Harry's House

In an interview with Apple Music, Styles explained how he came up with the album title: "The album is named after Haruomi Hosono, he had an album in the '70s called Hosono's House [sic], and I spent that chunk in Japan; I heard that record and I was like 'I love that.[...] It'd be really fun to make a record called Harry's House'."^[1] The initial idea behind the album came when Styles wanted to take the title in a literal way so he could make an acoustic extended play recorded at his own house.^[1] The album is considered Styles's most introspective of his career thus fair; according to Styles the central concept of 'house' is a metaphor for the inside of his mind rather than a "geographical location". Speaking on the album's concept, Styles said "It was much more of an internal thing… [and] it felt like it took on this whole new meaning and it was about, like: imagine, it’s a day in my house, what do I go through? A day in my mind, what do I go through? In my house I’m playing fun music, sad music, I’m playing this, I’m playing that. It’s a day in the life."^[2]

The album was largely written and recorded during 2020 and 2021. "Boyfriends", however, was initially written during the final week of Fine Line (2019) recording.^[3][4] The first song to be written for the album was "Late Night Talking", which was written the day Styles, the band and the producers arrived at Shangri-La studios in Malibu.^[3] "Matilda" is titled after the lead character from a book of the same name, written by Roald Dahl. The song was inspired by a relationship Styles had with someone who was going through difficulty. In an interview with Zane Lowe, Styles stated he wrote the song to show he was listening: "Sometimes it's just about listening. I hope that's what I did here. If nothing else, it just says, 'I was listening to you'".^[5] "Cinema" was Styles's "fun" track which he started writing while being on the treadmill and continued writing piecewise. The album features John Mayer on lead guitar on "Cinema" and "Daydreaming".^[6]

"Boyfriends" lyrically discusses the experience of romantic relationships in which "people don't treat each other very nicely sometimes" that Styles observed in his sister and friends when dating other people as well as his own experiences with dating. "Love of My Life" is Styles's way of showing his love and appreciation to England and home.^[1]

Musically, Harry's House takes influence from Japan's 1970s-80s city pop genre,^[7] and primarily features synth-pop, new wave, pop rock and pop-funk styles, with elements of R&B.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Styles announced the title of his upcoming third studio album as Harry's House on 23 March 2022, unveiling its artwork, a 40-second trailer and the album's release date of 20 May 2022.^[12] In the trailer, Styles steps on the podium of a theatre and grins while a "house façade" rises near him and reversed synthesisers play in the background; the audio would later be revealed to be a backwards version of the album's closing track, "Love of My Life".^[13] Joni Mitchell, whose 1975 album The Hissing of Summer Lawns featured a track called "Harry's House / Centerpiece", tweeted that she "love[d] the title".^[14] Upon announcing the album, Styles set up an interactive website and a new Twitter account. The messages published included "you are home" and "in this world, it's just us, you know it's not the same as it was".^[15] The album was released on 20 May 2022 through Erskine and Columbia.^[16]

On 15 April 2022, during his Coachella headlining performance, Styles performed "As It Was" live for the first time, in addition to two then-unreleased songs from the album, "Boyfriends" and "Late Night Talking".^[17]

One month before the album's release, Harry's House was reportedly leaked on Twitter in its entirety.^[18][19] Sony, owner of Columbia Records, publicly condemned the leak in a tweet.^[20]

On 26 May 2022, in a segment on The Late Late Show with James Corden, Styles and James Corden filmed a music video for the song "Daylight" directed by the latter, in which they visit an apartment belonging to some fans. Both the music video and segment were released on the show's YouTube channel on 28 May 2022.^{[21][22][23][24]}

Singles

"As It Was" was released as the lead single of Harry's House on 1 April 2022, having been previously announced on 28 March 2022.^[25] "As It Was" debuted atop the UK and US charts, becoming his second solo number one single in both countries,^[26][27] and reached the top of Australian and Canadian charts.

