Harry Styles and The Act of Being Genuine

I was 12 years old when I became enamored with a shiny new boy band called One Direction.  I was living in Westchester county, nestled somewhere above Manhattan.  The winters were cold and the snow never seemed to stop until April.  Having moved from the loud city below it, I suppose living in quiet Westchester was supposed to give me peace of mind.  The winding roads the school bus took to bring me home after classes, the emptiness of the forest that surrounded every mall, house and brook never gave me peace of mind.  I found myself lost in wanting to return to the city, craving to never see a wild turkey ever again (mostly because they’re terrifying), but mostly craving sound.    

The nights were silent.  Hauntingly silent.  The first few months of living there, I needed to listen to ambient city sounds just to fall asleep.  So, naturally, as most 12 year olds did, I found my music.  While I always had my mom’s new wave music and my dad’s glam rock, I never had anything that was just me until New Years.  

It was New Years Eve when I was first introduced to Harry Styles.  One Direction was everything a teen girl wanted: they were cute, they were British, and they were also teens.  My cousin, who had been watching the band rise in popularity in the British singing competition the X Factor, loved them.  For that entire night of the new year, I spent hours, well after my cousin and other guests left the house, looking at every music video the band had put out, and every video from their X Factor days.  From these videos, it was easy to figure out who each member was and what role they played in the band.  The members included Louis Tomlinson, the oldest member of the group (18 at the time), who had a delightful Yorkshire accent and a sassy demeanor.  Niall Horan, the resident Irish member of the group, was the blonde cutie who still had braces.  Zayn Malik, another Yorkshire boy, had a shy beginning of not wanting to even audition in the first place and being forced to by his mother and sisters, who believed him to have a brilliant voice.  Liam Payne, seasoned expert in auditioning for X Factor, had finally proved himself worthy of Simon Cowell, creator of the X Factor, after belting “Cry Me A River” for his second audition song.  Finally, there was Harry Styles.  Styles was referred to as a superstar well before he became one.  He was the youngest member of the group at age 16, complete with bouncy curls and a dimpled smile.

 Simon Cowell created the band One Direction by pasting together a group of boys who barely knew each other.  He brought together all five of them, who proved to be not enough on their own.  If they wanted to continue in the competition, they would have to remain a group, and they made it work for as long as they possibly could.  As the competition continued, One Direction had made their way to the top three acts.  The band did not win the X Factor in 2010, but they did win something that made their future as a band brilliantly bright: the hearts of millions of fans.  The band lasted five years, without any drama at all until they broke up in 2015.  Zayn Malik was the first to leave, for “mental health reasons”, after a concert in Hong Kong, followed by the band officially announcing their “hiatus” in 2015.  The hiatus has yet to end. 

This is when Harry Styles’ solo career took off.  Harry was never one to fade into the background of interviews, similar to some of the members.  He always had something to say and he always had this attitude about him.  Each member almost seemed to have their own “thing”, which is something that can be typically found in boybands.  Tylt Magazine writes that boy band members can be one or a combination of these archetypes, “the dreamboat, the boy next-door, the bad-boy, the baby-faced one, the quiet one, the older-brother type, the eccentric one, the goofball, and the sensitive one. Each successful boy band has had a combination of these archetypes that work together to help them rise to popularity.”  Louis was the funny one, Zayn was the brooding, quiet one, Niall was the irish one, Liam was the stern and seemingly odd “father figure of the group”, and then there was Harry.  Harry never really had a label.  He just had this sort of “Harry-ness” about him.  

Styles began working on his first studio album in 2016.  The album was recorded during a two month retreat in the fall between Harry and the members of his band in Port Antonio, Jamaica. The self titled album was the birthplace of his first solo single, “Sign Of The Times”, which made it onto the top 100 songs of the century on Rolling Stone.  The song followed a story about a mother giving birth to her child, and there are complications.  She is told, “the child is fine, but you’re not going to make it.  The mother has five minutes to tell the child, go forth and conquer”.  One Direction songs, while fun and light hearted and great to sing along to, never had a story like that tied to any of them.  It’s clear that “Sign Of The Times” isn’t structured as a pop single.  It runs at six minutes in length and is a pop ballad about death and loss, and above all, hope, which is the last thing pop music was looking for in 2017.  It was clear that Harry wasn’t trying to make something to hit the charts, he was making art.  

It’s evident that the thing that stands out about Harry is his “Harry Charm”, as Rob Sheffield calls it in an interview with Rolling Stone. This is also known as the act of being genuine.  Although Styles is making a name for himself with his new music, his manufactured, bubblegum pop past is undeniable; but so is his authenticity.  Harry’s recent album, Fine Line, released in late 2019 doesn’t strive to “follow the rules” of the new pop star, but it still garnered just as much attention.  Sheffield writes that, “instead of going the usual superstar-pop route — en vogue producers, celebrity duets, glitzy club beats — he’s gone his own way, and gotten more popular than ever.” 

