I’ve found the best method for writing articles ten months past relevance is to just ignore the time delay completely. So, moving on.
It is almost a cliche that the best artists refuse to explain their work, instead keeping it open for interpretation. It was perhaps best said by Pablo Picasso, when he said that as far as he is concerned, “A painting speaks for itself. What is the use of giving explanations, when all is said and done?” With that mindset, it is easier to understand Harry Styles’ incredibly ambiguous and ambivalent explanations of his hit “Sign of the Times.” Now, since he won’t, allow me to interpret.
If you hadn’t guessed, it is about the Trump era. When I say the Trump era, I mean more than Trump. I mean Brexit, Le Pen, the alt-right. I mean a world that seems to get worse every day. The chorus and the song itself begins with the stoic words “Just stop your crying, it’s a sign of the times,” meaning that crying itself is a sign of the times. It doesn’t feel like a good world and it’s understandable that you want to cry, but so does everyone else. “We never learn, we been here before,” is Styles admitting what many refuse to, that the wave of fear and distrust of government we are riding out has happened countless times before.
From the war in Iraq to Vietnam, to McCarthyism, all the way back to the populism of Andrew Jackson, we’ve been here before. The evidence suggests we will never learn and will forever make the same mistake we’ve made for centuries. The first verse is very tied to imagery of death, from “the final show” to our way to the “sky.” On our aural trip through the first verse, pre-chorus, and chorus, we are confronted with a harsh and fatalistic view of the global condition. This is an easy feeling to have today as politicians attack each other with more acidity than ever before and governments seem to care less and less about what happens outside of their own borders.
The tone shifts crucially in the second verse as the song’s first line is repeated but altered: after “just stop your crying,” the defeated “it’s a sign of the times” is replaced by the more carefree “have the time of your life.” “You look pretty good down here, but you ain’t really good,” from the first verse is substituted with “Things are pretty good from here.” This is immediately followed by the reassuring reminder that“everything will be alright.” Styles and the other writers use parallels in the first and second verse to take their own negativity and twist it into hope. “We been here before” now becomes something to take comfort in.
We’ve been here before and survived, so we will survive again.
In the bridge, Styles gives his simple suggestions on how to go forward. “We don’t talk enough, we should open up,” he says. We need to be more open as a society and communicate more. Communication fosters understanding, the absence of which leads to fear and factionalism. As countries like Hungary close off their borders and Styles’ two countries of residence, the UK and US each move to cut themselves further off from the world, staying connected is important. The lesson to be learned from this pop-rock ballad is that no, things don’t look great, but yes, we’ve done it before, and yes, by embracing each other and communicating, we can do it again
