The wait is over.
Harry Styles’ eagerly anticipated third album, Harry’s House, is finally out and judging by the reviews, it sounds like it’s been worth the two-and-a-half-year wait since he released the hugely successful Fine Line.
That album topped the charts around the globe, selling millions of copies in the process, so hopes are high for the former One Direction star’s follow-up.
Here’s what the critics are saying about Harry’s House.
“Answer the phone, Harry, you’re no good alone,” goes first single As it Was, “What kind of pills are you on?” Prince pills, it turns out. As Harry’s House flings open the doors of its party garage, Styles navigates this confusing emotional territory with a funk shuffle and future soul panache worthy of the Purple One himself, while keeping one eye on the retro-modernist appeal of Silk Sonic and The Weeknd. Read the full review.
Harry’s House’ is undoubtedly Styles’ best record yet and presents a musician comfortable and confident in what he wants to create right now. That gives the album a sense of warmth that makes the songs on it feel conversational and close, as if you’re sitting around your own house catching up with the star… The musician’s third album feels like a magical thing – a record that you want to take up residence in until you know its every nook and cranny in minute detail. Read the full review.
He’s pulled off the neat trick of making his music at once elegant and more refined but also warmer and more intimate — the polished-marble smoothness of Steely Dan with the generosity of an Al Green or Yo La Tengo record. Harry’s House is bright with synths and horns, often steeped in slick, sticky synth-pop and R&B. Read the full review.
Really well-crafted pop songs, polished by Styles and his longstanding co-author Kid Harpoon to the point that pretty much any of them could happily function as a single. It’s an album that, perhaps understandably, suggests an appealing confidence on the part of its authors, a world away from the classic rock cosplay of Styles’s eponymous 2017 debut. Even if you don’t buy the notion of Styles as a genius auteur whose oeuvre warrants comparison with the work of the artists he started his solo career aping, you’d have to concede it sounds like the work of people who know exactly what they’re doing. Read the full review.
The 28-year-old’s third studio album, is the most unconventional collection of music he’s released so far. Relatively speaking, at least — he hasn’t totally abandoned the chart-topping ship and gone full Throbbing Gristle — but from the opening track, Music for A Sushi Restaurant, it’s clear that Styles isn’t one to spend all his time chasing pop trends. Read the full review.
Harry’s House is Styles’ loosest, least fussy solo album to date, the sound of an artist in a rarefied pop star zone, comfortable in his environment and not having to worry about any unkempt corners of himself. Harry’s House boasts synths and rhythms designed to soundtrack lazy summer nights, conversational lyrics that revel in personal detail, ballads that opt for hushed resonance over emotional bombast, and a voice, deepened with time, that doesn’t need to overreach in order to impress. Read the full review.
The third solo album from the former One Direction member – and actor, heartthrob, and international style icon – will sell by the truckload. And so it should: Harry’s House is a party album with a heart, and precisely the kind of record that the world needs right now. Read the full review.
Styles’ third album, is a pop album because of the stature of its star. But like its effervescent lead single, As It Was, it gently nudges the expectations of what pop should sound like in 2022. It has the mood of a laid-back afternoon sifting through a friend’s impeccably assembled if interestingly organised record collection, with the singer slyly dropping hints about his day-to-day — the maturation of his wine tastes, his breakfast order, his preferred party favours — over songs that share a vibe more than they do a particular musical aesthetic. Read the full review.
Harry’s House is the former One Direction heartthrob’s biggest sonic shift yet, leaving behind the ’70s rock vibe that launched his magnetic solo career in 2017 and the shrooms that helped piece together his 2019 follow-up, Fine Line, for a fantastically funky and staggeringly intimate record fitting for its title… Some may argue that Harry’s House, as joyous as it is, isn’t as instant or radio-friendly as Fine Line, but that’s the beauty of a virtuoso like Styles. He’s a 21st century rock god who doesn’t need to cater to anyone. After all, we’re only guests in his house. Read the full review.
With 2019’s Fine Line, Harry Styles seemed to attempt to reinvent himself as a Bowie-esque shapeshifter whose public persona and style was as chameleonic as that of the thin white duke. But where that album dabbled in the sounds and aesthetics of 1970s folk and pop, the singer’s follow-up, Harry’s House, moves into the ’80s, drawing on new wave and synth-pop and blanketing the album with a more polished sheen... Styles may be a fashion trendsetter, but with Harry’s House, he continues trying on different styles in an effort to discover his own. Read the full review.
Styles is having his way with you — and whoever you happen to be getting down with in any corner of your house — on his sexiest album to date. When the album ends with “Love of My Life” — which couldn’t possibly be about anyone other than Wilde — Styles sounds positively smitten. Or better yet, love-stoned. Read the full review.
Harry’s House is out now.