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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