W.When this year’s Mercury Prize winners are announced in London next month, Harry Styles will be nowhere to be seen. Rather than join fellow nominees such as Oscar-nominated actor Jesse Buckley and acclaimed Geordie singer-songwriter Sam Fender, the former One Direction member is staying in New York. will perform at Madison Square Garden as part of 15 critically acclaimed shows. residence.
Most artists dream of the increased popularity that comes with Mercury’s victory. Not to mention his £25,000 check that came with it. But with nearly 100,000 more nominated albums sold than its closest rival, Fender, Styles is playing a different game.
Released in May, Harry’s House is already the biggest album of the year. One of only three nominated for Mercury in 2022, debuting at No. 1 in the UK, beating Adele’s No. 30 and Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour to become the longest-running chart leader in the past decade became. In the United States, Harry’s House recorded her 521,500 album worth units in the first week. It was the biggest selling week of any album of the year and produced four of his top 10 singles, including the #1 As It Was.
In addition to being a commercial hit, Harry’s House has received glowing reviews from a wide range of music press. It’s hard to imagine that recent Mercury nominees enjoyed critical acclaim, sales, and popularity on both sides of the Atlantic.
The stylistic shift from boy band pounding to critically acclaimed rockers didn’t happen overnight. In his seven years since One Direction disbanded, the 28-year-old classic has worked hard to cement himself as a kind of spiritual heir to his rock throne. See Turn, Led Zeppelin, Laurel Canyon Folk, Britpop. Styles is an unshakable ancestral artist whose image has been highly praised and featured in the media. In his first rolling Stone magazine cover in his story, he was featured by noted rock critic Cameron Crowe (writer and director of Almost Famous). A breathtaking review of his first album on NPR described him as a “rock savior”.
“Pop artist cultural abbreviations are taken seriously. Playing the guitar instead of singing along to a backing track,” said cultural commentator who has written extensively about One Direction and gave a keynote on boy bands. House Brody Lancaster says. At the 2016 EMP Pop Conference. His self-titled 2017 solo debut in Styles was, in what Lancaster puts it, “a very careful and deliberate campaign to make him look like an indie artist who’s gaining momentum with his music.” ” began.
Since becoming a contestant on The X Factor in 2010, Styles’ success has attracted young women to follow his moves, promote his songs, and keep his name on Twitter’s Trending Topics chart. It has been supported by many enthusiastic fans, including His relationship with his fans is built on mutual respect. In interviews, he defends them from misogynistic tropes about fangirls, and the Harry’s House song Boyfriend speaks directly to them.
“It is mainly at concerts that he engages with his fans. Fans communicate with him through posters such as: [things like] I want to come out to my parents,” says Lancaster. “He’s been known to give them the moment to announce it to the arena.”
In recent years, Styles has also become known for its eye-popping gender-bending outfits, including bright feather boas, patterned suits, and the Gucci dress that graced the cover of Vogue. Rachel Seville Tashjian, fashion news director at Harper’s Bazaar US, said Styles, along with his stylist Harry Lambert, ushered in an era of “very colorful, almost provocative” fashion.
“[Styles] willing to wear designers who aren’t necessarily household names,” she said, citing American brand Bode as the label that helped Styles rise to prominence. It’s not just the designers who don’t know anything about it, they’re very keen on wearing silhouettes and shapes that are kind of unorthodox for young white men.”
Styles’ flamboyant fashion sense and continued refusal to disclose his sexual orientation have led some to accuse him of “queerbaiting” on the internet. Tashjian suggests that these accusations miss the mark. “Especially me, who worked at her GQ, I can’t overstate how important it is for men to wear skirts and think it’s fun and fun and even casual,” she said. increase. “He seems to understand the potential impact of the silhouettes he wears.”
These days, criticism of Styles’ relationship with the LGBTQ+ community goes beyond fashion. Earlier this week, his comments about his role in the film adaptation of Bethan Roberts’ My Policeman, a period drama about two men falling in love in a time when homosexuality was still a crime, were met with anger. Stiles said that the film “isn’t like ‘This is a Gay Story of Being Gay'”, and that it has more “kindness” in its sex scenes than the average gay drama. “Disappointing … It’s disappointing that Stiles downplays the film’s queerness and reads in a way that evokes the panic of a bygone era,” Guy Lodge told The Guardian this week. wrote.
Still, it’s a mild controversy compared to what many pop stars of Styles’ ilk have gone through.The past year of Styles’ career has been, by all accounts, a roaring success. His next 12 months are likely to be as well. Just days before Mercury was announced, Don’t Worry Darling, a psychological thriller starring Styles opposite Florence Pugh, directed by his girlfriend Olivia Wilde, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It hits theaters, and My Policeman arrives in a month’s time. Mercury’s win at Harry’s House is by no means life-changing for Styles.
