Harry’s House: Album Review

It’s Harry’s House, and we’re just living in it. 

Released on May 20, “Harry’s House” is Harry Styles’ third solo album, with 13 tracks that ooze quintessential spring roadtrip essence. Featuring 42 minutes of groovy bedroom pop-style tunes mixed with heart-wrenching lyrics and pure ecstasy, this is Styles’ most sonically cohesive and dreamy album yet. 

To start with, would it even be a Styles album without mentions of food? The opening track, “Music for a Sushi Restaurant,” is exactly what the title implies: one could easily imagine themselves sipping green tea at a sushi restaurant while hearing bright trumpets and Styles professing his love from speakers above. It makes you want to stand up on a table in the middle of a sushi restaurant during a date and scream “You know I love you babe!” along with Harry. 

First heard at Coachella, “Late Night Talking” has already become a fan favorite for the feel-goodness of it all. Its catchy chorus of “If you’re feeling down, I just wanna make you happier, baby,” mixed with a groovy beat makes it a stand-out crush song. 

The essential fruit track of the album, “Grapefruit,” gives European summer vacation vibes. Crooning “There’s just no getting through / Without you,” Styles slows down the brightness of the first two tracks, making this third track truly set the tone for the rest of the album. 

There are quite a few tracks similar to “Sushi” and “Late Night Talking,” with Styles singing about a relationship in a way that is carefree and oh so in love. But, if you listen to the album further or on shuffle, you might get hit with whiplash. 

Three tracks, “Little Freak,” “Matilda,” and “Boyfriends,” are each respectively choking up audiences of all types for various reasons. “Little Freak” is a melodic, sickly sweet ballad about a past relationship he fumbled with, while “Matilda” is a sort of love letter to a friend telling them that everything will be alright. “Boyfriends” then comes in just to break everyone’s hearts, the one track that is the most stripped down. 

While the album isn’t necessarily limited to heartbreak, that is an overarching theme subtly slipped in amongst all the love and self-reflection. “Harry’s House” gives you a glimpse into Styles’s world (or house, one could say), without revealing too much. It genuinely does feel like you’re a guest at his house, but seeing only what he wants and has cleaned up for you. 

The debut single, “As It Was,” has and continues to take the world by storm, topping charts for weeks on end. It’s become one of his many proper dance songs, with up-beatness reminiscent of 80s pop. 

Personally, “Keep Driving” made me realize that this whole tracklist would be the perfect road tripping album, while “Daydreaming” sends listeners into daydreaming spirals with its disco-esque subtleties. 

One of the biggest fan favorites of the album is “Satellite.” Comparing himself to a satellite circling around a failed relationship, the track starts with a mellow sound that leans heavily onto the alternative pop that’s been making waves so far in the early 2020s. Towards the back half of the song, however, the song becomes exhilarating with Styles’s guitarist and drummer, Mitch Rowland and Sarah Jones, absolutely shredding it out. Definitely one of the better tracks to mosh pit too, if you’re so inclined. 

“Cinema” is another song that deals with working through the beginnings of a relationship, while the album closer, “Love of My Life,” is a supposed love letter to Styles’s home, the United Kingdom. “Daylight” is another hidden gem on the album, that actually got a *sort of* music video via James Corden’s Late Late Show.

Overall, this is one of the better albums of 2022 so far, and I believe will age perfectly well.