Harry's House

Harry's House is a spacious 13 tracks, largely full of synthy, anthemic pop songs — a bit of a shift from the former One Direction member's earlier, classic ...

“I guess you’re all mine / When you’re sleeping in this bed with me.” Ahem, and now we know how comfortable the primary bedroom is! You’ll find Styles’s girlfriend, Olivia Wilde, throughout Harry’s House, with some of the most clear references to their relationship on “Cinema”: “I guess we’re in time / If you’re getting yourself wet for me,” he sings. Like a good host, Styles also has plenty of food to offer throughout Harry’s House, from a nice 1982 red on “Grapejuice” to a full breakfast spread of coffee, pancakes, maple syrup, hash browns, and eggs on “Keep Driving.” Why yes, we are staying the night, thanks for offering!

The sexy intimacy on Harry Styles' third solo album makes you feel like you're peeking through the bedroom door as the former One Direction heartthrob is ...

And if you thought there were jazz vibes on “Music for a Sushi Restaurant,” Styles even scats here. And whatever’s on the menu, you’ll just be like, “I’ll have what he’s having.” And he pulls it off.

Harry Styles, “Harry's House” (Columbia Records) If the 13 tracks of Harry Styles' third LP are the walls in which he lives, “Harry's House” is a place of ...

The use of guitar harmonics on the stripped-down track bring intimacy to a song that is both cutting and hopeful as he encourages her to move forward without the guilt of leaving behind those who hurt her. In opener “Music For a Sushi Restaurant,” Styles’ feelings are more straightforward as he shares his love for another. If the 13 tracks of Harry Styles’ third LP are the walls in which he lives, “Harry’s House” is a place of self-expression, happiness and healing.

After months of hype, Styles' third solo studio album is finally here.

The release of Harry’s House punctuates a busy period for Styles, who continues to occasionally bulk out his acting career in addition to being one of the most successful musicians on the planet. (Let’s do a little music math: Even assuming every single one of those streams was done on Spotify’s free ad-supported tier—because those streams count a little less when you’re doing these calculations—the single alone has already scored more than 125,000 album-equivalent units, the industry’s accepted standard for the conversion of streams into album sales. The release of the 13-track Harry’s House comes a few weeks after the unleashing of its first single, “As It Was,” which has already accrued more than 472 million listens on Spotify alone.

On 'Harry's House,' Styles is someone to confide in and drool over, as much a woke Gen Z thought leader as a vest-with-no-shirt heartthrob.

“Keep Driving,” which could pass for Vampire Weekend, recounts a road trip for two by stringing together a bunch of images including “passports in foot wells,” “riot America,” “cocaine” and “side boob.” Not sure what exactly it all adds up to, but that’s a vibe, no question. Styles stands for inclusion, respect and sensitivity, though none of that has come at the expense of the wriggly charm he spilled all over Coachella’s stage in a rainbow-sequined jumpsuit. If Styles’ production choices have moved him closer to the Top 40 mainstream — “As It Was” entered Billboard’s Hot 100 at No. 1 for his second chart-topper after “Watermelon Sugar” in 2020 — his lyrical approach has actually grown more idiosyncratic. And indeed, the rest of “Harry’s House,” due Friday, is filled with tender assurances of his emotional availability (not to mention his erotic ingenuity). “If I was a bluebird / I would fly to you,” he croons over a jaunty synth riff in “Daylight,” “You’d be the spoon / Dip you in honey so I could be sticking to you.” “They take you for granted,” he sings, close harmonizing with himself like a one-man Crosby, Stills & Nash. They call only when they “don’t want to be alone.” Worst of all, he points out, they start “secretly drinking,” at which point it “gets hard to know” what they’re thinking.

The below has been edited and condensed. You can hear this conversation using the audio player at the top of the page. Leila Fadel, Morning Edition: This album, ...

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The title of the pop star's latest album suggests open-door intimacy, but instead pairs more vivid sonic landscapes with less revealing lyrics.

“Black-and-white film camera/Yellow sunglasses/Ashtray/Swimming pool,” he sings on the understated “Keep Driving,” the lyrics playing out like a stylish but stilted movie montage that takes the place of actual character development. The album opens with the bright and playful “Music for a Sushi Restaurant,” replete with horns, a gummy bass line and surprising bursts of stacked vocals. As the journalist Kaitlyn Tiffany writes in her forthcoming and highly entertaining book “Everything I Need I Get From You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It,” One Direction was “a group of boys whose commercial proposition is that they would never hurt you.”

On May 20, Harry Styles released his new album 'Harry's House.' On the album, he has lyrics that could point to his relationship with the 'Don't Worry ...

In between ba-ba-bas, Harry yelps, “You know I love you, babe.” (An unrelated aside: If the album is to be likened to Prince, as some critics are doing, he would be on his knees begging to die for you, not being all nonchalant about love.) After listening to the song with my sister, she said something that gagged me a bit, which I don’t think is appropriate to repeat here, but for the sake of service journalism: “Is he scatting over that pussy?” Valid question. On “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” he sings in the first verse, “Green eyes, fried rice, I could cook an egg on you.” According to Google, Wilde has heterochromia iridis, meaning that it is difficult to pinpoint her blue-green eye color … so let’s say this is another Wilde reference for fun. I guess it’s like the most you can kind of capture a moment is kind of being true to that.” “Cinema,” a slick synth-pop tune, appears to refer to Wilde and her current vocation: the cinema. “I think it’s important to write from what you’re going through at the time and trying to turn life into what you make.

