Harry Styles

Harry Styles' third solo album sometimes lacks substance, but style always abounds.

Its sounds—which move through funk, folk, and 2010s Tumblr-pop—are friendly and familiar enough to satisfy passive listening, but deftly executed, with a surplus of style and whimsy that rewards a more active ear. The state of the boy brand is strong. When a teen idol becomes a rock star, he announces it with a Rolling Stone spread.

Harry Styles' third solo album, 'Harry's House,' is very a much a continuation of its predecessor, 'Fine Line,' but more intimate.

Lyrically, it’s heavier and more serious in places — not surprising after everything that’s happened in the two and a half years since “Fine Line” dropped just before the pandemic. And at 28, no longer so young, he’s built himself an enviable solo career that “Harry’s House” goes a long way toward furthering. That ended up being 2019’s more defining and definitive “Fine Line” album, which could be considered his true debut, spawning massive singles like “Watermelon Sugar” and a blockbuster (if pandemic-delayed) tour that segues directly into “Harry’s House,” which is very much a continuation and progression of its predecessor.

Harry's House is a spacious 13 tracks, largely full of synthy, anthemic pop songs — a bit of a shift from the former One Direction member's earlier, classic ...

“I guess you’re all mine / When you’re sleeping in this bed with me.” Ahem, and now we know how comfortable the primary bedroom is! You’ll find Styles’s girlfriend, Olivia Wilde, throughout Harry’s House, with some of the most clear references to their relationship on “Cinema”: “I guess we’re in time / If you’re getting yourself wet for me,” he sings. Like a good host, Styles also has plenty of food to offer throughout Harry’s House, from a nice 1982 red on “Grapejuice” to a full breakfast spread of coffee, pancakes, maple syrup, hash browns, and eggs on “Keep Driving.” Why yes, we are staying the night, thanks for offering!

Back in 2020, the singer also performed at the Brit Awards in a white lace Gucci jumpsuit. It's easy to see why Styles is a fan of the silhouette: It's a ...

He styled it nonchalantly with sneakers, as though it were the simplest thing in the world to wear. Just today, for instance, he performed on the Today show in New York City wearing his latest jumpsuit—a striped one-piece by JW Anderson complete with long, flared sleeves. He performed with Shania Twain at Coachella in April wearing a sequined Gucci jumpsuit that channeled the flamboyant style of Elton John or David Bowie—you could see those shimmering paillettes from the nosebleeds!

Grammy Award-winning singer reminisces on 'Today' show about Coachella and his performances with Shania Twain and Lizzo.

I think the movie is really exciting." "I'd love to say it was for the crowd, but it's just for me." On Thursday, he said a few fans got in touch with whoever found the ring and he managed to get it back. Aside from his successful music career, Styles is dipping his toes into the acting world more and more. "We could have rushed it to get it ready, and it just felt like there was something special about it and I wanted to take my time with it," he said of "Boyfriends." Styles' third studio album, "Harry's House," is out Friday. The "As It Was" singer said of the album: "It's the most free I've ever felt making music, it's the most proud of anything I've made."

He is one of the biggest pop stars in the world. You don't get there without your fans.

Styles does this most overtly in the song Treat People With Kindness, which he performs draped in pride flags. Harry Styles, and popular music like his, does this on a mass scale. It builds on his pop music background and travels around between 70s style folk storytelling and various eras of great dance music. The nature of his public profile means there has been intense scrutiny about his personal life. Styles’, um, style has been likened to iconic musician David Bowie in terms of gender and genre fluidity. He is essentially saying no one should need to justify or explain who they love.

After months of hype, Styles' third solo studio album is finally here.

The release of Harry’s House punctuates a busy period for Styles, who continues to occasionally bulk out his acting career in addition to being one of the most successful musicians on the planet. (Let’s do a little music math: Even assuming every single one of those streams was done on Spotify’s free ad-supported tier—because those streams count a little less when you’re doing these calculations—the single alone has already scored more than 125,000 album-equivalent units, the industry’s accepted standard for the conversion of streams into album sales. The release of the 13-track Harry’s House comes a few weeks after the unleashing of its first single, “As It Was,” which has already accrued more than 472 million listens on Spotify alone.

Harry Styles' 'Boyfriends' reveals his thoughts on the difficulties of modern dating. Here's the lyrical lowdown on the stunning 'Harry's House' track...

You So what is the penultimate track about? Harry Styles' 'Boyfriends' reveals his thoughts on the difficulties of modern dating.

The sexy intimacy on Harry Styles' third solo album makes you feel like you're peeking through the bedroom door as the former One Direction heartthrob is ...

And if you thought there were jazz vibes on “Music for a Sushi Restaurant,” Styles even scats here. And whatever’s on the menu, you’ll just be like, “I’ll have what he’s having.” And he pulls it off.

The below has been edited and condensed. You can hear this conversation using the audio player at the top of the page. Leila Fadel, Morning Edition: This album, ...

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The title of the pop star's latest album suggests open-door intimacy, but instead pairs more vivid sonic landscapes with less revealing lyrics.

“Black-and-white film camera/Yellow sunglasses/Ashtray/Swimming pool,” he sings on the understated “Keep Driving,” the lyrics playing out like a stylish but stilted movie montage that takes the place of actual character development. The album opens with the bright and playful “Music for a Sushi Restaurant,” replete with horns, a gummy bass line and surprising bursts of stacked vocals. As the journalist Kaitlyn Tiffany writes in her forthcoming and highly entertaining book “Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It,” One Direction was “a group of boys whose commercial proposition is that they would never hurt you.”

