Harry Styles has fooled the music industry – his secret? Being a man ...Middle East

Harry Styles has broken records with the presale for his upcoming tour. Ticketmaster has said the 11.5 million registrations it received to buy tickets for his 30-night Madison Square Garden residency in New York is “the largest artist presale registration performance ever seen for a single market or residency-style run”. Fans are, naturally, fuming about the cost of attending the concert; seated tickets at his 12-show run at Wembley (itself record-breaking in its length) are priced between £44 and £466 and go on general sale today.

Yet while there is a lot of discussion about the ever-inflating cost of stadium tours, nobody is talking about why you would want to go and see Harry Styles in the first place – let alone pay hundreds of pounds for the privilege. Well – perhaps the answer to the specific question of “seeing” him is obvious, since anything he does, from giving a cheeky grin to growing a moustache to putting on a pair of jeans, is enough to make most straight women weak at the knees. But concerts are generally defined by not only a visual but an audio experience. And, in the audio department, Styles has always been hugely overrated.

I have written about the Styles phenomenon in the past – namely, that his songs do not stand up to the heft of his public image. However, I tried to come at his new single, “Aperture”, without bias, and, as usual, I found it… fine. A mellow, easy-listening, vaguely electronic pop song that is inoffensive and palatable, just catchy enough to remember but not interesting enough to burrow deep into your brain. It’s accompanied by a slightly off-the-wall music video in which Styles showcases his charisma and what I suppose could be called “creative vision”. Fair enough. We can all move on with our day.

But then I read a number of praising reviews that described it, varyingly, as “quietly radical” and as possessing “melancholy and intimacy”; I saw him compared (lightly) to LCD Soundsystem, and the likes of Charli XCX and Rosalia in how he is challenging the pop industry’s expectations. And so I am, again, forced to wonder whether I am living in an alternate reality.

Let’s be frank. Styles’s career is, like that of most contemporary stars, sustained by an army of loyal fans, many from his days in One Direction: young girls looking for an idol, young women looking for men who are, in the words of Sabrina Carpenter, “both jacked and kind”, and older women lamenting that their husbands are too chicken to wear pearl necklaces to the Slug and Lettuce. (I’m yet to come across a true male fan, but let me know if you find one.)

None of that has changed in the decade Styles has been releasing solo material; however, the solo material has, as any good commercial product does, adapted to an evolving musical climate and provided us with vaguely grungy pop-rock (“Sign of the Times”), determinedly feel-good quasi-feminism (“Watermelon Sugar”) and, now, something with a slightly housey beat that positions Styles on the ASOS-clad edge of the rave and, perhaps more importantly, at the front of the Park Run pack.

But what struck me most about all this is just how lightly he gets off as a man. If an equivalent female star put out something so unremarkable, she would be eviscerated for it by both music critics and the internet. Just look at the number of thinkpieces that came out when Taylor Swift released her middling album Life of a Showgirl – everyone desperate to prove that she wasn’t all she was cracked up to be. Female stars are constantly having to improve (Dua Lipa), innovate (Charli XCX), shapeshift (Beyoncé), self-narrativise (Swift), and contend with the public implications of their sexuality (Carpenter) – yet Styles seems to be able to do whatever he wants and go entirely unquestioned.

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Styles has carved out a place for himself in the industry that is very different from your usual washed-up talent show star. The tragic death of his bandmate Liam Payne in October 2024 shows that situation in extremis – when the pressures of fame develop into mental health crises and addiction. But his other bandmates – and equivalent boy- and girlband members past – have had typically unremarkable pop careers, putting out a stream of bland music but never quite reaching the stratospheric heights of their early days. Styles – the fan favourite from One Direction – has always appeared to have more edge. Yet most of that edge is wrapped up in his gender fluid dress sense – which is part of what some people describe as “queerbaiting” – rather than anything musically groundbreaking.

Because if you took away the image, what would be left? There is very little of interest to explore in his catalogue. And yes, pop music doesn’t have to be serious or even have staying power. Sometimes it just captures a moment in time. Sometimes it really is as simple as making something that satisfactorily accompanies shortform video content (or, as Styles aptly puts it in his reels-appropriate song “Music For a Sushi Restaurant”, “music for whatever you want”). But what frustrates me is that Styles’s output is taken seriously where that of women in his position often isn’t. And that women’s work is broken down and scrutinised, while Styles glides through a sea of four- and five-star reviews on charisma alone.

It’s a strange time for men in pop. The industry has been dominated by “girlies” for well over a decade, and with a new generation now dominating – Addison Rae, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Tate McRae – that shows no signs of changing. Styles is a much-needed male role model in many respects – he makes unapologetic pop music with little fear of his own emasculation (Matty Healy could take a few tips here). He seems kind. He is a showman. But let’s give his work itself the same treatment as the women he’s competing with – it’s only fair.

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