Not even 30 seconds into his third album, Harry’s House, Harry Styles is already implying that you’re so hot he could cook an egg on you. It’s the kind of strange and unexpected lyric that makes you sit up in your seat the first time you hear it, looking around to see if there’s anyone around that can overhear him say such wanton things, lest you both be caught together in this private moment.
It’s flirty, a little gross, and damn charming in the casually disarming manner that Harry Styles has perfected. He mixes an innate but subtle sex appeal with an innocent dimpled smile that belies his true intention: to make everyone in the room—regardless of who they are or how they identify—a willful participant in the cheeky fun.
Three albums in, Harry Styles has learned how to get away with seduction by bad pickup lines.
That album opener, “Music For a Sushi Restuarant,” feels as alluringly cheesy as a handsome stranger asking if it hurt when you fell from heaven. It’s so committed to its own silliness. It’s hard to think of another artist besides Styles who could start a song with muted synths reminiscent of Hikaru Utada’s J-Pop catalogue and end the same song with scatting jazz horns while sandwiching a whole bevy of food references in between, but that’s just the kind of musician that Styles has been growing into.
He is dedicated to a vision and unafraid to get more than a little weird in pursuit of being himself.
This is a pop star who, after all, has stopped L.A. traffic when it was already in gridlock to shake his ass on the hood of a car, captions photos with the word “Kissy,” and remains devoted to trying to maintain his rockstar sex appeal while in the clutches of a friendship with the U.K.’s most milquetoast expat, James Corden. His real-life peculiar nature may not always feel entirely in line with who he positions himself to be in the music, but like flirting with another person on the dance floor, there’s no harm in trying.
Harry’s House is Styles’ strongest and most refreshing album yet—it’s also his strangest, a much-needed foray into heavier sonic and lyrical experimentation that he previously only dallied with here and there across his first two records. He may not be going full-tilt into PC Music, but he’s finally begun to noticeably leave behind the drab rock and roll singer-songwriter archetype he boxed himself into when abandoned the safety of his boy band and traded it for solo stardom.
For the most part, gone are the mere allusions to drug use and debauchery that could be found on songs like “Kiwi” in 2017. The Harry Styles of Harry’s House isn’t afraid to let you know he’s going to do some coke and lay his saucer-sized pupils on your horoscope in the morning paper while watching the sunrise. Ah, modern love.
Although he’s moved into an era where he’s willing to be more straightforward in his musical output, Styles is still particularly good at disguising his most horny impulses into his most infectious melodies.
This time around, he’s closing his eyes and thinking about the woman who told him “love me like you paid me” on “Daydreaming” until he reaches a vocal crescendo that mimics the moment of climax. At other points, he’s making not-so-thinly-veiled references to a certain auteur in his life on “Cinema,” which ends in an album highpoint of him repeating, “You’ve got the cinema/I bring the pop to the cinema/You pop when we get intimate.”
One can’t help but conjure the image of Olivia Wilde throwing that ass in the back row of an Alamo Drafthouse as people step over the couple just trying to make their way out to the lobby while the Don’t Worry Darling end credits roll.
Still, there remains an ever-present, unfortunate disconnect between Harry Styles the musician and Harry Styles the celebrity.
On stage, Styles throws himself around with all of the swagger of a seasoned industry vet, and yet the songs hardly ever match up with his energy—the tour mixes featured in his Coachella set even went so far as to water down the best melodies on his last album. But when he’s performing, either live on stage or in his day-to-day role as one of the most famous men on Earth, it almost doesn’t seem to matter.
He brings all of the confidence and charm that made him a star to everything he does; it’s what makes him so undeniably charming and what has made his continued ascent into the upper echelons of stardom feel not just welcome, but deserved. In a moment where everyone else seems to be so edited to perfection and hyper-conscious of their own image, Styles puts it all out there without a care, in Gucci suits and pink tutus, throwing risk assessment to the wind and letting the chips fall where they may.