Harry Styles performs onstage at the Coachella Stage during the 2022 Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival on April 15, 2022 in Indio, California. Kevin ...

And that’s what makes “Matilda” a triumph. (Preach, Ralph Waldo: “’Tis of no importance what bats and oxen think.”) That’s why Matilda ends up being the star of the album. The “home” here is a trap full of nightmares, but the singer has faith that Matilda will move on and create her own home. It begins with a childhood flashback of a kid riding a bike, trying to pretend her pain is “no big deal.” But as it develops, Matilda tells her tale of family trauma, possibly abuse or abandonment. As Ralph Waldo Emerson would say, it’s about “Self Reliance,” but it’s also a challenge to define yourself by what you love, unplugging from social media and other distractions. “Matilda” is the story of somebody trying to build their own world. But given that she’s just coming to terms with her past, instead of grieving that it took so long, or mourning the years she lost, “you’re just in time” is such a moving affirmation. It’s tricky because Harry is simply trying to be a respectful witness to Matilda’s pain, without letting his own shocked or sad reactions get in the way. As he says, “You can let it go / You can throw a party full of everyone you know / And not invite your family.” Harry’s House explores the idea of home, and how home is something you make up as you go along, building it out of your emotions and memories. He wrote “Matilda” with Amy Allen (who also cowrote “Adore You”) along with his trusty collaborators Tyler Johnson and Kid Harpoon. It comes halfway through the album, surrounded by glam-pop gloss—a deep breath of a song. Good! Now we’re going to sing a sad song.” That could be a mission statement for HH. He spends the album mixing great dance-pop wet dreams with quiet ballads like “Little Freak” and “Boyfriends,” dancing in the zones between the having of sex and the feeling of sad.

Don't be fooled by the pastel tones and gentle sounds of Harry's House. By Spencer Kornhaber. Harry Styles in a white sweater, blue ...

On “Boyfriends”—a bit of choral folk that evokes Peter, Paul and Mary—he rues male-pattern relationship flakiness, of which he himself has no doubt been guilty in the past. Listen again, though, and you may discern a sort of gravity to the song: a downward droop to the notes, the words, the vibes. “Tea with cyborgs / riot America / science and edibles” goes part of “Keep Driving,” a song about one’s eyes on the road in spite of strange things in the side mirrors. The bubbling keyboards and funky progressions of the opener, “Music for a Sushi Restaurant,” may conjure memories of Oingo Boingo—or recent songs by Charlie Puth and John Mayer (the latter of whom plays guitar on two Harry’s House songs). But Styles’s takes on new wave—and his forays into folk and Brit-pop elsewhere on the album—do have a distinct flavor. Some songs spark the regret of failing to book the ideal dinner reservation. For example, much of Harry Styles’s third album, Harry’s House, imparts the mild joy that one might get from completing a list of chores.

On Harry's House, he stops mining the past and starts building his own place in music history.

Given Styles’ Joni fandom, the album title often has been taken as a tribute to the song “Harry’s House/Centerpiece” from Mitchell’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns. But in a couple of interviews now, he’s clarified that it’s actually a reference to the 1973 album Hosono House by Japanese folk-psych and “city pop” pioneer Haruomi Hosono, of the groups Yellow Magic Orchestra and Happy End. That record was an early example of a bedroom project, and Styles was anticipating that during the pandemic he might have to pursue a similarly homespun album. And there’s a touching centerpiece in the guitar-piano meditation “ Matilda.” It departs from the romantic themes to provide distant, gentle counsel (“it’s none of my business, but it’s just been on my mind”) to a friend who needs to detach herself from a hostile family life: “You can start a family who will always show you love,” Styles sings. And while the songs are not explicit about it, they do convey a sense of place, unlike the kind of stage-set facades one imagined him posing in front of on the earlier albums. In that context, the acoustic ballad that follows, “ Boyfriends,” isn’t necessarily just the sensitive-feminist denunciation of guys mistreating their romantic partners that it seems—though it’s a fine on that level, too, with that ultimate sensitive dude Ben Harper on guitar—but a potential self-excoriation too. It’s one of the many songs here that seem to be about the insecure moorings of a long-distance relationship. I can’t parse exactly what’s going on in the narrative of “ Little Freak,” for instance, where Styles starts off calling someone a “jezebel,” later declines to apologize for spilling a beer on the person’s friend at Halloween (maybe?), and then owns up that these acts of disrespect really came at his own expense. Then, in the final minute, the satellite’s path seems to get more tangled, and the music becomes overwhelmed by a twister of noise that dismantles its sweet optimism. A paradoxical effect of this embrace of maturity is that, like Dylan in 1964 (though this is where that parallel ends), Styles seems liberated to be lighter and less sententious. He has an instinct for the zeitgeist that’s most apparent in his ongoing visual refusal of gender restrictions—an extension of the “soft” masculinity associated with the boy-band archetype, on his own terms—but doesn’t stop there. The 28-year-old singer has said in recent interviews that watching the rise of the much younger Billie Eilish made him aware that for the first time he was no longer in contention to be the bright young thing in pop. And in this mode, ironically enough, his personal songwriting voice comes through much more clearly than when he was trying to reproduce blurry scans of templates from 1970s singer-songwriters like Elton John, Joni Mitchell, or his friend and idol Stevie Nicks. These songs find their own routes to feeling instead of retracing inherited maps. Quoting Bob Dylan to do it feels apt because, on 2017’s Harry Styles and 2019’s Fine Line, the former heartthrob from U.K. boy band One Direction seemed overly compelled to pile on reference points, particularly from rock-music history, in order to prove he deserved to be taken seriously.