Harry Styles Goes Solo & I Actually Love It



Harry Styles Goes Solo & I Actually Love It

After seven years of fronting one of the world’s biggest boybands, Harry Styles has followed in the footsteps of fellow band mate, Zayn Malik and has gone solo. By losing all credibility and sense of authenticity by being in a commercialised boyband literally hand-picked by Simon Cowell for world domination, it seems Styles has tried to spin this all around and turn his head to something more ‘authentic’.

‘Sign Of The Times’ was produced by Jeff Bhasker (Beyonce’s 4 album and Taylor Swift’s Red) and was premiered by Nick Grimshaw on Radio1 yesterday (7th April). The song touches on themes such as inauthenticity as Styles sings, “Just stop your crying it’s a sign of the times,” over a really, dull piano arrangement. The lyrics are a bit boring, with the 1D frontman repeating lines in high-pitched tones over a gentle piano and subtle guitar wails; all designed to paint a picture of Styles sat at a piano projecting an almost ‘Bowie’ image. The attempted piano ballad that resembles Queen’s traditional piano sound, seems to be a hopeful stepping stone between cheesy-boyband image to something more Bowie-esque by shining a light on Styles that supposedly presents him as a ‘real’ musician (whatever that is).

However, despite my opinion of describing ‘Sign of the Times’ as a boring melody, try-hard attempt to show the vocal range of Styles and a mind-numbing attempt to project Styles as a ‘real’ musician, I really, love this song.

I know, I don’t get it either.

But the track has taken inspirations from Bowie, Queen and even has small dustings of The Beatles mixed in yet, continues to sound very, 2017. It’s evident the good-looking boy of pop still needs to do some work to move away from the 1D image that will continue to stay branded all over his face. However, ‘Sign Of The Times’ was the bravest attempt of a solo move compared to any 1D solo-step (let’s not remember the vomit-inducing 3 minutes 23 seconds of ‘Pillowtalk’). But although Harry Styles is not the next Bowie or John Lennon, he sure is a bit of a 2017 legend that will make fans swoon as much as the pre-mentioned legends.

And hey, it’s 2017, who cares about credibility anymore. Just look at the charts.

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