Harry Styles

Born: 1 February 1994 [ Redditch, England ]

Occupation: Singer | Songwriter | Actor

Years active: From 2010

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Harry Styles

Harry Edward Styles (born 1 February 1994) is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. His musical career began in 2010 as a solo contestant on the British music competition series The X Factor. Following his elimination, he was brought back to join the boy band One Direction, which went on to become one of the best-selling boy groups of all time before going on an indefinite hiatus in 2016.

Styles released his self-titled debut solo album through Columbia Records in 2017. It debuted at number one in the UK and the US and was one of the world's top-ten best-selling albums of the year, while its lead single, "Sign of the Times", topped the UK Singles Chart. Styles' second album, Fine Line (2019), debuted atop the US Billboard 200 with the biggest ever first-week sales by an English male artist, and was the most recent album to be included in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2020. Its fourth single, "Watermelon Sugar", topped the US Billboard Hot 100. Featuring the chart-topping single "As It Was", Styles' third album, Harry's House (2022), was widely acclaimed and broke several records.

Honor & Award

Styles has received various accolades, including two Brit Awards, a Grammy Award, an Ivor Novello Award, and an American Music Award. His film roles include Dunkirk (2017), Don't Worry Darling, and My Policeman (both 2022). Aside from music and acting, Styles is known for his flamboyant fashion. He is the first man to appear solo on the cover of Vogue.

Musical style & influence

Styles's music has been described as soft rock, pop, and rock, with elements of folk and Britpop. The musical style on his debut solo album was called a "mish-mash of Los Angeles' style classic rock and ballads" by NME, invoking an "intimately emotional Seventies soft-rock vibe" by Rolling Stone, and "synthesis[ing] influences from the last half-century of rock" by Time magazine.

It was influenced by the artists he grew up listening to, such as Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac, as well as the songwriting of Harry Nilsson. Styles praised Nilsson's lyrics as being "honest, and so good, and I think it's because he's never trying to sound clever." His second solo album, Fine Line, was seen by NME to have taken, "this nostalgic sound and combined it with soaring pop sensibilities."

Styles has also cited Freddie Mercury, Elvis Presley, and Paul McCartney (including his side project Wings) as influences, while mentioning Shania Twain as his main inspiration both musically and in fashion. His favourite album is Astral Weeks by Northern Irish musician Van Morrison, which he called "completely perfect"; he also considers Etta James's album At Last! to be "perfect". Upon listening to Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon as a child, he said he "couldn't really get it, but I just remember being like—this is really fucking cool." Joni Mitchell's 1971 album Blue inspired Styles to contact the album's dulcimer instrumentalist, with whom he worked on Fine Line.