Harry Styles turns 30: the great One Direction survivor who triumphs beyond music | People

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“Sorry, by the way. I’m not going to go back to being who I was,” confesses Harry Styles (Cheshire; United Kingdom, 1994) in his song Lights Up (2019). And he has fulfilled it. The English artist has been one of the few to get rid of the curse of boy bands and evolve to a more intimate level, which has crowned him as one of the most influential artists of the 21st century. Great critics and professionals in the music industry compare him to personalities like John Lennon or Mick Jagger. But his multifaceted personality (he is also an actor, model and businessman) allows him to position himself as a one-of-a-kind artist. The pretty boy from One Direction turns 30 this Thursday, February 1, and there are many expectations that the public has about him and his career. In May of this year, The Idea of ​​You is scheduled to be released, starring Oscar winner Anne Hathaway, and inspired by Harry Styles and the group that brought him to the peak of fame.

What many wonder is how a boy who sang for the first time on a television set at the age of 16, with an angelic face, and working on Saturdays in a bakery in his small town in the north of England to earn a few pennies, has been able to reach the highest of the highest. He grew up in a suburb of Manchester, ground zero for some of the most important British groups of the 1980s and 1990s, including The Smiths and Oasis – the latter broke up the same year Styles was born. His parents were also music lovers. Styles’ father fed him a balanced diet of the Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and Queen, while his mother was a fan of Shania Twain, Norah Jones and Savage Garden. “They are all great melody writers,” Styles said during an interview with the American media Variety. Melodies that have remained marked in his conscience, and that have helped him win three Grammy Awards since he launched his solo career, thus crowning himself one of the great artists of the century. The English magazine Rolling Stone even mentions him as the “Mick Jagger” of our time, since he is able to naturally assume his role as a gender-fluid megastar and seamlessly transition from rock to soul and from there to ballads with “abundant charm.” ”.

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Even so, it is impossible to understand his professional career without his time in One Direction. At just 16 years old, he led White Eskimo, a punk band formed with his classmates from Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School. What that version of Harry Styles did not imagine was that, just a year later, he would be one of the most recognized faces in the music industry in the United Kingdom and Ireland, along with his bandmates, Liam Payne, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson; who became known during their time on The X Factor program. In the United Kingdom, in the seven years that the group remained active, they placed four songs and all of their albums at number one, selling more than 200 million copies. “It was like the Beatles in the sixties. Although one tends to think otherwise, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr were a boy band because they fulfilled a fundamental requirement: a teenage fan base, and especially female, that fainted with every wink,” he declared about One Direction in 2022. Craig Williams, music promoter and journalist in media such as The Guardian.

In April 2023, Styles was clear when asked whether One Direction would return or not – the band announced their separation in 2015, but they continue to ask him about it: “I’m afraid it’s not a yes or no question. I would never say never to that. I think there was a moment when we all felt that we wanted to do it, I don’t see why we couldn’t do it.” In fact, the members of the boy band have never wanted to publicly consider the idea of ​​the group’s return impossible, but not of a reconciliation, since, according to Styles himself, there was never a dispute. “I think there is a habit of pitting people against each other. And I think for us it’s never been about that. This is a next step in evolution. The fact that we have all achieved different things outside of the band says a lot about how hard we work in it,” said the artist in Variety. But, clearly, English has been the one that has achieved the greatest success.

From left to right, the members of One Direction; Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Harry Styles and Niall Horan, photographed in London in 2011.Dominic Lipinski – PA Images (PA Images via Getty Images)

A role that has taken few by surprise, since in One Direction he was already the star. His first solo song, Sign of the Times, took a while to arrive (it came out in April 2017), but he did it with a bang: climbing to the highest positions on the sales charts. A promising start with which the artist demonstrated that his music was going to be linked to his feelings and ideas. A maturity that has been noticeable in his latest albums. Everything changed during the coronavirus: “I think it’s been quite good for me to kind of stop, look and think about what it really means to be an artist, what it means to do what we do and why we do it. “I lean toward moments like this: moments of uncertainty.” An artistic evolution that is explicitly reflected in Fine Line (2019) and Harry’s House (2022). Contemporary effects and trendy beats barely influence Styles’ decision-making. He likes to focus on feelings, his own and those of his followers, and see himself on the track, and not on the stage. “The people inside [de la industria] “It feels like it operates on a higher level than the one listening to it, and I like to make music from the point of view of being a music fan,” said the artist for Variety magazine.

