After months of anticipation, Harry Styles' new single "Sign of The Times" has been released, and his new sound has sent the internet into an even bigger frenzy than the time he cut his hair. In a swerve away from the vanilla pop-music of his One Direction years, Styles' solo debut is a soaring, spacey, rock-meets-indie band ballad - and it offers an interesting glimpse into what we can expect from his musical rebranding.
Not only is "Sign of the Times" most definitely not what anyone expected from the former boybander, it's also a step away from the tried and tested commercial formula used by the likes of fellow One Directioner Zayn Malik. These days, mainstream music is dominated by bassey, bland dance music that's as catchy as it is vacuous. Justin Bieber and his fellow track-churners have been owning the charts with short, upbeat, inoffensive, and utterly boring odes to "popping bottles" or their love interests. But Harry Styles clearly isn't going to play that game with his solo stuff.
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It's certainly not what some Directioners might have expected. "Sign of the Times" is pessimistic, reflective, thoughtful and almost ominous. Take the song's opening lines: "Just stop your crying / It's a sign of the times / Welcome to the final show / Hope you're wearing your best clothes." The track is far more David Bowie in his Hunky-Dory days than it is Bieber or Ed Sheeran.
The single is over five minutes long - a mammoth length that, for a less well known artist, would be commercial suicide - and features a throaty Styles over sombre piano chords that spiral upwards into the kind of sing-along-at-a-festival crescendo every pop-rock band aspires to (we defy you to listen to this and not think of U2 or Savage Garden). You can literally picture the bellowing crowds, swaying with their arms in the air and lighters up, while Styles dramatically soaks it all up on stage, hair down and paisley shirt open.
And that's exactly what Styles and his team will have been hoping for. It's enough to keep his existing fans engaged, and is also likely to introduce a new, more mature audience to Harry Styles as a solo performer - which will in turn cement his position as a credible artist.
To be fair to Styles, he does manage to pull it out of the bag. For one, Styles actually has a really good voice. Who knew? "Sign of the Times" shows of his impressive range - he sings much of it in falsetto - and the song generally feels very grown up. Secondly, the production is obviously of that glossy high quality that only a big-name producer like Grammy award-winning Jeff Bhasker, who's worked with The Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Jay Z, can seem to get right. Finally, a turn of events is always a lot more interesting than those artists who replicate the same drivel that made them famous in the first place.
Like the song or not, it's a hat-tip to Harry from us for daring to do something different.
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