Guys, I have a very serious problem. I can't stop listening to Harry Styles' self-titled debut solo album which came out on Friday and, for the sake of appropriate grandeur, I'm going to henceforth refer to as The Harry Styles Album. Contrary to its two extremely misleading mobile phone advert-friendly lead singles, The Harry Styles Album has revealed itself to be the exact thing I want to spend my summer blasting at antisocial volumes while getting pissed on my sofa in a tank top that is glued to my back because I don't have air conditioning.
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Unfortunately, though, that won't be happening. Soon – it could be mere minutes from now – I will be in the ground, cold and still, my face frozen in a permanent cocktail of elation and stress. "RIP Emma," my tombstone will say, "who was, on this day in 2017, bodied to death by the vocal prowess and breadth of 70s rock influence displayed by Harry Styles on his debut album that he named after himself".Think of me during all future public appearances when he runs his hands through his hair like it's fucking nothing and says something painfully normal like, "Hi I'm Harry Styles and welcome to the Graham Norton show". Please read this – my final piece of content, my swan song, detailing what Harry Styles has obviously been listening to and miraculously made his own on The Harry Styles Album – at my funeral, and scatter my ashes on the side of that LA freeway he spewed on.Based on the first 30 seconds – if I didn't know any better, or I hit my head on the corner of a kitchen cupboard and my entire knowledge of music became scrambled into a nondescript cloud – I would have assumed this was a young indie band performing an ill-advised, jaunty cover of Pink Floyd's "Breathe" in the BBC Live Lounge. That bass tone, that vocal reverb, Harry harmonising with himself – are you kidding me? I'm so sorry to both of my parents who will no doubt convulse when they read what I'm about to say, but: this is some early 70s David Gilmour-lite shit right here, from that viscid, heavy-eyed feeling down to the vague sense of ennui that lies in lyrics like: "Give me some morphine / Is there any more to do?"
MEET ME IN THE HALLWAY
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Around the one-minute mark it rapidly develops into something resembling the Fleet Foxes album we all deserved and never got. But that's to be expected from the guy whose debut video as a solo artist featured him flying passionately through the forest in a cable knit jumper.To collate everything we have previously identified in our not-at-all-overblown roundtable on Harry Styles' first solo single: this sounds like Chris Martin called Elton John for advice on how best to write a song that sounds like "Life On Mars" as watered down for an X Factor contestant to perform in the semi-finals. I still maintain this isn't a particularly exciting cut, but in context of the rest of the album its virtues as a rock ballad that will dismantle you psychologically on a comedown emerge a little more.Ah yes, the force of "Stuck In The Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel is strong with this verse, with a smattering of Mick Jagger repeatedly shouting "I CAN'T GET NO" in the chorus. If a video is released and it isn't the precise centre of a Venn diagram for Robert Palmer's "Addicted To Love" and Rolling Stones doing "Satisfaction" live then I'm filing a lawsuit for crimes against erotica.
SIGN OF THE TIMES
CAROLINA
TWO GHOSTS
"AWWW I BLOODY LOVE THI- hang on…. What is… What???"That's my mam, listening to this tune and trying to come to terms with the fact that it is not, actually, "Melissa" by The Allman Brothers Band.
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The story behind Harry Styles crooning about a woman with "lips red, "eyes blue" and a "white shirt" (I WONDER WHOM) may not be as deep as Gregg Allman writing THREE HUNDRED songs while struggling with substance abuse until he landed on one he deemed good enough, titling it after a name that came to him in a shop late at night while he was purchasing milk (an image that makes me feel depressed for so, so many reasons), but still. It's an interesting touchstone for distance and longing, and in case you weren't already submerged in nostalgia, picturing yourself driving alone down an interstate at sunset with one arm on the wheel and the other resting on an open window and a battered suitcase full of belongings in the back, he's also thrown in a peak Lynyrd Skynyrd slide guitar for your woes.Bonus reference: Real heads may also notice the resemblance in the lyric "We're just two ghosts swimming in a glass half empty" to Pink Floyd's iconic "We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl" line in "Wish You Were Here", which probably isn't a direct nod but I'm going to take it as one anyway based on what we heard four songs ago.tHiS sOuNDS LiKE blACKbiRd by tHE BeAtLES
SWEET CREATURE
ONLY ANGEL
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KIWI
EVER SINCE NEW YORK
WOMAN
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