He reminds me more of the monologue that opens Mary Harron’s 2000 film American Psycho, in which Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman coldly intones, “There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman. I personally wouldn’t compare him to Bowie or Prince, for a variety of reasons. In a recent list of the world’s most stylish musicians, Styles was praised as “a new-school style icon in the gender-fluid footsteps of ’70s and ’80s heroes - especially David Bowie and Prince,” presumably because he wears dresses on stage, just as countless other straight male pop stars have done for a half-century.
Finding a place to feel good … is good! It’s the equivalent of a corporation tweeting out a social-justice slogan. “And we can treat people with kindness / Find a place to feel good.” Do I dispute the message of the song? Of course not. “Maybe we can / Find a place to feel good,” he sings. He lays it on so thick that the performative altruism becomes oppressive, like in “Treat People With Kindness,” a particularly egregious nice-guy routine from Styles’ blockbuster second album, 2019’s Fine Line. “Harry Styles is a good person” is Harry Styles’ overriding artistic credo. In the ersatz indie-pop number “Grapejuice,” he’s the hopeless romantic who admits that “I was on my way to buy some flowers for you.” In the low-key bedroom ballad “Little Freak,” he’s the sultry dreamboat who raves about “the body all that yoga gave you.” But mostly, he’s just … nice! Really, really nice! “Take a walk on Sunday through the afternoon,” he sighs moonily in “Love Of My Life.” “We can always find something for us to do.”
And he’s here to be your surrogate best friend, romantic partner, and/or sensitive ally, the hunky hero who will whisper sweet nothings while the dumpy zero in your life watches sports on the couch. As he makes clear in the other songs on Harry’s House, Styles himself is not guilty of any of these offenses.
“They take you for granted / They don’t know they’re just misunderstanding you.” A few lines later, he sniffs, “You love a fool who knows just how to get under your skin.” Singing in a tender croon over a gentle, finger-picked guitar lick that evokes the ’70s AM gold of John Denver, Styles enumerates the many ways in which most boyfriends are bad. Take “Boyfriends,” the penultimate track from his forthcoming album, Harry’s House. I know this because he told me himself, over and over, in his songs.