For an artist whose entire artistic ethos and persona are built on a visible, raging self-assurance—the same one that led him to prance across the Coachella stage in a rainbow-sequined jumpsuit and brought him to develop his own nail polish line—Harry Styles still seems to be deathly afraid to let his guard all the way down where it actually matters: in his art.
He knows how to make some songs sound vulnerable and heart-wrenching, but rarely are they either of those things. And in case you might start to listen to the lyrics of a plodding Harry’s House album cut like “Boyfriends” too closely while watching him perform it on the Today Show stage, you’ll quickly be distracted by the ugliest jumpsuit you’ve ever seen, too busy laughing at him looking like a pint of Mediterranean Mint Talenti gelato that melted in the humid May rain to notice that this is the fifth derivative copy of the same song in his discography.
It’s an interesting tension. The moms of America who are up early watching their favorite morning show are as mystified by this man as their children are, watching him clad in that ridiculous striped outfit and likely thinking he’s the strangest, most outgoing pop star since Lady Gaga. But when he opens his mouth to sing, the music can’t live up to that illusion of weirdness. It’s muted and slow, a dose of sonic melatonin strong enough to counteract their morning coffee and send them right back to sleep.
For all of his invigorating panache, Styles is still missing the mark on a third of the songs on each of his albums, letting his outfits, quirky good looks, and his collaborators pick up the slack when his own creative input takes a dip in quality. All 13 songs on Harry’s House have anywhere from one to six co-writers, and while most of them are likely so razor-sharp because of the fact that so many hands had a part in their existence, it’s impossible not to ponder what it might be like to spend an afternoon in Harry’s House if he didn’t have so many goddamn roommates.
“Imagine it’s a day in my house or a day in my mind,” Styles suggested to Zane Lowe about the album’s themes. “What do I go through? I’m playing fun music. I’m playing sad music. I’m playing this, I’m playing that. I have doubts. I’m feeling stuff. And it’s all mine.” That all sounds nice, but it really means nothing. Think Cole Sprouse in Riverdale saying to another character, “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m weird. I’m a weirdo.” It’s the kind of thing you have to show, not tell.
With such an ardent love for self-expression—be it through his music, his clothing choices, or raucous stage performances—it would be fascinating to see what Harry Styles could bring out of himself on a song that really was entirely his, with no single syllable changed by another writer. Would he tiptoe around the point like he so often does, making allusions to sex and substance use through winking lyrical asides? Or would he finally let the walls come down for once to tell the world something they don’t know about him, face-to-face? And I mean besides that he does cocaine.
And yet, Harry’s House still manages to blow Styles’ first two records clear out of the water with its willingness to be playful and bounce between evocative imagery. Where Fine Line had occasional flashes of weirdness, their authenticity always felt under question, as if someone told Styles he could raise eyebrows by putting a Lawrence Welk Show-esque choral arrangement on the dreadful “Treat People With Kindness.”
The moments of eccentricity on Harry’s House ultimately feel much more earned than those, even if they sometimes straddle the line between being a little too cautious and all too forward. Hearing him brazenly open “Little Freak” by cooing, “Little freak, jezebel” feels like being catcalled during the Salem Witch Trials. But once the shock passes, you kind of want to hear him do it again.
Harry’s House is reflective of the Harry Styles of 2022, now seven years out from the restrictive Harry of boy band’s past: more experimental, fashionable, glam, and fun, but still working through coming into his own as an artist.
It’s less of a bold left turn and more of a slow, continued creep into the intersection of sonic theatrics and lyrical confessions that he’s been building the foundation of for years. He’s now got four walls, a roof, and some great, mid-priced IKEA furniture to get things started.
Yet, one can’t help but wonder what Styles’ new digs would look like if he took a few more risks with the interior design. Navigating through Harry’s House is like touring a safe and sturdy home for sale, admiring its solid infrastructure and catalog-ready decor, until every so often you come upon a funky chandelier or an artful nude oil painting.
Ultimately, they’re welcome touches that help spice up the vibe for casual visitors, but one can’t help but wonder how the place might feel if its current owner just went all-out with their apparent inclination for creating a spectacle. A little more commitment would sell Harry’s House a whole lot faster.
