Harry Styles: An Album A Day

An album a day is posted 5 days a week, Monday through Friday

Who would have thought that with all the major rock artists to release albums this year the album I'd be most excited about would be from 1/5 of One Direction. Harry Styles' self titled solo debut is a strong one, drawing inspiration almost entirely from old school soft rock and classic rock. The lead single, Sign of The Times, is a strong radio rock track that despite garnering air play on pop stations is wholly unlike anything on the radio today. The song displays a strong Beatles influence mixed with elements of 80s and 90s soft rock.

One of the things that hit me about both Sign of The Times and the album as a whole, is that Styles has filled every track with real instruments played by superb musicians. Styles has brought in a huge cast of studio musicians and backing vocalists to fill out the mix, rather than relying on samples and multi tracking of his own vocals. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of electric guitar on this album with at least 5 of the 10 tracks having guitar solos as well as legitimate lead guitar playing throughout.

The high points of the album for me are tracks 6 and 7, Only Angel and Kiwi. These two tracks take a detour into hard rock territory before the album closes out with the funky blues driven track Woman and the acoustic ballad From The Dining Table. Only Angel starts with an ambient tone that you expect to lead into another soft rock track before taking a detour at the :54 mark into Rolling Stones esque blues rock.

This hard rock interlude continues with Kiwi, which I consider the best track on the album. Kiwi is a track that mixes classic rock sounds with vocals that evoke Scott Weiland or Chris Cornell at times. This track was Styles coming out moment for me, as he shows with this song that he isn’t just a pretty boy singing love ballads but that he can be a legit rock star if he wants to.

Overall this album is absolutely brilliant with even the more pop oriented tracks having value and not feeling phoned in. By keeping the album to just 10 songs Styles avoids having any of them feel like filler with each track being different enough to not get boring. In a year filled with disappointing pop leaning albums from Linkin Park and Paramore, it is fantastic to see a pop artist put out a legitimately good rock album.

What Bruno Mars did with funk and soul music is what Styles has done here with classic rock and soft rock. I for one hope that he continues to pursue rock music, and that given his popularity others will follow his lead. It is premature to say for sure, but Harry Styles might have just kicked off a rock rebirth in the mainstream music industry.
Album On Google Play Music
Album on ITunes
Album on Amazon