Harry Styles. You either know him, have never heard of him, or are somewhere in the middle. He first auditioned for "X-Factor UK 2010," where he was eventually paired up with four boys; Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, and Niall Horan. They became known as One Direction and went on in the show to take third place. But this was not the end for the group. They were taken under the wing of Simon Cowell, and then blew up in the UK. Through the help of Twitter, the band got big globally with a popularity that rivaled the Beatles. Their first single they released was "What Makes You Beautiful" off their first album "Up All Night." Their music started off very bubblegum pop, but their market was teenage girls, so naturally, their CD's sold, winning awards, touring, and releasing four more albums. As they aged, their music matured along with their fans. Contrary to popular belief, not all fans of these boys are twelve years old.
When 2016 came, the band decided to take a hiatus, going their separate ways to work on solo projects. Fans were devastated, myself included, but we stayed united respectfully supporting our favorite boy and the others. Harry is and always will be my favorite, from the minute he appeared on my laptop screen at 12.
Waiting on his first album was agony, and he dropped it without a lot of hype. The first album simply entitled Harry Styles released one single off it, "Sign of the Times," and the sound was a far cry from what he did with One Direction. The smooth and classic song quickly became downloaded and streamed all over the world; the boy is an old soul living in the twenty-first century. He released his album and proceeded to tour to promote it.
Something he did that I both admired and got frustrated with was to get tickets to his show, you had to sign up and wait to get a code from Ticketmaster. He did this in order to keep people from buying too many and then reselling them for higher prices. For his first tour, I didn't get a code and I was devastated. A few months went by, and suddenly he released more dates, including a date for Washington D.C. that upcoming June of 2018. This process was frustrating, but I loved it because to me it meant people who were really big fans of him got tickets.
Harry spilled about writing his album saying he wanted to do something completely different than what he did with One Direction. His new sound was classic rock, mixed with a sound I can't quite describe. It's something that is purely Harry Styles. He tells a story in every song, and some fans even have theories that the songs all tell one cohesive story. I don't know how true that is, but only Harry knows the answer to that question.
SInce then, he has been taken under the white wings of Stevie Nicks, the fairy godmother of music, performing a private show together in May of 2017 in LA. More recently Harry inducted Stevie into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. Performing together again, she jokingly refers to him as her adopted son. I have no doubt that Harry himself will one day be in the hall of fame.
He has managed to shake his boyband past, and pave a musical career for himself outside of One Direction, and I can't wait to see what else he does. Waiting for his second album is hard, but until then, I have his first album to have on repeat. Even when I'm thirty with kids, I will go see him in concert and sing my heart out even though I'm tone-deaf.
Watch out y'all he's going to be an icon.
