Pre-pandemic talks between Styles and the Darling team didn’t make it far; he was, after all, due on a global tour for most of 2020. Instead, Shia LaBeouf won the role, but by the end of that summer, Wilde had reportedly booted the actor for poor on-set behavior. He doesn’t rule out taking on new roles. “I think there’ll be a time again when I’ll crave it,” he says. “But when you’re making music, something’s happening. It feels really creative, and it feeds stuff. A large part of acting is the doing-nothing, waiting thing. Which if that’s the worst part, then it’s a pretty good job. But I don’t find that section of it to be that fulfilling. I like doing it in the moment, but I don’t think I’ll do it a lot.” After much discussion, the band mutually agreed to a hiatus, which was announced in August 2015 (Zayn Malik had abruptly left One D several months earlier). Fans were traumatized by the band’s decision, but were let down easy with a series of final bows, including a tour that ran through October. Styles remains a One D advocate: “I love the band, and would never rule out anything in the future. The band changed my life, gave me everything.” Styles, without prompting, points out how silly he finds some of the arguments about how he may identify to be: “Sometimes people say, ‘You’ve only publicly been with women,’ and I don’t think I’ve publicly been with anyone. If someone takes a picture of you with someone, it doesn’t mean you’re choosing to have a public relationship or something.” Everything in my life has felt like a bonus since X-Factor. Get on TV and sing. I never expected and never thought that would happen” — Harry Styles

Hynes and Styles have been working together a lot lately. Hynes was the surprise guest and musical director for Styles’ 2021 Grammy performance of “Watermelon Sugar,” and he went on to play cello on “Boyfriends.” Currently, he’s opening for Styles’ 15-show Madison Square Garden residency, performing under his stage name Blood Orange. He’s thinking about what it would be like if he had children one day: “Well, if I have kids at some point, I will encourage them to be themselves and be vulnerable and share.” It was in a London studio in late 2014 that Styles first brought up the idea of One Direction taking a break. “I didn’t want to exhaust our fan base,” he explains. “If you’re shortsighted, you can think, ‘Let’s just keep touring,’ but we all thought too much of the group than to let that happen. You realize you’re exhausted and you don’t want to drain people’s belief in you.” The most powerful moment on Fine Line— a raw confession of jealousy. His engineer Sammy Witte was playing an acoustic guitar riff that Styles overheard and loved. “That was the moment of saying, ‘Yeah, I want my songs to sound like that,’” he says. It ends with a female voice speaking French, while Harry jams on guitar. � We walk out before the crowd fully disperses. Styles lingers a second to take some photos of the room before he heads out to get ready for his concert, where he’ll bounce around the stage, lifted by the wails of young fans who have been waiting years for this moment.

Pink Is Rock & Roll

Family,” answers Ben Winston. “It comes from his mom, Anne. She brought him and his sister up incredibly well. Harry would choose boring over exciting … There is more chance of me going to Mars next week than there is of Harry having some sort of addiction.” As It Was’ is definitely the highest volume of men that I would get stopping me to say something about it,” he notes casually. Styles shot Don’t Worry Darling between September 2020 and February 2021 in LA and Palm Springs. Those months were the longest Styles had lived in one place in 11 years. He thought about going completely off the grid while making it: maybe get a flip phone, stop making music. “The reality is you get there on the first day and wait around for 75 per cent of it,” he says. “And it’s like, ‘Actually, I’m going to text my mate.’” Vest and Skirt by Vivienne Westwood, Shoes by ERL Over the years, Styles has been able to keep a few of his school friends by his side. Most of his closest friends are people he met after moving to London at the beginning of his career. He describes these past two summers as some of his favorites, since he was able to catch up with family and old friends in London. Styles confirms he’s not bald yet. “What is it with baldness? … It skips a generation or something, right? If your grandad’s bald then you’ll be bald? Well, my granddad wasn’t bald, so fingers crossed.”

I always said, at the very beginning, all I wanted was to be the granddad with the best stories … and the best shelf of artifacts and bits and trinkets.” Harry Styles photographed in Queens on July 23rd, 2019, by Ryan McGinley. Grooming by Thom Priano (hair) and Dotti at Statement Artists (skin). Styling by Harry Lambert at Bryant Artists. Ryan McGinley for Rolling Stone Photographed by Amanda Fordyce for Rolling Stone. Top by Botter. Shorts by JW Anderson. Shoes by ERL.Fine Line is the soulful, expansive, joyous pop masterpiece Styles has been reaching for ever since he blew up nearly 10 years ago, as the heartthrob of One Direction. As he sings in “Lights Up,” the single that dropped in September, he’s stepping into the light. “It all just comes down to I’m having more fun, I guess,” he says. “I think ‘Lights Up’ came at the end of a long period of self-reflection, self-acceptance,” he says. “Through the two years of making the record I went through a lot of personal changes — I just had the conversations with myself that you don’t always have. And I just feel more comfortable being myself.” In that instant,” he says, “you’re in the whirlwind. You don’t really know what’s happening; you’re just a kid on the show. You don’t even know you’re good at anything. I’d gone because my mum told me I was good from singing in the car …but your mum tells you things to make you feel good, so you take it with a pinch of salt. I didn’t really know what I was expecting when I went on there.” His audience has a reputation for ferocity, and the reputation is totally justified. At last summer’s show at Madison Square Garden, the floor was wobbling during “Kiwi”— I’ve been seeing shows there since the 1980s, but I’d never seen that happen before. (The only other time? His second night.) His bandmates admit they feared for their lives, but Harry relished it. “To me, the greatest thing about the tour was that the room became the show,” he says. “It’s not just me.” He sips his tea. “I’m just a boy, standing in front of a room, asking them to bear with him.”