Whatever the reason, Harry's House is rife with food references, primarily on the opening track, “Music for a Sushi Restaurant”: “green eyes, fried rice, I ...

Although many have assumed that Harry’s House is a reference to Joni Mitchell’s 1975 songs “Harry’s House/Centerpiece,” Harry told Zane Lowe that the album was inspired by his time spent in Japan, where he discovered Japanese musician Haruomi Hosono and decided to make an album inspired by the artist’s 1973 album Hosono House. And despite the title, Harry’s House was influenced by Harry’s travels all over the world. But he doesn’t just stick to movie references—Harry’s “Cinema” isn’t afraid of an R rating: “If you’re getting yourself wet for me, I guess you’re all mine,” he sings before adding, and “I bring the pop to the cinema, you pop when we get intimate.” And he’s not done there! Fans worldwide are still in mourning over Harry’s relationship with Olivia, but it may be time to accept that our guy is head over heels and happy as a horny little clam. As Harry Styles proves on Harry’s House, home is where the headphones are. Perhaps he was mid-diet to prepare for his rumored nude scenes in the upcoming film My Policeman. Whatever the reason, Harry’s House is rife with food references, primarily on the opening track, “Music for a Sushi Restaurant”: “green eyes, fried rice, I could cook an egg on you … sweet ice cream, you could use a flake or two / blue bubblegum twisting round your tongue.” On “Daylight,” he sings, “dip you in honey so I could be sticking to you,” and “Keep Driving” contains a verse devoted to “maple syrup, coffee, pancakes for two / Hash brown, egg yolk, I will always love you.” Someone is clearly into sploshing. Walking in the park, driving to the beach, or perhaps just back at the house, at the end of a long day—it doesn’t matter. “Yesterday it finally came, a sunny afternoon / I was on my way to buy some flowers for you / Thought we could hide away in a corner of the heath” he sings on “Grapejuice.” On “Daylight,” he croons, “Out of New York, I’m on my comedown speed / we’re on bicycles, saying ‘There’s life out there.’” But Harry’s House isn’t just horny in the traditional sense. But now, between Harry’s House’s soothing lyrics, unhurried melodies, and even some recent casual meadow frolicking, it’s clear that Harry is ready to slow down, stay on the ground, and enjoy the little things in life. And no complaints about that, but are we sure someone didn’t just mistake the shopping list for song lyrics and commit to the bit? Five years ago, Harry Styles was flying over Scotland, dangling from a helicopter and taking himself very seriously as he kicked off his solo career with an epic, nearly six-minute power ballad about the end of the world. In an era of streaming music that seems more indistinct and unpredictable than ever, Harry Styles is a constant source of can’t-miss content and larger-than-life moments.

On Harry's House, he stops mining the past and starts building his own place in music history.

Given Styles’ Joni fandom, the album title often has been taken as a tribute to the song “Harry’s House/Centerpiece” from Mitchell’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns. But in a couple of interviews now, he’s clarified that it’s actually a reference to the 1973 album Hosono House by Japanese folk-psych and “city pop” pioneer Haruomi Hosono, of the groups Yellow Magic Orchestra and Happy End. That record was an early example of a bedroom project, and Styles was anticipating that during the pandemic he might have to pursue a similarly homespun album. And there’s a touching centerpiece in the guitar-piano meditation “ Matilda.” It departs from the romantic themes to provide distant, gentle counsel (“it’s none of my business, but it’s just been on my mind”) to a friend who needs to detach herself from a hostile family life: “You can start a family who will always show you love,” Styles sings. And while the songs are not explicit about it, they do convey a sense of place, unlike the kind of stage-set facades one imagined him posing in front of on the earlier albums. In that context, the acoustic ballad that follows, “ Boyfriends,” isn’t necessarily just the sensitive-feminist denunciation of guys mistreating their romantic partners that it seems—though it’s a fine on that level, too, with that ultimate sensitive dude Ben Harper on guitar—but a potential self-excoriation too. It’s one of the many songs here that seem to be about the insecure moorings of a long-distance relationship. I can’t parse exactly what’s going on in the narrative of “ Little Freak,” for instance, where Styles starts off calling someone a “jezebel,” later declines to apologize for spilling a beer on the person’s friend at Halloween (maybe?), and then owns up that these acts of disrespect really came at his own expense. Then, in the final minute, the satellite’s path seems to get more tangled, and the music becomes overwhelmed by a twister of noise that dismantles its sweet optimism. A paradoxical effect of this embrace of maturity is that, like Dylan in 1964 (though this is where that parallel ends), Styles seems liberated to be lighter and less sententious. He has an instinct for the zeitgeist that’s most apparent in his ongoing visual refusal of gender restrictions—an extension of the “soft” masculinity associated with the boy-band archetype, on his own terms—but doesn’t stop there. The 28-year-old singer has said in recent interviews that watching the rise of the much younger Billie Eilish made him aware that for the first time he was no longer in contention to be the bright young thing in pop. And in this mode, ironically enough, his personal songwriting voice comes through much more clearly than when he was trying to reproduce blurry scans of templates from 1970s singer-songwriters like Elton John, Joni Mitchell, or his friend and idol Stevie Nicks. These songs find their own routes to feeling instead of retracing inherited maps. Quoting Bob Dylan to do it feels apt because, on 2017’s Harry Styles and 2019’s Fine Line, the former heartthrob from U.K. boy band One Direction seemed overly compelled to pile on reference points, particularly from rock-music history, in order to prove he deserved to be taken seriously.