6’ is stuffed with The Beach Boys-style vocal harmonies and production that could have come off the latest Vampire Weekend record, and ‘Canyon Moon’ combines those aforementioned Fleetwood Mac nods with sunny, ‘Screamadelica’-indebted instrumentation. The jangling ‘Cherry’ is drenched in psychedelia with its clattering riffs and harmonica lines. You can hear the weight of his heroes Fleetwood Mac threaded throughout the track (and on the rest of the record), but this time around Style’s own charm doesn’t seem lost among his admiration for historic greats. It’s filled with simple backing vocals, twinkling glockenspiel tinkles and a huge, warm chorus. Punchy opener ‘Golden’ is a big and brash indie-pop song. This was evident in the first few singles: ‘Lights Up’, which blends soft rock with modern indie and a glimmer of soul, and the bombastic ‘Watermelon Sugar’, a ‘70s inspired bop stuffed with bolshy brass lines. And while his influences are still evident (Hell, he even sought out the woman who made Joni Mitchell’s dulcimer in the ‘70s, and plays one on the album), there’s far more of a cohesive Styles sound on ‘Fine Line’. His follow up ‘Fine Line’ has taken this nostalgic sound and combined it with soaring pop sensibilities. There were glimmers of his personality and own sound, but they were partially obscured by the eclectic inspirations and attempts to distance himself from his boyband past. Brilliantly bizarre and endlessly endearing, it featured a handful of mega tunes, but sometimes it felt like Styles was borrowing too heavily from his musical heroes. The power ballad fused elements of ’70s rock with Britpop, and was a taster of what was to come on his self-titled debut album, which combined the aforementioned influences with elements of soft rock, psychedelia and a dash of funk. Styles’ debut single ‘Sign of the Times’ was a Bowie inspired epic standing at just under six minutes. ![]() When One Direction went on hiatus in 2016, it wasn’t really a question of if Harry Styles would release solo material – more, what sort of music would it be? Would he follow ex-bandmate Zayn Malik down the sensual electronic-R&B route? Would he try and shed the boyband label and push out a record of boyish indie? Or would he go down the Justin Timberlake route of a tightly written, full-blown pop album?
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