"Adore You" by Harry Styles, Thursday, July 13, 2023

There are not many songs that get the promotional treatment that Harry Styles' "Adore You" received when Columbia Records released the second single from Fine Line in 2019. Before the single was released, a Twitter page title "@visitedora" appeared.  Then a website for the fictional tourist island appeared, though it wasn't advertised as a fictional location. There was no place to book a ticket and Google Maps wasn't able to find the location. 

WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT? Harry Styles released a trailer for "Adore You" on December 2, 2019 and then dropped the single and music video on December 6. In the music video, Styles treats viewers to a storytelling video about a boy (played by Styles) who is rejected by the residents of the small island, Edora. The boy befriends a magical fish, saving the fish from a fish market. Along the way, the "Adore You" music video introduces viewers to a number of colorful characters who live on the gloomy island.  The experience of watching "Adore You" feels like watching a film adaptation of young adult novel you didn't read: you don't expect to get so drawn into the story, but something about it keeps you engaged. The themes of the video about feeling like an outsider and looking for love, even if it is in the form of a magical pet are well executed that viewers forget for a moment that the story is fiction. Furthermore, the moody setting of the Eroda, filmed on several Scottish islands, though far from what many of us want on a summer vacation, but by the end of the video, I'm looking at tickets to northern Scotland.

WALK IN YOUR RAINBOW PARADISE. Musically, "Adore You" blends a futuristic synth with a throwback disco. It's upbeat, but it's longing due to the minor key. As Fine Line's second single, "Adore You" has a tone of introspection, although the song's upbeat nature feels a bit contradictory in the emotional arch of a break up album on a first listen. It's not a tearful track, but it is a reflection on potential one-sided love. On Fine Line, "Adore You" directly follows "Watermelon Sugar," which is a much more upbeat song and precedes "Lights Out," which is a substantially slower song. I generally think of Fine Line as a summer record, but the release of "Lights Out," "Adore You," and "Falling" in the colder months as well as the album's December make me reassess my judgement on the record. And even though "Adore You" mentions "summer skies," it feels cold. But with the rainy season in Korea, the weather reminds me of the music video, damp, sticky, but somehow a little upbeat because it's not so cold outside. So, however your summer is shaping up, revisiting the many moods of Fine Line is never a bad idea.

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