"Late Night Talking" was released to US pop radio on 21 June 2022, as the album's second single.^[28] It reached the top five on American, Australian, British and Canadian charts.^{[29][30][31][32]}

"Music for a Sushi Restaurant" was released to adult contemporary radio on 3 October 2022, as the album's third single.^[33] It peaked in the top ten on American, Australian, British and Canadian charts prior to its release as a single.

"Satellite" was released as the album's fourth single on 3 May 2023.^[34][35][36]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.7/10[37]
Metacritic	83/100[38]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[39]
And It Don't Stop	A[40]
DIY	[41]
Entertainment Weekly	A−[42]
The Guardian	[43]
The Independent	[44]
The Line of Best Fit	7/10[45]
NME	[46]
Pitchfork	7.2/10[47]
Rolling Stone	[48]

Harry's House was met with critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 83 based on 26 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim"—Styles' highest rated album.^[38]

Veteran critic Robert Christgau applauded the album's musical fluidity while stating, "Even more remarkable is the way the lyrics this soundscape cushion and accentuate achieve a metaphorical reach and narrative concreteness truly rare in megapop."^[40] Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote that the album "ticks a lot of the right boxes and has abundant charm, which makes it a perfect reflection of the pop star who made it".^[43] Reviewing the album for DIY, Emma Swann felt that while Styles alternately spends time "exploring vivid lyrical micro-vignettes" and then "obfuscating" the narrative on the album, he is "also not scared of being secondary to the song; a lesson it's taken many others far longer to learn".^[41] Neil Z. Yeung from AllMusic stated that "Harry's House is what happens when Styles steps out of the spotlight to live his life. And despite the fact that there's nothing as immortal as 'Watermelon Sugar' to be found, this album, as a whole, has solid bones and is sturdy enough to last."^[39]

Year-end lists

Numerous critics and publications listed Harry's House in their year-end ranking of the best albums of 2022, often inside the top-ten.

All-time lists

In 2023, Harry's House was included in Rolling Stone's “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list.

Two hours after the album was released on Apple Music, Harry's House earned the most first-day streams for a pop album released in 2022.^[60] In the United Kingdom, the album debuted at number one on the UK Albums chart with 113,000 album-equivalent units, becoming Styles' second number-one album and the fastest-selling album of 2022 so far.^[61]

In the United States, Harry's House debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart with 521,500 units, consisting of 330,000 pure sales and 189,000 streaming units (from the 246.96 million on-demand streams of the album's tracks). It became Styles' third US number-one album, his biggest debut in the country, and the second-largest opening week for an album in 2022, behind Taylor Swift's Midnights.^{[62][note 1]} Additionally, it set a modern-era record for single-week vinyl album sales in the US, selling 182,000 copies, and marked the second-largest week for an album on vinyl since Luminate began tracking music sales in 1991.^[62] Harry's House notched a second consecutive week at number one, with 160,500 units sold, becoming his second album to spend multiple weeks atop the charts after 2019's Fine Line and the first album to spend its first two weeks at number one since Adele's 30 spent its first six weeks at number one from late 2021 through to early 2022.^[64] With the entire tracklist charting within the top 15 of the ARIA Charts, the album set a new record in Australia.^[65]

Besides the chart-topper "As It Was", three other songs reached the top 10 of the US Billboard Hot 100: "Late Night Talking" (at number four), "Music for a Sushi Restaurant" (at number eight) and "Matilda" (at number nine). With four concurrent top-ten hits on the chart, this made Styles the first British solo artist to achieve this, and among all British acts he joins the Beatles, who achieved the feat in 1964.^[66]

Harry's House has garnered many awards and nominations, including Album of the Year at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards.

All tracks produced by Kid Harpoon and Tyler Johnson. "Cinema" was produced along with Samuel Witte.

Notes

Musicians

Technical

Art

• Molly Hawkins – creative director
• Hanna Moon – photography
• Harry Lambert – styling
• Patience Harding – set decoration
• Bradley Pinkerton – graphic design