After being in a boy band, Harry Styles was a blank slate
Speaking recently about recording his debut solo album — which has, for years, felt like a foregone conclusion, given his status as the most breezily winning member of One Direction — the floppy-haired 23-year-old Mr. Styles said: “When we started, I didn’t know what it was going to sound like, or what I wanted it to sound like.”
Where he landed, while not entirely predictable, considering the beat-driven pop sounds of the day, was close to home: “Pink Floyd, Beatles, Stones, Fleetwood — all the stuff I grew up listening to,” Mr. Styles said. And as unlikely as that may sound, it’s true: His self-titled LP is a paean to classic rock and its English progeny (Oasis, Blur), built around fingerpicked acoustic guitars, McCartneyesque jangle and lyrics about one-night stands with devilish women.
“She’s all over me, it’s like I paid for it/I’m gonna pay for this,” Mr. Styles, who is not running from his essential Jaggerness, sings on “Kiwi,” a sleazy-sounding number with grown-up references to cigarettes and cocaine. Softer and more broadly sensitive are the first single, “Sign of the Times” (a homage to Prince in title, and Bowie in practice), and the more believably adult closing track, “From the Dining Table,” which begins: “Woke up alone in this hotel room/Played with myself/Where were you?”
Yet, for all the earthbound introspection and insistent maturity, Mr. Styles, who was discovered, along with his former group, by Simon Cowell on “The X Factor,” remains as slippery in conversation as any megafamous pop star who’s been dodging tabloids since he was 16. On the phone from London this month, he insulated his vagueness with polite deflection and generalities while declaring that his new album was his most open work to date.
“I just realized that I find writing to be very therapeutic — I think it’s when I allow myself to be most vulnerable,” Mr. Styles said. “It’s exciting to kind of share a piece of me that I don’t feel like I’ve really put out there before.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
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