It’s tough to wake up to news of fragile splinterings an ocean away, but that’s what happened to many of us this morning. We won’t touch upon one of said partings because the wound is still too fresh and tender. This other exit may have also been in the stars for a while; however, that doesn’t make it easier to have officially confirmed. Harry Styles is going solo. These are the words that have been on so many lips for months—perhaps years—and yet it’s with trepidation and regret that we finally commit them to digital ink.
Billboard broke the news, sharing that Styles signed a recording contract with Columbia Records. Columbia also handles One Direction, so perhaps (perhaps . . . perhaps) there’s a clause in Styles’s solo contract that one day he must return to the group that propelled him to global stardom—the lineup from which parents who were dragged to many concerts can easily spot him and say, “Oh, that must be the Harry one they all go on about.”
Styles has already moved on to other projects, though. He’s in the midst of filming Christopher Nolan’s World War II film Dunkirk. He’s so deeply committed that he cut off his famous long locks so as better to play a W. W. II soldier. Phase II of the life of Harry Styles is already in motion, and now we just have to wait and see if his solo album will be influenced by his 1940s period film. His deep, soulful voice is perfect for singing about the girl he left behind as he went off to war. He has to differentiate his solo career from that of his bandmate Zayn Malik somehow, and going for a W. W. II sound might be the way to go.
But then there are the important questions: What will become of Larry Stylinson? Is this really it for One Direction? Will they soon fracture into five directions, all of the lads finally becoming fully realized people, stronger apart than they were together? That’s not how this was supposed to work. We had a deal, and that deal was for them to sing about what makes us beautiful, and for us to worship them as a beautifully coiffed, skinny-jeaned group of boy wonders manufactured in Simon Cowell’s X-Factor laboratory.
What a day in history this has been. The day Harry Styles went solo. That’s the one we’re talking about here.
