“Golden” by Harry Styles, Thursday, April 22, 2022

At first it may seem like an odd choice to release a summer album in December, but if the artist in question releases a big enough record, that artist can ride the success into the following summer, sweetening the spring along the way. However, if that album happened to be released in December of 2019 like Harry Styles' Fine Line, that following summer is going to look different. Fortunately for Styles, his album was a welcome reprieve for the hell that we were going through back then. And by the time the single "Watermelon Sugar" was released in May of 202o, the was longing for normal sweet, sticky fun.

I'M OUT OF MY HEAD, AND YOU'RE STILL SCARED. But when a friend said, "You should check out that new Harry Styles record. It's surprisingly good," all I heard was static. My brain was trying to dump the useless information that I knew that there were five boys in One Direction, and that at one point Harry Styles allegedly dated Taylor Swift, giving us the song "Style." I couldn't tell the one direction boys apart, and Harry Styles with his long hair wasn't particularly attractive to me. Only static registered in my brain like when I hear the names dropped of Dua Lipa, Diplo, or Demi Lovato--I couldn't tell my pop artists apart. But last year, "Sunflower, Vol. 6" blew my expectations. On a closer listen "Treat People with Kindness," "Adore You," even "Watermelon Sugar" were quite good. The static started to clear. Today's song with its fast-paced Doo Wop "da nah nah nah"s  and what would be a breakneck speed if not compared to yesterday's song, "Panic Switch" opens the album and sets a mood for Harry's new style: a '70s inspired progressive pop with elements of disco and R&B. Lyrically, Fine Line deals with a break up and the death of his step father, which Styles talks with Zane Lowe on The Zane Lowe Interview Series, and today's song could be interpreted about either loss. 

HOLD IT, FOCUS.  Harry Styles' eponymous solo debut flirted with old-time rock 'n' roll. And, listening back to One Direction today for research, I found that they were actually a more rock-focused boy band than the early '00s incarnation of the boy band. I couldn't name two One Direction songs as, like the Jonas Brothers as of the early '00s, I could tell they weren't for me. But I'm finding that I have to keep trying artists because they grow up and also my ears change. Today's song made me think about the Robert Frost poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" just because the song builds a golden hue in its tone, and I think about the transient nature of life. I think about teaching my students that poem years ago. They struggled to understand the meaning, but as we unpacked it in class, the reactions I heard when they started to get it made me feel like a real teacher and that I was doing the good work of instilling an appreciation of poetry in my students. But that was many years ago, and those students are now senior in high school, and they will soon graduate. Styles runs in the video, chasing something, something golden. The lyrics frantically beg the listener to stay. But is this gold lasting?

Read the lyrics on Genius.