Hey, guys.
Today we're going to talk about Harry Styles.
And his new album, Harry's House.
Yes, it just dropped everyone's abuzz about it online.
So naturally, we're going to chat about it. Sure.
So Harry Styles originally popped onto the scene
when he got booted off of the X Factor in 2010.
How far he's come in this decade. Right?
Right.
It's crazy.
He's gone in one direction.
Yes. Dead jokes.
Yeah. You're good with those. I like your dad jokes. Thanks.
So basically, Harry Styles found fame once he got in to One Direction,
and they're like one of the best selling boy bands of all time.
Something that although those K poppers
are kicking some serious booty right now. As they should.
As they should.
Who says that English speaking countries
should have predominance over all music everywhere for all time.
And bands like Butts.
They're fully committed to the boy band thing.
I found that.
Grown in a lab to be a part of the boy band.
Well, I found out that, like,
if you break if you break from the boy band, you're persona non grata.
Like. Like in the either.
Sure.
Yes. The entire, entire career community turns against.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah. You. You have to stay.
It's serious. Yeah.
So, Harry,
I want to talk about how I feel about it,
but if you want to go into some backstory with him,
like a kind of it's kind of give some clarity.
I don't. Know.
To be honest, clarity is important with Harry Styles because I feel like
as a person of my age, like, I do enjoy his music.
I do.
But I also have references from nineties music, eighties music
growing up from my family, like just
I have such a wealth of information about music.
Well, and you've also had record con.
You were signed to Atlantic.
You're a Broadway singer.
So you have a lot of knowledge with how the music business works.
It's not even just the music business as much as his actual production
and like what he's going for as a brand who he is,
I find to be a male muse.
But for everybody, it's fascinating.
We're talking about somebody who's now launched a cosmetics line
where he has faces forums.
He and he also has these nail polishes.
It's Kris Jenner working for him. Yeah.
Because
if he's hitting any and all demos, he's doing something right.
And I will say that he has to treat people
with kindness thing that he does where he puts it on his merch.
And it's sort of like this edict that he kind of throws out.
Right?
And if you're in the audience of a Harry Styles concert,
you feel like your family,
you feel seen, you feel loved, like he has that presence.
And I do think it's so interesting
because to go from being booted off a reality show to then
all of that ensemble success, he is sort of an enigma.
And I think that's what draws people into his brand.
What keeps sort of enlisting
more and more listeners to him so that he can be an icon?
Nothing in Hollywood and nothing in media is a not curated.
It is all meant for you to interact with to impinge upon you
and for you to then basically eat it up like a drug.
I mean, like, that's what he is. He's like he's like a ferryman.
He's a walking, talking ferryman.
He's utilizing imagery, I think, like of David Bowie and other androgynous.
Very, very David Bowie.
He's trying to capture the idea of like British punk mixed with like,
you know, a lot of a lot of elements that he uses in question.
Yeah.
As a as a former punk singer, can you be
David Bowie if you started off in one direction?
That's the question.
Is he going to be a legend or is his sort of like initial setup
going to be in the back of everyone's minds at all times?
Like I do think he has emerged as a solo artist.
But when we talk about how people need to constantly change their looks,
is he always going to be rooted in the mainstream as avant garde
as he goes?
How much for further can he go in the avant garde
before he alienates a large part of a large base?
Hard to say because he is not alienating anyone right now.
I mean, he's actually he's he's found a way, like I said,
to have everybody feel like they're a part of his circle.
Right. He's reclusive.
If you like.
Looking at this new album, there's a song called Grape Juice.
It feels very Gorillaz.
Yeah.
Like I'm sensing a little bit of where he's pulling from,
from a lot of these songs.
He and his team are very hip to knowing how to toe that line.
Like you were just saying. It's all about.
How do I do something sort of original that sounds that sounds alternative,
indie ish, but also be very appealing, like as it was,
and get a tick tock thing going, but also doing that, like songs
like Grape Juice that are more chill that have that Gorillaz vibe to them.
Yeah, it's, it's, you know, let's have like one or two big singles
while also being appealing to people who actually are, you
know, music files. Sonic, whatever.
You know, what I find interesting about him
isn't so much that he's managed to find himself
and is seemingly being authentic to who he wants to be.
At the very least, he's very inclusive and all that.
But I do find it interesting that he's also acting.
And he's a good actor.
That's the thing. It's like you would he's a good actor.
You would think that he was just a boy bander, like,
just kind of like you want to write
people off in the industry all the time.
And he he had it up against him and his.
Granted, he probably has really good representation across the board.
Of course. He does. But people don't know what that means.
So when somebody goes to an agency
and they're represented across the board,
it means that he has high powered agents that represent him,
not just for his music dates and his tours,
but they also represent him for his endorsements
to get the highest amount of money for anything he endorses.
