Harry Styles: Lights Up review – soulful, enigmatic return

The former One Direction member’s second solo single is laced with surprises and sounds refreshingly like nothing his British male pop peers are doingHarry Styles is a Rorschach test – the antithesis of his pop peers who are very keen to set the terms of their own narrative and furiously reject what they perceive as incorrect interpretations of their work. He offers little information about his personal life, and seldom cares to address comments about his relationships and sexuality; a recent cover profile in Rolling Stone provided a portrait of a boy at ease with fame, partial to Steely Dan and magic mushrooms, but not much in the way of hard detail.This laissez-faire approach is probably a reaction to spending his teenage years in One Direction, a band tightly controlled so as not to alienate potential consumers, though the upshot is much the same: he can be all things to all people. A sceptic could take it as a commercial strategy; another might suggest that such an approach wouldn’t be available to female pop stars, who are generally held to more punishing standards. Either way, there is something quite soothing about his welcome-all-comers approach. Continue reading…
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