"Watermelon Sugar"'s not high enough

June 11, 2022 11:02 AM

Every Harry Styles Song Ranked (published just ahead of the release of his most recent record, Harry's House) [Rolling Stone]

Harry Styles, previously

posted by chavenet (12 comments total)

They all should be rated higher.
posted by ashbury at 12:01 PM on June 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

I don't pay much attention to popular music at all but every once in a while I hear a song and I ask, "Who is this guy?" and it's always Harry Styles.

He has an absolutely amazing voice, perfect pitch control, feeling, and he generally avoids pop cliches.

Strangely, he sounds to me as a more polished and less folksy Sufjan Stevens.

It's not music I'd likely put on high rotation—just my tastes and predispositions—but there's no denying that he's just really good at what he does. Really really good.
posted by sjswitzer at 2:31 PM on June 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

Treat People With Kindness is ABSOLUTELY not high enough.

I don't really know much else of his music, but have been meaning to - but I've always enjoyed clips of him doing practically anything else, because he just seems to be having so much damn fun and seems so comfortable being exactly who he is, and doesn't seem to give a toss what anyone else thinks of any of it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:06 PM on June 11, 2022 [8 favorites]

I mean, as a punk/indie purist, this stuff just sent me reeling. I haven’t heard anything as revelatory since Kid A. I absolutely want a Thom York/Harry Styles collaboration, no matter how implausible that might seem. (Maybe throw in Damon Albarn to make it more unlikely.)
posted by sjswitzer at 3:10 PM on June 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

KIWI is not high enough, not by a long shot! I saw him at the Roxy in Georgia. One, he was both completely in the moment, but also preternaturally aware of the audience.

It was extremely crowded, very hot, and he stopped the show several times because people in the audience were being crushed/overwhelmed/fainting. But once people were all good again, he slipped right back into the show with all the passion and joy he had before he stopped it.

And it was a damned good audience. We cheered for a reprise of Kiwi, and he played it for us THREE TIMES! He was so tickled! We were so delighted. And I have to say, I saw him in One Direction, and I saw him solo... and solo, he just is truly set loose. I highly recommend seeing him live. Obviously.
posted by headspace at 3:33 PM on June 11, 2022 [5 favorites]

The Eternal Sunshine of HARRY STYLES

I should have included this interview in the FPP
posted by chavenet at 3:51 PM on June 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

He's an interesting guy who does some unusual things. Consider From the Dining Room. It's a simple song that's basically just voice and guitar. He's sad, lonely, drunk and disgusted with himself. Then at the linked point, about 1:50 into the song and only for 30 seconds he adds some strings and layers in his own voice a few times for harmony. It's remarkable and sublime.

He does this kind of stuff all. the. time. in unexpected places.

I'm not a pop guy but I definitely listen to Harry Styles. He knows what he's doing and he knows how to do it and he doesn't care about genres. He loves what he does and it really shows. Further, he's a voice for today's changing generation and he says things that are important and that need to be heard.
posted by ashbury at 4:26 PM on June 11, 2022 [6 favorites]

A Styles interview appears in Better Homes & Gardens to promote "Harry's House." He's on the cover. (Article and photos, while interesting, do not feature his actual home.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 7:16 PM on June 11, 2022 [3 favorites]

Harry Styles is such a delight. I did not to expect to love him or his music as much as I do, but he's fun, fearless and thoughtful. I'm rooting for him.
posted by edencosmic at 7:33 PM on June 11, 2022 [6 favorites]

I had literally not heard a Harry Styles song...until I saw this post. I'd heard his name but didn't know his music at all.

I've given a few songs a listen, and I'm sold. What a voice this guy has! Nice to see that rock is not totally dead, though he seems to veer more into pop/mainstream.
posted by zardoz at 2:27 PM on June 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

If you want to see a fun clip of Harry being all cute and gregarious -

When James Corden's wife had a kid and he needed to go on paternity leave from THE LATE LATE SHOW, Harry filled in as the guest host for a couple of the days he was out. An occasional "game" they have on THE LATE LATE SHOW is called "Spill your guts or fill your guts" - which is basically Truth or Dare, only the Dares all involve eating one of an assortment of unpalatable things. Harry briefly dated Kendall Jenner, and they're still on good terms, so he invited her to be the challenger for SPILL YOUR GUTS during his host stint.

I still love the moment when he becomes weirdly self-aware in the middle of the game and turns to the audience to ask: "....what are we doing?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:04 PM on June 12, 2022 [2 favorites]

The Saturday Paper's Shaad D'Souza is less complimentary: Harry Styles’ latest album demonstrates the tyranny of ‘good taste’:

With a built-in fanbase for life and the knowledge that his albums will always make their budgets back, there is no imperative for him to interrogate his own process, or even to question whether there is a way to make “classic-sounding” music that doesn’t involve merely aping the classics. Harry’s House proceeds with an unnerving frictionlessness – it is an album with no raison d’être other than to telegraph its own tastefulness and its own self-proclaimed status as an Art Object, rather than a pop album. It is all bells, all whistles, no proper songs – nothing to prove that Styles has the chops he loves to imply he does.

You get the sense that, were Styles a little more willing to venture outside the realm of generally accepted good taste, Harry’s House might have ended up a half-decent record. Of course, it’s clear from listening to the album that did eventuate that Styles would think that proposition – the idea that challenging a listener might be more interesting or more artistically significant than simply acquiescing to them – to be a complete paradox. Harry’s House is so profligate in its desire to be liked and to seem fashionable that it ends up feeling pleasant but totally forgettable, undeniably chic but cool to the touch. It feels more like Harry’s Airbnb: perfectly decorated with nobody inside.

posted by acb at 1:54 AM on June 13, 2022 [1 favorite]