Because questions are more interesting than answers.
HM: Yeah, I feel the same thing about my books, I’m just offering the question, not the answers. There are obviously going to be critics and suchlike who say this guy’s the winner and that guy’s the winner, but I don’t like that world, so I just stay away from it. I’d rather be just running.
And I get the same vibe from you. You’re probably not the person that cares about getting awards or how many records you sold, and you probably place some more importance on, you want to live the life you want to live.
You win an award because somebody else says you’re worthy of an award, but what’s more important is what you think is of value to your life.
HS: I’m in a field in which there’s so much opinion on who’s the best, with all these rankings of who sold the most, who’s won this award—even though music is such a subjective thing and isn’t really tangible like that.
The thing that I’ve found, in the rest of my life but particularly in running, is the idea of trusting myself to do exactly what I say I’m going to do.
To say to myself, I know that you can do something difficult, and that you can get up and train when you don’t want to train, and that you’re able to push through hard things.
Having that kind of self-integrity—no one can run a marathon for you. Whereas there are a lot of people who help me make music, put the music out, put on a show and make me look good at it! But running is a conversation with myself.
Creative Director: Molly Hawkins; Produced by: Someday Studio; Executive Producer: Andrew Gallo; Executive Producer: Wyatt Whitaker; Wardrobe Stylist: Harry Lambert; Makeup Artist: Carol Dotti; Hair Stylist: Candice Birns; Set Designer: Kelly Infield; Full Stop Management: Jeffrey Azoff, Tommy Bruce, Tom Skoglund; Hand Printing: Lloyd Ramos; Post Production: Imagine.
I came across a blog that thinks Matty Healy was the red herring ? Do you think that’s true with Tortured Poets and her songs? Ik you don’t care about Taylor anymore and I don’t really anymore but all the Maylor posts ruin it for me and my mindset about Haylor. Was The 1 really for Healy and not Harry? I’m so confused ‼️‼️‼️‼️
my thoughts on maylor are here:
💬 0 🔁 12 ❤️ 93 · Maylor/Haylor storytime with too much info · MH cried on stage about haylor?? I need to see this give me link
The TLDR i
okay wait if I have a chronology of sorts of songs in ttpd that I am confident are haylor…then imgonnagetyouback (grammys 2023 - March 2023) -> Chloe et al (April 2023) -> Peter (June 2023-December 2023) and then unsure Haylor songs (FOTS: December 2022-May 2023; GAS: 2022-March 2023). They all do tell a story of fantasizing about that what if, an opportunity arising to rekindle the decade-old romance, but then miscommunication contemplating the future to the point she finds someone immediate.
my TTPD posts are here
TTPD Prologue has 3 Muses
Fortnight and fortnight music video
Tortured poets department
Guilty as Sin?
Fresh out the Slammer
Down bad
Florida!!!
The smallest man who ever lived
But daddy I love him detailed analysis
The Alchemy
Who’s afraid of little old me
loml (detailed analysis) or loml (lyric cards)
Imgonnagetyouback
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus
Peter
I look through people's windows
Prophecy detailed analysis
The manuscript
Charlie Puth easter egging in 2022
Taylor easter egging Typewriters & TTPD in 2021
TTPD theory
The original 1989 used typewriters and evidence files
It’s interesting to me that Harry has referenced the Paul Simon song “50 ways to leave your lover” several times in interviews. The lyrics are quite interesting if thinking about Taylor and Travis lol
I think Harry just likes the song, he talked about it to rolling stone in the fine line interview
Hii have you seen the video of tears for fears "head over heels" theres a part in the video we're he opens the desk with boxes like in the fortnight video and the papers fly too! And the video is from the year 2013! Crazy! again i didnt know this!
Wow! It’s from 1985 though, the band uploaded all of their old videos in 2013.
This is the same album as Everybody Wants to Rule the World. When Harry performed that at live lounge I thought there were layers to how the lyrics apply to the world today and some of the shade I think he has to other performers in the record and interviews. This is an interesting coincidence
