![]() ![]() (It’s a totally different song if it happens to carry you through a grief experience.) “Sign of the Times” seems to pack a lifetime’s worth of hope into a few minutes. but it just gets more powerful as you live with it over the years. The song made an instant impact - it hit Number Four in the U.S. “The mother is told, ‘The child is fine, but you’re not going to make it.’ The mother has five minutes to tell the child, ‘Go forth and conquer.’” That’s why “Sign of the Times” feels uplifting, finding beauty in bleakness. As Harry told Rolling Stone in 2017, it’s sung from the perspective of a mother dying in childbirth. Talk about an audacious career move: He was aiming for the high ground of Bowie, or Prince, or Queen. His first solo single after One Direction wasn’t a pop banger, it was a nearly six-minute love-and-death piano epic. The last thing the world was expecting from Harry Styles. “Boyfriends - are they just pretending?” is a tragically timeless question.Best line: “You love a fool who knows just who to get under your skin/You still open the door.” The vibrant folk guitar evokes the Paul Simon of “I Am A Rock” or “Armistice Day.” Since Harry grew up in a pub hearing Simon and Garfunkel constantly, he knows this turf well. (It would rank even higher if we were going by the finished version.) As he said when dedicating it live, “To boyfriends everywhere: fuck you!” The song dissects a man so pitifully out of touch with women (like the dude from “She”?), he can only relate by turning them into a “daydream.” It’s full of empathy for the girlfriend who’s misunderstood and taken for granted, who doesn’t want to live in that daydream anymore. ![]() One of the absolute highlights of Harry’s House, his best album, and he just introduced it at Coachella, which means it’s fair game, though there’s no way to begin processing the beauty of “Boyfriends” without hearing the real thing. And here’s to the music he’s got in store for the future. (The words are the point here, not the numbers.) So let’s make some noise for all 30 of these songs and the man who brought them into the world. (As the old song says, we don’t want a shadow holding us hostage, right?) This list leaves out his great one-off cover versions, like “Landslide” or “Juice” or “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” (Believe me, I was tempted to cheat on this rule to include his Coachella duets with Shania Twain.)Įvery fan would compile a different list - that’s the fun of it, especially with a canon this loaded with goodies. Obviously, there are no One Direction tunes that would be a totally different list. Sure, this is totally cheating, but otherwise we’d have to leave “Medicine” off the list, which would be a tragedy. We’re counting the songs he did regularly on his tours, even if they’re not officially released. ![]() The list includes everything from both of his solo albums, plus his brand-new Number One hit, “As It Was.” Also the two new songs from Harry’s House that he just introduced at Coachella. He’s all these things, but as these songs prove, the realest, truest Harry is the one who puts his heart and soul into this music. A dangerous madman who finds his pleasure in getting under our skin and trashing our expectations and dancing on our madness. No clunkers here, just gems, so it’s a tribute to every single song. (And while the world is recovering from his sequin-gasmic Coachella set.) So let’s break it down: all 30 Harry Styles tunes, ranked and reviewed. Now’s the perfect time to celebrate that songbook, while the world awaits his third solo album, Harry’s House, which drops on May 20. And it’s just about to get bigger, since he’s also an evil angel of chaos who never gets tired of wreaking havoc on our lives. Since then, he’s built one of the wildest, weirdest songbooks of modern times - a brilliant body of work from a genius singer, songwriter, and performer. Harry Styles dropped his debut solo single “Sign of the Times” five years ago, in April 2017. ![]()
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