Harry Styles â Harryâs House
Genre: Pop
Release Date: May 20, 2022
24-Bit/ 48.0 kHz - Stereo
Harry Stylesâ third solo album, Harryâs House, is the product of a chain reaction. Had the pandemic not thrown his world into a tailspin in early 2020, he wouldâve continued to tour behind Fine Line, his critically adored sophomore album, and played its songs hundreds of times for sold-out crowds around the world. A return to the studio was planned, of course, but when COVID-19 canceled those plans too, Styles faced an empty calendar for the first time in a decade. The singer opted to use this free time carefully, taking a solo road trip through Italy and visiting with family and friends for rare long, drawn-out stretches. It was an important moment of reevaluation. âYou miss so many birthdays,â he told Apple Musicâs Zane Lowe. âAnd eventually it's just assumed you're unable to be at stuff. Finally I was like, âI want to balance my life out a bit. Working isnât who I am, it's something I do. I want to be able to put that down.ââ
His upbeat, lightly electronic third LP riffs on the concept of home, viewing it less as a geographical location and more as a state of mindâhis mind. âImagine itâs a day in my house, a day in my mind,â he said. âWhat do I go through? Iâm playing fun music. Iâm playing sad music. I have doubts. Iâm feeling stuff.â Because of the pandemic, Styles recorded the songs with a small handful of longtime friends and close collaborators who gathered in a single room to drink wine, write, and play. That intimacy is reflected in the songs, which are conversational and casually confessional, as if heâs thinking out loud. Blending vintage folk rock with flickers of disco and a generally more relaxed sensibility, they illustrate a turning point in Stylesâ career as he transitions even further towards career singer-songwriter. âFor a while it was, how do I play that game of remaining exciting?â he says. âBut I finally had a moment where I felt like, âOkay, Iâm not the young thing, so I would like to really think about who I want to be as a musician.ââ Read on for the inside story behind a handful of standout selections from Harryâs House.
âMusic for a Sushi Restaurantâ
âAfter Fine Line, I had an idea of how I thought the next album would open. But there's something about âSushiâ that felt like, âNah, that's how I want to start.â It becomes really obvious what the first song should be based on what you play for people when theyâre like, âOh, can I hear a bit of the music?â It's like, how do you want to set the tone?â
âDaylightâ
âWe were like, âWe have to find a way to stay awake and finish this, because if we all go to bed, then this wonât turn out the way it would if we finished tonight.â So we powered through, finished it, and went down to the beach as the sun was coming up and it was like, âOkay. Yeah.â It felt correct that we'd finished it in that place. Life, and songs in particular, are so much about moments. In surfing, for example, sometimes you don't get the wave and sometimes the wave comes and you haven't practiced. But every now and again, the wave comes and youâre ready, you've practiced enough that you can ride it. Sometimes when the songs write themselves like that, it feels like, âOkay, there's a reason why sometimes I sit out there, falling off the board a bunch. It's for this moment.â
âAs It Wasâ
ââAs It Was,â to me, is bittersweet. Itâs devastating. It's a death march. Itâs about metamorphosis and a perspective change, which are not necessarily things you have time with. People arenât like, âOh, we'll give you a couple more days with this moment and let you say goodbye to your former self,â or whatever. No. Everyone is changing, and by the time you realize whatâs happened, [the moment] is already gone. During the pandemic, I think we all at some point realized that it would never be the same as it was before. It was so obvious that it wouldnât. You can't go backwardsâwe canât as a society and I canât in my personal life. But you learn so much in those moments because youâre forced to face things head-on, whether theyâre your least favorite things about the world or your least favorite things about yourself, or all of it.â
âMatildaâ
âI had an experience with someone where, in getting to know them better, they revealed some stuff to me that was very much like, âOh, that's not normal, like I think you should maybe get some help or something.â This song was inspired by that experience and person, who I kind of disguised as Matilda from the Roald Dahl book. I played it to a couple of friends and all of them cried. So I was like, âOkay, I think this is something to pay attention to.â It's a weird one, because with something like this, it's like, âI want to give you something, I want to support you in some way, but it's not necessarily my place to make it about me because it's not my experience.â Sometimes it's just about listening. I hope that's what I did here. If nothing else, it just says, âI was listening to you.ââ
âBoyfriendsâ
ââBoyfriendsâ was written right at the end of Fine Line. I'd finished the album and there was an extra week where I wrote âAdore You,â âLights Up,â and âTreat People With Kindness.â At the end of the session for âLights Up,â we started writing âBoyfriends,â and it felt like, âOkay, there's a version of this story where we get this song ready for this album.â But something about it just felt like, no, itâll have its time, let's not rush it. We did so many versions of it. Vocal. Acoustic. Electric guitar. Harmonies on everything, and then we took them out for chunks and put them back in for chunks. You try not to get ahead of yourself when you write a song, but there was something about this one where I felt like, âOkay, when I'm 50, if I'm playing a show, maybe there's someone who heard me for the first time when they were 15 and this is probably the song they came to see.â Because I'm learning so much by singing it. Itâs my way of saying, âIâm hearing you.â Itâs both acknowledging my own behavior and looking at behavior I've witnessed. I grew up with a sister, so I watched her date people, and I watched friends date people, and people don't treat each other very nicely sometimes.â
âCinemaâ
âI think I just wanted to make something that felt really fun, honestly. I was on a treadmill going, âDo-do-do-do-do-do.â I tend to do so much writing in the studio, but with this one, I did a little bit here and then I went home and added a little bit there, and then kind of left it, and then went into the studio to put it all together. That was a theme across the whole album, actually: We used to book a studio and be like, âOkay, we've got it for two months, grind it out.â But some days you just don't want to be there, and eventually you've been in the studio so long, the only thing you can write about is nothing because you haven't done anything. So with this album, weâd work for a couple of weeks and then everyone would go off and live their lives.â
âLove of My Lifeâ
ââLove of My Lifeâ was the most terrifying song because it's so bare. It's so sparse. Itâs also very much in the spirit of what Harry's House is about: I wanted to make an acoustic EP, all in my house, and make it really intimate. Itâs named after [the Japanese pop pioneer Haruomi] Hosono, who had an album in the '70s called Hosono House. I immediately started thinking about what Harryâs House might look like. It took time for me to realize that the house wasn't a geographical location, it was an internal thing. When I applied that concept to the songs we were making here, everything took on new meaning. Imagine it's a day in my house or a day in my mind. What do I go through? I'm playing fun music. I'm playing sad music. I'm playing this, I'm playing that. I have doubts. Iâm feeling stuff. And itâs all mine. This is my favorite album at the moment. I love it so much. And because of the circumstances, it was made very intimately; everything was played by a small number of people and made in a room. To me, it's everything. It's everything I've wanted to make.â
Tracklist:
- Music For a Sushi Restaurant
- Late Night Talking
- Grapejuice
- As It Was
- Daylight
- Little Freak
- Matilda
- Cinema
- Daydreaming
- Keep Driving
- Satellite
- Boyfriends
- Love Of My Life
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