How the former One Direction member became the internet’s boyfriend.
The Saska Kępa neighborhood of Warsaw looks like it has been visited by a flock of exotic birds. However, the feathers coating the upscale cafés and bars in the area are residuals from visiting Harry Styles fans, most dressed in oversize boas and strings of pearls, all ready to descend on the nearby PGE Narodowy stadium to watch their hero perform, or settle in a nearby park to picnic and eavesdrop on the show from just outside the gates.
Admittedly, this level of devotion isn’t unheard of — one doesn’t have to look further than Beyoncé’s BeyHive, BTS’ A.R.M.Y., or Taylor Swift’s Swifties to witness fandoms in full bloom. However, for the casual outsider, these communities can seem somewhat exclusive without insider knowledge — or at least a working understanding of the artist’s discography.
Like the others, Styles has his devotees, aka the Harries. However, he’s also managed to transcend mega pop star life to achieve an even more impressive cultural status — namely, near-universal likability. Even if your point of reference is a TikTok video or two (or in the case of his mega smash hit “As It Was,” 2.6 million TikTok videos), chances are you harbor feelings ranging from warm to outright adoration.
So, how did a bakery employee from Cheshire, U.K., become the internet’s boyfriend? For the uninitiated, here’s a bit of backstory.
Style’s first public appearance was on the 2010 season of The X Factor, warbling an off-key version of “Hey, Soul Sister,” a song choice stumble that was quickly redeemed by his next pick — an a cappella version of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely.” He initially failed to make it much further, but inspired, show producer Simon Cowell paired him with fellow cast-offs Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Niall Horan, and Louis Tomlinson. Their powers combined, the burgeoning boy band finished the season in third place, launching One Direction hysteria with their 2011 album, Up All Night, the U.K.’s fastest-selling debut album of the year.
That alone would ensure that none of the members became a reality show casualty. (For every Kelly Clarkson, there are dozens of performers who never find notable career traction after their 15 minutes of fame.) But even after the X Factor fervor faded, One Direction’s cultural footprint kept growing. Three more albums later, the band had the top-selling tour of 2014 and was the only group to have their first four albums enter the Billboard charts at No. 1.
Gentle genre-bending allowed him to shed his boy band mold while being compared to everyone from Mick Jagger to the Beatles. It’s a shift he owns while winking at his past — see his first turn hosting Saturday Night Live, where during the opening monologue, Styles joked about being grown in a test tube by Simon Cowell. It’s that comfort, both with himself and the camera, that allowed him to segue into an acting career, which has included roles in the high-profile films Dunkirk, My Policeman, and Don’t Worry Darling, a film that, for all its mind-melting storytelling, stumbled because most of us couldn’t quite believe that he could actually be a dirtbag.
Like most celebrities, Styles is an enigma, but on the bright side, he’s using his powers for good. It helps that his music videos feature recurring themes of him reaching out or being torn away from his beloved, while his lyrics are littered with lines like “If you’re feeling down, I just wanna make you happier, baby” — all laser-designed to fuel the fantasy that he would be the boyfriend you wouldn’t kick out bed for eating crackers. But those are only enhanced by his onstage antics, a love language that launched a thousand listicles. From stalling a concert so a pregnant attendee could use the bathroom to calling a fan’s mother onstage, he performs with a clear audience-first mentality. “Please feel free [to be] whoever you wanna be in this room tonight,” he announced during his Warsaw show. “If you need anything, let me know.”
For all his benign outspokenness, Styles has also managed to dodge controversy with remarkable ease, even when he opts to show rather than tell. Appearances in the 2019 Gucci campaign and then again on the 2020 Vogue cover (making him the first male artist to receive the honor) gave him a proto-Bowie moment as a traditionally good-looking white man doing his part to move the needle on conversations about traditional masculinity with the help of a ruffle-blessed wardrobe.
And why wouldn’t he push the envelope? There is the general sense that, yes, this dude really loves his listeners — all of them. As Styles told Cameron Crowe in a 2017 Rolling Stone interview, he’s not about to start drawing lines over whom he wants to listen to his music. “How can you say young girls don’t get it?” he noted. “They’re our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents; they kind of keep the world going. Teenage-girl fans — they don’t lie. If they like you, they’re there. They don’t act ‘too cool.’ They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick.”
Would-be pop stars, take note: Feeling seen is hot.
Is Harry Styles, the public figure, the invention of a clever performer playing the role of a glitter-covered boy next door or simply a dude with good gut instincts? Given the guardrails that he’s wisely put on discussing his personal life, we’ll never fully know. But it doesn’t really matter. Styles has created a space where we can safely engage with our own definitions of love, creativity, and personality. And that’s a bit of feather boa-covered fun that’s hard to resist.