And we're talking really high.
Also, like anything that he wants to create,
whether it's a book or a movie piece.
Or art.
An NFT, probably like anything basically at these high powered
agencies like a CAA, William Morris, whatever they're called nowadays,
it's like you can be repped for anything across the board,
and one of those agents is going to make sure
that you get the best of the best.
So when he was going into the movie business, he's not going to go
into like some teenage movie What he did was he.
Went Christopher Nolan's.
Dunkirk, and he did it right anyway.
He could have done that
and people would have been like, Yeah, he wasn't that good,
but he was good. He was. Good. What do you think?
I think he's very versatile, talented guy.
That's the truth.
I wouldn't say that his music is necessarily my cup of tea,
but after, like, going through and listening to some tracks,
I was pleasantly surprised.
Like of like he's kind of like Justin Timberlake for and Z.
Better than Justin Timberlake.
Well, no, no.
Justin Timberlake can dance.
Well, wait, wait.
I don't I mean, really, I mean, in terms of the depth of his music.
Justin Timberlake is extremely talented, extremely talented.
And but what I'm saying is it's just pop.
Everything he does is just pop.
Whereas Harry Styles has nuance,
like it's not exactly something I'm going to listen to regularly,
but I would much prefer to listen to that than a lot of other stuff.
Justin Timberlake.
No. Yeah, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And no offense to Justin Timberlake.
People people love to hear pop nonstop.
That's not me.
You know,
I mean, I want to think I want a song that has subtext, a song that, like,
stays with me.
And he's got a couple of those. He's talented.
But he can still make music and be inspired by Radiohead.
What I've found through the years are there are people
who are good at almost everything they do
and that are born with an ability
to access and both and intellectual and emotional side of things.
He is one of those types.
Now, I will say this.
What makes him be able to stand the test of time?
You know, people are very taken by him now, but what about ten years?
15 years? Like, what's going to make him David Bowie?
Like, what is he's pulling from so many people.
But you've even told me, like, we don't aim to copy things.
We aim to create new formats, new, interesting.
And when we have tried, like,
I'll admit, like
there are things that we produce and I'm like, hey,
I see something similar,
but I think if you can do a version of that,
that's like way more your own and interesting in that
that hasn't worked as well.
And like when
when you're not derivative and it's just something
completely original, whether it works or not, people respect it more.
Yeah. I mean, he doesn't exactly.
And this is going to be
an unpopular opinion, but he doesn't have vocal range,
and that's what I will say about Justin Timberlake.
I keep bringing him up, but like he had a very
unique sounding voice and he did have the runs.
Oh, R&B singer. Yeah. Yeah.
He had the voice.
And you need like as a
as a music head, like, I don't need that vocal range.
If if the like.
Let's talk about Bob Dylan, for example.
Like Bob Dylan his voice is, you know, it's not good.
It's not it's not a good voice when you're
talking about traditional voices. Right.
But it's unique. It's interesting.
And the writing and the depth to his music supersedes all of that.
So I'll put it Bob Dylan song.
I'll put a not a Bob Dylan song that's obscure.
No one's ever heard of over Justin Timberlake.
So a Bob Dylan any day.
Bob Dylan was a musician.
And Bob Dylan also was a songwriter with a lot of life,
to my knowledge, experience.
He has been famous since he was young, and therefore, that hinders
his life experience.
Someone like Bob Dylan literally feels like he's a vagabond.
He was like busking on the streets of New York. Like I said.
I'm saying, yeah, and that's what I think is up against someone like this.
That's a. Really good. Privilege.
And he lacks perspective in terms of what it means to struggle.
I'm sorry.
That's probably going to be an unpopular opinion,
but if you can try to understand where I'm coming from with that
in terms of art
and the art that can come from privilege versus
the art that can come from somebody who struggled to get to that place,
trust me, I know a little thing or two about struggling to, to, to
to stay in the mainstream.
This is why, you know, was it Twain or Hemingway had that saying, like,
you know, you want a recipe
for to become like a great writer, have a terrible childhood,
you know, and like you, if you have baggage to pull from
like now, I will say I will say this baggage is subjective.
Yeah. We don't know. We know baggage is.
But what I'm talking about is more fundamental as a songwriter,
where it's like, yes, like you could want everyone
to treat people with kindness and that is wonderful.
But at the same time, you need to keep pushing forward, keep
challenging yourself so that you really can truly
keep yourself in the conversation in a way that helps everybody.
Let's grade the album when you give it a B-plus.
Really?
Yeah. OK, I give it a A-minus.
OK, yeah.
I think people should go listen to it.
Those are our grades. But comment below on what you think.