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

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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.” Styles jauntily appears at the Late Late office. He’s clearly a regular visitor, and he and Winston have a brotherly shorthand. Styles, without prompting, points out how silly he finds some of the arguments about how he may identify to be: “Sometimes people say, ‘You’ve only publicly been with women,’ and I don’t think I’ve publicly been with anyone. If someone takes a picture of you with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re choosing to have a public relationship or something.” 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.’” At times, Harry sounds like an ordinary 25-year-old figuring his shit out, which, of course, he is. (Harry and I got to know each other last year, when he got in touch after reading one of my books, though I’d already been writing about his music for years.) It’s strange to hear him talk about shedding his anxieties and doubts, since he’s always come across as one of the planet’s most confident people. “While I was in the band,” he says, “I was constantly scared I might sing a wrong note. I felt so much weight in terms of not getting things wrong. I remember when I signed my record deal and I asked my manager, ‘What happens if I get arrested? Does it mean the contract is null and void?’ Now, I feel like the fans have given me an environment to be myself and grow up and create this safe space to learn and make mistakes.”

Harry Styles loved being in One Direction. He also doesn’t understand artists who used to be in boy bands who hate their former groups. “If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t have done it,” he admitted. On tour, Styles even covered several One Direction songs. “It’s not like I was tied to a radiator.” 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.” Darling and Policeman make their big premieres at prestigious film festivals in Venice and Toronto late this summer, but Styles isn’t sure his pivot to the silver screen will be permanent. “I don’t imagine I’d do a movie for a while,” he says. There are rumours about how many Marvel movies he’s signed on for and other franchises he might be secretly in talks to do. (In response to a rumour he’ll be starring in a future Star Wars series, he says, “That’s the first I’ve heard of that. I’d imagine…false.”) 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. Other than that, acting wasn’t really part of his life plan. He liked it, but he found a new rush when he started performing with his band White Eskimo. When they debuted at — and won — a Battle of the Bands competition, it was the first time he felt “the switch”: his teachers looking up at him, instead of vice versa. “I think I was just a showoff,” he says, with a hint of cheekiness. “I say that like it’s past tense.”

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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.”

But today, in a Hamburg hotel, Styles is still trying to make sense of it all. He thinks hard about love, shame, honesty, and the importance of kindness and therapy. And he worries. He worries about how he can be one of the biggest pop stars in the world, the kind who can be everything for his fans while also being a great son, brother, friend, and partner to the people standing beside him. As everything gets bigger, Styles imagines a life that is smaller. How does the world’s most wanted man save the best parts for himself?In late February 2016, Styles landed a plum part in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming World War II epic, Dunkirk. In Nolan, Styles found a director equally interested in mystery. “The movie is so ambitious,” he says. “Some of the stuff they’re doing in this movie is insane. And it was hard, man, physically really tough, but I love acting. I love playing someone else. I’d sleep really well at night, then get up and continue drowning.” Fans noticed something different about the encore: Styles didn’t end with his usual closer, “Kiwi”; instead, he opted to finish the night with a second performance of his new single “As It Was,” his dance-through-the-tears pandemic reflection on isolation and change. When he played it, the crowd exploded in a way even Styles had never experienced. It left him a bit shaken. Darling and Policeman make their big premieres at prestigious film festivals in Venice and Toronto late this summer, but Styles isn’t sure his pivot to the silver screen will be permanent. “I don’t imagine I’d do a movie for a while,” he says. There are rumors about how many Marvel movies he’s signed on for and other franchises he might be secretly in talks to do. (In response to a rumor he’ll be starring in a future Star Wars series, he says, “That’s the first I’ve heard of that. I’d imagine…false.”) Fans noticed something different about the encore: Styles didn’t end with his usual closer, ‘Kiwi’; instead, he opted to finish the night with a second performance of his new single ‘As It Was’, his dance-through-the-tears pandemic reflection on isolation and change. When he played it, the crowd exploded in a way even Styles had never experienced. It left him a bit shaken.

u201c@RollingStoneUK @Harry_Styles He is not no king of pop he\u2019s not even the prince dpmo\u201d — Rolling Stone UK (@Rolling Stone UK)We came offstage, and I went into my dressing room and just wanted to sit by myself for a minute,” he tells me, two months later. “After One Direction, I didn’t expect to ever experience anything new. I kind of felt like, ‘All right, I’ve seen how crazy it can get.’ And I think there was something about it where I was…not terrified, but I just needed a minute. Because I wasn’t sure what it was. Just that the energy felt insane.” If the intensity of the Harry fandom ever seems mysterious to you, there’s a live clip you might want to investigate, from the summer of 2018. Just search the phrase “Tina, she’s gay.” In San Jose, on one of the final nights of his tour, Harry spots a fan with a homemade sign: “I’m Gonna Come Out to My Parents Because of You!” He asks the fan her name (she says it’s Grace) and her mother’s name (Tina). He asks the audience for silence because he has an important announcement to make: “Tina! She’s gaaaaay!” Then he has the entire crowd say it together. Thousands of strangers start yelling “Tina, she’s gay,” and every one of them clearly means it — it’s a heavy moment, definitely not a sound you forget after you hear it. Then Harry sings “What Makes You Beautiful.” (Of course, the way things work now, the clip went viral within minutes. So did Grace’s photo of Tina giving a loving thumbs-up to her now-out teenage daughter. Grace and Tina attended Harry’s next show together.)