 Solo careers have not been as favorable for the other ex-members of the band.   Upon looking at Pitchfork album reviews for the rest of the band, the main theme between all of them is the lack of heart.  From Niall Horan’s recent album having “everything, except soul,” and Louis Tomlinson’s lack of progression “from featured voice to solo artist,” love and passion is nowhere to be found, which makes sense considering their past as a manufactured pop act.  This concept of making manufactured music isn’t new.  It’s what Maria A. Sanders likes to call the “singing machine” and what I like to call the boy band factory.  The concept of the “singing machine” plays on the 1894 work by George Du Maurier, about a man who trains a woman to become his “singing machine”.  Maria A. Sanders relates this to boy bands.  “Manufactured pop music is nothing new, in the sense that the images and music of esteemed artists like Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley were shaped for mass consumption.”  Boy bands and manufactured music is constantly being created specifically for the masses, almost like a factory.  She explains that fans are not just hungry for the members of bands “but also affiliated merchandise.” Due to this music (beginning in the 1960’s), the term “bubblegum pop” appeared, meaning that the members followed a “formula for clean cut...nice young men, songs that promised endless sublimated love...and an attitude that does not worry parents.”  

Sanders explains how “in the traditional band/manager relationship, the real or "organic" band forms and has some idea of its musical style, material, and image before seeking the manager's participation.”  The manager or record label may help them by making their music more marketable, but besides that, the band is responsible for their own art.  Simon Cowell conceived of the idea of One Direction before they even knew each other.  Since the band gained some fame amongst the teen girl population at the time, they then made music marketable to that audience.  Sanders brings up groups like The Monkees and New Kids On The Block which were also “made”.  The Monkees met for the first time in a costume fitting and caused world wide hysteria that was unmatched until New Kids On The Block arrived 30 years later.  The goal for New Kids was to create new hysteria, as said by Maurice Starr, creator of the band, “America has been waiting for this for years, ever since the Monkees.”  These bands tend to have terrible endings, as they’ve felt resentment towards their careers.  Michael took his resentment to the public with a statement to the Sunday Evening Post, “We're being passed off as something we aren't. We all play instruments but we haven't on any of our records. Furthermore, our company doesn't want us to and won't let us.”  Donny Wahlberg has complained about the fact that their band had been compared to the Monkees because “we don’t play any instruments or sing songs we’ve written.” It was clear that these bands were being held together because of a puppeteering manager, and not because of art. 

In Hugh Barker and Yuval Taylor’s piece on Elvis entitled “Heartbreak Hotel”, Elvis is completely broken down as the character that he was as a manufactured artist.  The story around “Heartbreak Hotel” is a tragic one dealing with death, similar in a way to “Sign Of The Times”, except Elvis didn’t write the song whereas Styles did.  While Styles has no “particular anguish” relating to motherhood, he still sang the song just as Elvis,  “a well mannered southern kid...with no particular anguish torturing him,” sang “Heartbreak Hotel”.  Both Elvis and Styles (within One Direction) were shaped for “mass consumption”, yet Elvis formed a “unique vocal vocabulary” through using other artist’s sounds.  It became apparent that the songs Elvis genuinely cared about were the one’s sung without “barrier or affectation”.  Although One Direction songs certainly had a formula and “affectations”, Styles’ solo work does not- it ranges from a sweet acoustic (“Sweet Creature”) to sultry ballad (“She”), to spunky short lived fun (“Kiwi”).  

  Boy bands have constantly struggled with maintaining musical legitimacy.  Through the muck that is the boy band factory, Styles managed to establish his musical legitimacy, as well as his genuine nature as a solo artist.  When it comes to Harry, it isn’t about changing completely who he was and enhancing himself for someone new.  It wasn’t a renouncement of his former “One Direction” self, and this is because Harry Styles has always been Harry Styles.  When Styles was asked by Rob Sheffield for Rolling Stone about who he “wanted to be” post-One Direction, his answer was simple: “When somebody gets out of a band, they go, ‘That wasn’t me. I was held back.’ But it was me. And I don’t feel like I was held back at all. It was so much fun. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t have done it.” 

Harry Styles is one of the only musicians that I’ve followed that has brought the same amount of joy to me as he did when I was in middle school, listening to him and One Direction for the first time.  It’s odd to think that such an authentic character came from such an inauthentic beginning.  Looking back, the formulation of One Direction seems systematic or something to be marketed and sold, and it was.  For those five years, I loved them and for those five years, Harry was a part of that world.  He sang with a boy band that brought smiles to countless faces and unforgettable melodies that’ll always bring me nostalgia.  Harry pulls off the act of being genuine really well, and this can be seen through his music, interviews and general persona.  I think what makes Harry stand out from the rest of his former band members is that he was always this way.  Authenticity has followed him everywhere, from the X Factor stage to recording his first solo album in Jamaica.  I hope that it continues following him.  Something tells me that it will.