Rolling Stone UK Magazine (September, 2022) Harry Styles Cover

Product Information

Styles jauntily appears at the Late Late office. He’s clearly a regular visitor, and he and Winston have a brotherly shorthand. My great uncle lives here,” Styles says of Hamburg. “He married a German lady, so I have a German cousin. They always used to come and visit when I was a kid, and the only word in English [the cousin] knew was ‘lemonade’. I didn’t know if she actually wanted lemonade or was trying to say ‘Give me some water, please!’”

Styles didn’t get to play live again until last autumn, but something funny happened in the interim. While we were bound to our homes, Styles experienced his first number one hit in Fine Line’s ‘Watermelon Sugar’, a tune so sweet it may take a moment to realise he’s singing about cunnilingus. Less than a year later, he won his first Grammy for it. The videos kept coming. “‘Watermelon Sugar’ was probably the most amount of videos I’d had from friends sending me pictures of their kids singing it, like videos of them just dancing around,” Styles says. “It wasn’t a single when we put [it] out. It was just like, ‘OK, interesting … this is a high volume of videos of small children singing the song.’” With the continuous accolades Styles received from his success, Rolling Stone only thought it was right to crown him the new “king of pop”. I can’t claim to know her that well,” Styles says. “It’s one of those things where if you listen to her music, you feel like you know her very well. And then you realize that you don’t. But it was definitely really special to meet her. It’s one of those, for me, where you meet people like that and just realize how important songs are.”Studying the finer points of buildings fits the regimented, disciplined, and distinctly grown-up tour life he’s created. Styles has found himself enamored with routine on the road: 10 hours of sleep a night, IV injections pumping him with nutrients and vitamins, a strict acid-reflux-conscious diet that cuts out coffee, alcohol, and certain foods that affect the throat 50,000 fans are depending on. Last night, he slept with two humidifiers that apparently made it look like he was stepping out of a steam room when he opened his hotel-room door. In that instant,” he says, “you’re in the whirlwind. You don’t really know what’s happening; you’re just a kid on the show. You don’t even know you’re good at anything. I’d gone because my mum told me I was good from singing in the car …but your mum tells you things to make you feel good, so you take it with a pinch of salt. I didn’t really know what I was expecting when I went on there.” How am I going to be mysterious,” he asks, only half-joking, “when I’ve been this honest with you?” Those 20 months were when they went from being on a reality show, X Factor, to being the biggest-selling artists in the world,” recalls Winston. “That period of time, he was living with us in the most mundane suburban situation. No one ever found out, really. Even when we went out for a meal, it’s such a sweet family neighborhood, no one dreamed it was actually him. But he made our house a home. And when he moved out, we were gutted.”

Was he able to tell her that he admired the songs? “Yes and no,” he says after a long pause. “She doesn’t need me to tell her they’re great. They’re great songs … It’s the most amazing unspoken dialogue ever.” Those conversations in his life are helping his songwriting. “For me, it doesn’t mean I’ll sit down and be like, ‘This is what I have for dinner, and this is where I eat every day, and this is what I do before I go to bed.’ But I will tell you that I can be really pathetic when I’m jealous. Feeling happier than I’ve ever been, sadder than I’ve ever been, feeling sorry for myself, being mad at myself, being petty and pitiful — it feels really different to share that.” When Styles played two sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium in June, the first thing he did after stepping offstage each night was take a shower. The post-show shower has become a ritual: a hygienic necessity, sure, but also a crucial moment of clarity and reflection. He washes away the screams full of love and desire to just be in his presence. Anyone would be overwhelmed by that. “It’s really unnatural to stand in front of that many people and have that experience,” he says. “Washing it off, you’re just a naked person, in your most vulnerable, human form. Just like a naked baby, basically.”Last year, Harry was in the gossip columns dating the French model Camille Rowe; they split up last summer after a year together. “He went through this breakup that had a big impact on him,” Hull says. “I turned up on Day One in the studio, and I had these really nice slippers on. His ex-girlfriend that he was really cut up about, she gave them to me as a present — she bought slippers for my whole family. We’re still close friends with her. I thought, ‘I like these slippers. Can I wear them — is that weird?’ While Styles has worked and performed with plenty of intriguing artists, he’s never had a real feature or collaboration on his albums. “I would do it if it happened organically — if I wrote a song with someone and that’s why we wanted to do it,” he says. “I want to put out stuff exactly the way that I want it to be.”

He’s completely obsessed with it,” Styles says of Hull. “He won’t stop sending me messages about [people] trying to work out if I’m bald.” Pre-pandemic talks between Styles and the Darling team didn’t make it far; he was, after all, due on a global tour for most of 2020. Instead, Shia LaBeouf won the role, but by the end of that summer, Wilde had reportedly booted the actor for poor on-set behavior. It’s changed how he approaches his songs. “For me, it doesn’t mean I’ll sit down and be like, ‘This is what I have for dinner, and this is where I eat every day, and this is what I do before I go to bed,’” he says. “But I will tell you that I can be really pathetic when I’m jealous. Feeling happier than I’ve ever been, sadder than I’ve ever been, feeling sorry for myself, being mad at myself, being petty and pitiful — it feels really different to share that.”

Pink Is Rock & Roll

He’s found a vague balance through compartmentalization. “I’ve never talked about my life away from work publicly and found that it’s benefited me positively,” he explains, perhaps preemptively. “There’s always going to be a version of a narrative, and I think I just decided I wasn’t going to spend the time trying to correct it or redirect it in some way.” STYLES BECAME A leading man when he was four years old, starring in a play called Barney the Church Man. Later, he transformed into Buzz Lightyear in a production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang “because Buzz Lightyear was in the toy shop for some reason.” His other early theater credits include: Razamatazz in Bugsy Malone (“the band leader”) and the Elvis-inspired Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. (He would later audition for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, but was deemed too iconic by the director.) In the past couple of years, he started to go to therapy more routinely. “I committed to doing it once a week,” he explains. “I felt like I exercise every day and take care of my body, so why wouldn’t I do that with my mind?” For the next 20 months, one of the most desired stars on the planet slept on a small mattress in an attic. The only other bit of house-dressing was the acoustic guitar that would rattle into the Winstons’ bedroom. While fans gathered at the empty house where he didn’t live, Styles lived incognito with a couple 12 years his senior. The Winstons’ Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, with a strong family emphasis, helped keep him sane. After a DeuxMoi blind item claimed an A-list male pop artist and occasional actor was secretly balding and wearing a hair piece, a few TikTok conspiracists began speculating that Styles might be the star in question: Few people are more A list than Styles, and he’s been in a several movies, including Dunkirk and the upcoming film Don’t Worry Darling, directed by his girlfriend Olivia Wilde. Fans started zooming in on pictures of his hair, wondering if it might actually be a toupee.

Removing it was a tough call because of how much he loves the song. “It’s one of my favorites on the album. Because the new album had come out, it felt strange to close the set with it because it’s from a different album. Everywhere we’ve put it in the set, it feels squeezed in. But I love the song still. It’s not like I’ve changed my mind on that one,” he said.Styles’ voice, charm, charisma, and even his good looks have propped him up on a pedestal, setting him apart from his former One Direction bandmates. Taken from theOctober/November 2022issueof Rolling Stone UK. Buy it online now.Available on UK newsstandsfrom24 August. In This Article: