Harry Styles Is Still Getting Used to Being Harry Styles

As Harry Styles sang, “I know what you like, I know what you’ll really like,” at the first of his six Mexico City concerts this summer, a girl in the pit turned to her friend and yelled, “He’s talking about me!” She was surrounded by 68,000 people, all packed into an outdoor stadium in the rain to see Styles’s Together, Together tour, for his fourth solo album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.

Since 2010, Styles has released nine albums and toured for a cumulative five years and eight months. About half of all that was with the British boy band One Direction, which he joined as a swooshy-haired 16-year-old. After the band went on an “indefinite hiatus,” in 2016, Styles quickly matured from teen pop idol to respected solo artist. Between his previous album, the 2022 hit Harry’s House, and his latest, Styles finished a very long tour, moved to a small paparazzi-free Italian town, and went out—not as one of the biggest pop stars of the decade, but as a regular guy—to LCD Soundsystem concerts and clubs like Berghain. As a result, his new music sounds different. His first solo albums leaned in to 1970s and ’80s rock, a little David Bowie and Elton John; the latest one is more electronic pop, a little James Murphy and Berlin techno.

For the Together, Together tour, Styles is doing a series of residencies—just seven cities, but longer stretches in each. First was Amsterdam; then London, where he had 12 sold-out nights at Wembley Stadium. For W, the photographer David Sims went to his final London show, on July 4, and took photos as Styles danced like a boy at a rave and played a modular synth behind his back. A few weeks later, they met in Mexico City for portraits. The centerpiece of Styles’s tour is a 30-show stretch at New York’s Madison Square Garden, his only U.S. stop. He’s doubling his 2022 Garden run, which earned him a banner in the rafters. Every night is sold out, which means that over 10 weeks, more than 500,000 people will dance with him in that arena.

Julio Torres interviewed Styles a few days after seeing him perform in Mexico City. The writer, director, and actor’s work is whimsical and uncopyable: Take his comedy specials, Color Theories and My Favorite Shapes, which imagine the backstories and inner lives of inanimate things such as the color navy and the airplane curtain between first class and coach. Needless to say, he and Styles respect each other’s work. —Jensen Davis

Hello. My name is Julio. I was asked if I wanted to go to Harry Styles’s concert in Mexico City and interview him for W magazine. I think maybe I came to mind because I’m also an Aquarius. We’re elusive people and somewhat prone to metaphor (you’ll see). The show was a never-ending sea of bedazzled, mostly female fans having the most incredible time of their lives. They threw roses and teddy bears and yelled out, “Te amo, Harry!” And yet, looking up at the stage, I didn’t get the sense that he was an impenetrable, untouchable being up in the clouds. He felt so…human. I think that’s what the te amo’s are about. Not “I love you” like “Please take me,” but “I love you” like “Thanks for this show!” or “I’ve loved you since we were both kids!” Not a kiss, but a hug.

I went into the conversation guided mostly by curiosity—not necessarily a curiosity about this one very beloved person, but curiosity about how someone in his position thinks about the relationship between artist and audience, the tension between observing and being observed, and how to avoid making art that is just a reflection from the Internet’s hall of mirrors. I also asked him what’s up with all the fish imagery in his work, though maybe I didn’t press him enough on that. After all, I’m not a journalist. I’m just a curious guy. And what I found is that world-famous icon Harry Styles is one too.

Julio Torres: One of the things that was so special about your show was the energy of the fans. It seems like you’re pretty sensitive to that.

Harry Styles: The fans have always been so emotionally generous toward me. I feel it now more than ever after taking a break from the road. When you’re around something all the time, it numbs you to it—like eating your favorite food all the time. The break recontextualized it. Black is most shocking on white.

In the time that I took away from touring, I watered a side of my life I hadn’t paid much attention to previously. Because I started so young, touring became so much of who I was. I would feel quite uncomfortable with stretches at home. I didn’t know what to do with myself sometimes. Now I feel really fortunate to have this incredible job and creative environment, but also this life away from it that I’m excited to spend time in. I don’t know that I had that before. The idea of not touring is less frightening to me. It feels quite special to be in it, bathe in it, and be aware it’s not forever. It doesn’t come with this existentialism that it used to, when I was like, Who am I if I don’t do this? I’m a little more comfortable with who I am if I’m not doing it, which makes touring a lot more enjoyable. It quiets the—

—who am I if I’m not being perceived?

Exactly.

It takes confidence to be a public-facing artist and take a step back and be okay with disappearing for a little bit. When I was growing up, if someone didn’t have a project, you wouldn’t hear about them. Then suddenly social media was like, Oh, we’re meant to know what people are doing every day of their lives. I think at some point the work suffers from that, from constantly reflecting but never absorbing.

A big part of the break was about recalibrating the image of myself that I felt like I was accidentally swallowing all the time—that was being reflected back at me but that I didn’t want necessarily. It’s such an unnatural thing to be shown other people’s perception of you all the time. I was a little bit in my head about moving through the world and feeling very aware of how everything was being perceived toward the end of the last tour. Like, if I moved this way, or if I did this—very outside in.

Once you read a comment…

It’s death!

It’s irrelevant whether it’s a good comment or a bad comment. Suddenly, you are not creating something that you want to show people but, rather, performing for an audience.

A lot of the time off was about getting back to living from the inside out. With the work as well, it was about: How do I make something that I really love with no perception of what’s expected of me or what people want from me? There’s a cycle when someone makes something that connects with people. It becomes commercially successful, then everything you’re being told that you are is shifting you away from the version of yourself who was able to make something from a nice point of view.

It’s almost like a constant loop of making bad sequels about the original.

It’s an easy trope to fall into. You can become so disconnected from the world, the universe, and people. Then you stop being able to relate. That’s when people go, “Oh, I’m gonna try and redo that thing I did.”

We met [in 2019] at Saturday Night Live, when I wrote a sketch for you and Bowen Yang. When I worked there, I noticed that in a writer’s first year, they’re a fountain of ideas. They’re mostly people who, up until that month, have been pretty broke, living a life, hustling, and struggling to make it in show business. Then around year two or three, there’s a danger that sketches become about airports and awards shows. You’re completely consumed by what works, versus thinking, What do I believe is exciting?

Yeah.

I read your conversation with Haruki Murakami [in Runner’s World]. It touched me that you seemed to be wondering what your contribution is. As someone who went to your show, I saw this massive ocean of people who’d been looking forward to this night for a long time. They received such joy from it.

There’s so much emphasis that it’s about me. It’s a really complex relationship to have with yourself. One of the best things anyone has told me is that comments, the bad and good, neither of them are true. Some people will tell you you’re the best thing in the world, and that’s not true. Some people will tell you you’re terrible, and that’s also not true. When you’re younger, there’s this want to be great, and it’s harder to negate the positive stuff. When people say, “Oh, this is great!” you want to be like, “Really? You think I’m great?”

When I was younger, admitting that it’s not really about me would have been quite terrifying. Now it’s actually really liberating to acknowledge that it’s so much bigger than me. We, as the crew and the band, get to create an environment for people to have this joyous time. But we’re all there for the same thing. If you’re onstage, it’s a very godlike position. But I’m not guiding you to me. I’m not asking you to follow me. I’m saying that I believe in the same thing that you believe in, and we’re all here for that reason, which is beyond me.

You’re the astronomer, not the stars.

Yeah, exactly.

At the show, I was next to this girl who had bedazzled a tie with your initials. The fans all had little sparkles on their faces. At least aesthetically, you seem pretty drawn to a sparkle. It’s so smart because everyone wants to feel a little sparkly.

There’s definitely been some sequin use over the years.

You have a lot of water and fish imagery in your work too. What’s up with that? I ask as someone who’s also drawn to water and fish.

It has always been a joke that when we do a shoot or a video, if I’m not wet and/or cold, we haven’t done anything. When I come offstage, the first thing I do is shower, because it’s better for me to feel like I washed it off. There’s a version where you come offstage and feel like, Oh, I’m the guy right now. I remember that from the really early days, the “How do I stay in this feeling—this is amazing!” Over the years, I’ve tried to acknowledge that is that, and I can wash it off. You do the show, you go backstage, you shower, and all of a sudden you’re naked in this most vulnerable, almost infant-like state of yourself. It couldn’t be more different from what you were doing 10 minutes ago.

Are you excited about New York? I suppose you have to say on the record that you are excited.

New York operates at a higher frequency than I do. At times, I find it quite a lot. But for that reason, I’ve always loved performing there so much. You really feel the city during the show, this swelling of energy. I’m not going to do this forever. It feels very singular, and that’s allowing me to really be in it. During the shows, there’s a lot more moments where I’m standing there taking it in, when I’m in the room with the crowd, seeing this energy they’ve made. I feel so aware that it exists past the shows, the songs, the tour—everything. It’s like, “You did this more than I did,” in a lot of ways. I can show up and play as many times as people buy tickets for. Doing this many shows in New York is solely because of them.

Have you ever been in New York for Halloween?

The last show is on Halloween, actually. We did a show a few years ago on Halloween, and it’s one of the coolest experiences to see everyone dressed up. When you look at the world, we’re getting more and more isolated, and we’re losing ceremony. It’s why people still love weddings—it’s a ceremony where we all get to come together. It’s the same thing with sports.

All these events are about community—you’re experiencing the thing together. It’s not not like Halloween. No one does Halloween by themselves.

Post-Covid, and now in this AI time, there’s something about standing next to a sweaty stranger and exchanging energy that you can’t really replace with anything. The desire is for the more tangible, the little bits of magic that just happen.

All the imperfections that come with that give you the moments that you really remember. A shitty rainy day or wet socks while watching Harry perform are the moments that are actually getting ingrained in our memory, versus the content that is created for the deliberate purpose of being enjoyed, then forgotten about immediately.

Everything in our world now is about being productive—how do we grow this and optimize everything. Almost exclusively, my favorite things have come in moments of being incredibly unproductive.

People are obsessed with data, like wearing rings that tell them how many hours of good sleep they got.

You know those things on websites where they say to verify you’re a human, and you have to tick the boxes that have bridges in them?

Yes. It’s like, What is a bridge? Or when they say, “Check every box that has a bicycle”—what if there’s a sliver of a bicycle? Who am I to say that box does not contain a bicycle?

Where’s the line?

I wish one could give a subjective answer verbally.

Someone has to sit in front of you, and you could explain why this was.

Why, to you, the shadow of a bicycle represents enough of the bicycle.

Actually, it’s just a picture of a bicycle. You’re not a human. Don’t ask me if I’m a human. Where do you have the gall!

Hair by Lukas Tralmer at Streeters; makeup by Dotti for iS Clinical at Statement Artists. Set design by Patience Harding.

Executive Production: Erin Fee Productions; Production: Westy Productions; Postproduction: Skn Lab; Stylist’s Assistants: Naomi Phillips, Kayla Perno.

W’s Fashion Issue hits newsstands September 8.