“Daylight” by Harry Styles + Harry House Track by Track, Saturday, June 10, 2023

Last year, Harry Styles released his third album, Harry's House. Last month, I talked about the former One Direction's second album, his musical dark horse Fine Line. I've listened to this album a lot--or at least started listening to it a lot--in hopes that it will make me fall in love with it similar to how I fell in love with Fine Line. While I have started to pick up on the musical nuance in this record, I still think that Fine Line is superior. But here's a house for the tracks that I talk about on this record. I’ll furnish the house with more information as it is later!
 

1. "Music for a Sushi Restaurant" kicks the album off in the best way possible. I've heard so many music snobs slam this song as a soundtrack to shopping at Target, and that's partially true. It's "music for whatever you want." The somewhat shallow lyrics about the speaker's oral fixations set a tone for the album's lyrical depth. Things don't go very deep on Harry's House. There are a few points of lyrical devastation. It's sex, drugs, and food.

2. "Late Night Talking." By track two, I started noting a difference between Harry Styles' second and third records. Fine Line was generally a brighter record. Even the slower, melancholy moments lead back to warmth and bright acoustic tones. Harry's House feels colder. There are moments of musical extraversion, starting with "Music for a Sushi Restaurant," but the album's second track is half-bummer, half-banger. The musical production feels a little bit like a head cold, but the lyrics evoke the feeling of being up all night talking during the start of a new relationship. Perhaps it's nostalgia for a better time and the production is the contrast of the shitty time that is in the present. That's purely my interpretation, though.

3. "Grapejuice" feels a bit like a kid wanting his sippy cup. Harry starts to go deep on this track. The musical production sounds half '70s folk with the keys and the acoustic guitar, and half indie-rock with the driving beat. The vibe I have from "Late Night Talking" lyrically is thematic in "Grapejuice": reminiscing about the old days is fun, but it makes me depressed about what's going on now--and this could be a pandemic depression song.

4. "As It Was" is another pandemic depression song. When Harry Styles released the song, the upbeat A-ha-styled synth line distracted listeners from the fact that it's a song about being paralyzed by the past. 

5. "Daylight" is today's song. Its calm start contrasts with "As It Was," taking listeners back to the '70s. "Daylight" is a prime example of how the concrete images Styles uses to paint a picture can either make the meaning of the song obtuse or crystal clear. The image of the bluebird flying to see his love turns to "sticking like honey to you." His love is on a plane, he's on the roof.

6. "Little Freak." We're well into the album's second act. The lyrics on "Little Freak" and "Matilda" are the most melancholy the record gets. It's a relationship that has ended. Some have called the song offensive with the opening line: "Little freak, Jezebel."  

7. "Matilda" is a slow acoustic ballad that seems very personal to Harry Styles. When talking with Zane Lowe, he didn't elaborate much on the story behind the song in order to protect the identity of the subject. The song deals with the theme of chosen family and draws a parallel between the subject of the song and Roald Dahl's protagonist from the novel of the same name as both the subject and the protagonist are neglected by their families.

8. "Cinema" brings the energy of the album back up to its second peak. It's a jarring contrast between the emotional "Matilda" and the disco "Cinema," but the summertime vibes and the buttery, fizzy imagery make the mistake a pleasant one. Many speculate that "Cinema" is a song referring to Harry Styles' and director Olivia Wilde's relationship at the time of recording Harry's House. Harry Styles met her on the set of Don't Worry Darling. 

9. "Daydreaming" picks up the groove where "Cinema" left off. It's dreamier, though. Another one of Taylor Swift's exes plays on this track--John Mayer. 

10. “Keep Driving” takes the energy of the album down again. According to his interview with Zane Lowe, Styles said that he wrote the song about an experience driving from the UK to Italy in 2020 when some of the travel restrictions began to ease. 

11. “Satellite” is Harry’s latest single.  The song’s central metaphor is comparing watching an ex being like a satellite, watching from afar.

11. “Boyfriends” is an acoustic track about toxicity in relationships. Styles admitted to Zane Lowe that the song is “both acknowledging my own behavior [and] it’s looking at behavior [Styles] has witnessed.”

12. “Love of My Life” ends Harry’s House in a similar way that Fine Line ends—anticlimacticly.  It’s Styles as a singer-songwriter, but with the hype that the album sets up, I wish that there was something more dynamic to end with. And who is the love of Harry’s life? England, his home country.

Read the lyrics on Genius.