In his latest album, the most personal to date, he introspects to use the concept of house as a metaphor for the interior of “the rooms of his mind.” An album in which he also wanted to reflect the importance of psychological therapy in her personal life. “I thought it would be like admitting that I was destroyed. I wanted to be that person who could say that he didn’t need it. But therapy has allowed me to open new doors within myself to rooms that I didn’t even feel were there. It has been my best decision instead of looking the other way (…). I think that accepting to live, to be happy, to suffer, that is the most alive you can be. Losing control crying, losing it laughing: there is no way, I think, to feel more alive than that.” Harry’s House was the best album of the year at the 2023 Grammys; she won the victory ahead of Adele or Beyoncé. An award that was especially criticized. Not for winning it, but for his speech that was fiercely branded as racist on social media: “This thing of winning awards doesn’t happen to people like me often, and it’s very nice.” His words were considered wrong because he was a white man – in 10 years only one black artist has won that category; Jon Batiste in 2022―.

Moment in which Harry Styles wins the Grammy award for best musical album of the year (2023). Timothy Norris (FilmMagic)

But if there is something that makes him unique, and that he welcomes as attractive to the followers of this century, it is that beyond his music, Harry Styles is an icon for many: he completely rejects the typical stereotypes of masculinity and breaks with imposed gender norms. He does it without breaking a sweat. He has broken barriers that many artists have taken years to break. In December 2020, he became the first man to appear solo in the American edition of Vogue magazine. It was a milestone in the history of fashion journalism, since Styles dared to break the pre-established patterns and appears on the front page in a voluminous baby blue dress combined with a black Gucci tuxedo jacket – the brand for which he has been model on multiple occasions―. Confirmation of him as a fashion icon was when the all-powerful editor Anna Wintour made him one of the hosts of the 2019 Met Gala.

Last July, the artist ended in Reggio Emilia, Italy, two years after a tour that toured the world with 173 concerts and earned millions in profits. “It has been the best experience of my entire life,” the artist wrote on his social networks — he has more than 48 million followers on Instagram alone—. Of the money billed, he has donated six million euros to more than 30 charities, a generous way to end this journey that he brought to Spain in the summer. In addition, he is building his own performance palace in Manchester to “celebrate music”, which is scheduled to open in April 2024: “The goal is in no way to try to monopolize the city in terms of music. “It’s about bringing more music to Manchester, about wanting more artists there, about using this building as a reminder of why it is such a good city for music and not about trying to destroy other places,” he said in an interview last year for the British economic newspaper par excellence Financial Times. “I think Manchester deserves it. It feels like a full circle, a coming home, to do this and be able to give any kind of contribution. I am incredibly proud. I hope they let me play there at some point.”

Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, captured in New York on December 2, 2012.David Krieger/Bauer-Griffin (GC Images)

But he has wanted to explore paths beyond music. In 2017, the year in which he published his first album, he became one of the protagonists of Dunkirk, a film by director Christopher Nolan, nominated this year by Oppenheimer. In 2022, he walked the red carpets as one of the protagonists of Don’t worry, dear. And in between, he became an entrepreneur as the owner of Pleasgin, a unisex cosmetics brand: “It is a celebration of all these unique identities that make up a community. I feel very lucky to have so many fans who support me, who believe in freedom and have built their own space of security. Pleasing is for them,” said the singer at the launch.

Harry Styles and Florence Pugh, in a scene from ‘Don’t worry, darling’, directed by Olivia Wilde and released in 2022.LILO/SIPA (LILO/SIPA / Cordon Press)

Beyond his talent and artistic ability, his love life has been in the media spotlight since its beginnings. It was then, when she was still part of the boy band, when her romance with the American singer Taylor Swift became public, monopolizing all the spotlights and creating a massive neurosis among both of their followers. It seems incredible that after a decade of those famous images together, both are at the peak of their artistic careers. His last relationship, also popular in the media, happened during the filming of Don’t Worry Dear, where the artist felt a special connection with his director, Olivia Wilde. A romantic relationship that ended at the end of 2022 after two years.

After more than 15 years of experience, Harry Styles has not found any setting in which he does not feel at home. The artist is resting in his family villa in Tuscany, Italy, after more than two years on tour. But all his fans are clear that there is little left for his idol to announce a new job, because as One Direction’s favorite boy says: “I’m always writing.”